The Secret Sauce behind some of my most effective campaigns

Article by Fleur Skinner, Partner / PR, Content & Experience at HeyYou

Thinking about new, different, inventive ways to market?

PR, and activation, can be incredibly effective ways to generate engagement, shift perceptions and drive sales.  But what makes a really good PR or experiential campaign? Here are 5 proven ingredients for a great result.

1 – Amplify a point of contention

Points of conflict are typically the subject of avoidance in marketing, but when strategically harnessed, they can be a powerful force in generating talkability.

In 2017 I worked with Movember to develop a campaign to get the nation talking about growing a moustache during November.

How? We leveraged the social tension: many High Schools don’t allow boys to participate in Movember because they have a ‘clean shave’ policy. Arguably unfair when teenage boys are a high-risk group for poor mental health.

To leverage this point of contention we sent a letter to High School principals asking them to reconsider their ‘clean shave’ policies.

The same letter was also sent to news media outlets and ran in donated media space as a full-page ad.

This conversation was a good one, both in news and social media, and it got the nation talking about Movember.

The result was record-setting participation and donations. The campaign won dozens of industry award including Effies, Beacons, Axis and PREScom honours.

2 – Build a Queue

There’s something psychologically compelling about a queue. It suggests that whatever is at the end of it is something you need.

Global fashion brand H&M have mastered this with over 5,000 store openings. But how do you build the kind of anticipation that triggers a queue?

When I worked with H&M on the opening of their Christchurch store, we erected a giant coat hanger that acted like an art installation in the lead up to the big day.

For Commercial Bay in Auckland we partnered with artist Ruben Patterson to ‘projection map’ the new H&M building, bringing its unique architecture to life with moving images of native New Zealand flora and fauna. The light show made the store pop out of the busy urban landscape.

Both experiential actions marked the start of something ‘big’ and, along with the promise of a great in-queue experience (e.g. celebrity DJ’s & goodie bags) we were able to attract hundreds of excited shoppers queuing out the front of these new stores on each opening day. Of course, the resulting news stories and social content then had a whole new wave of shoppers lining up to come in next.

3 – Tell stories that relate, to resonate. 

Often advertising campaigns target the masses, and for good reason. But when you have a really clear target in mind, the story you tell needs to relate directly to connect.

When I was working with the NZ police in 2013 on a recruitment campaign, we needed to attract Māori & Pacific, Indian and Asian recruits - and within those groups, women in particular.  

We had an existing creative campaign that was based on recreating real Police experiences as street art, it was cool, but it wasn’t getting through to our key audiences.

So, we worked with the real Officers involved in the art to unearth stories that we could leverage through niche media outlets.

Each new art installation was unveiled at community and media launches, and a pitch was made to media that focussed on both the uniqueness of the campaign and interview opportunities with a diverse group of police role models.

The campaign achieved a record level of sign ups and attracted the most diverse bunch of recruits to date. It was also awarded a Gold Effie, for the Hardest Challenge.

4 – Tap into FOMO, it’s a powerful thing

One of the most powerful tools for cementing brand preference is a rich experience, and one of the most compelling ways to get people to have that experience, is to make it available for a limited time. 

When Rekorderlig sprang onto the NZ scene it marked the beginning of a wave of cider brands all competing for attention in the same space. The growth of the category was good, but the challenge was to maintain market leadership.

It was also getting cold, how do you make a cider brand the market leader in winter? The solution was to make it central to an unmissable winter experience. 

Rekorderlig Winter Lights was a 10-day pop up bar, a transformed CBD restaurant, rebuilt as a tree filled, wood paneled winter garden. Leveraging PR and influencers to seed the knowledge and build interest, the winter garden was highly successful – with queues out the door every night and a wide reach of both earned and user generated content for the brand.

5 – Design a stunt and have a little fun 

A well-timed stunt can be a really impactful way to grab attention and connect in a spirit of good humor. Generally speaking, consumers love brands that are unafraid to poke fun at themselves. 

April fool’s day is a legitimate excuse to endear people to a brand by doing something ridiculous.

The Holden ‘Mullet Amnesty’ April fools’ stunt was one of those times. TVNZ crowned it the number 1 April fools’ prank of the year. The idea was to offer a new Holden Astra in exchange for a mullet; a nod to the transformation of the brand - away from its ‘westie’ roots.

We had hidden cameras, racing legend Greg Murphy, a hairdresser, a brand-new Holden Astra. And we had our guy; he turned up sporting a classic mullet and matching metal band T-shirt.

Instantly we edited the content together in two ways; one for owned social platforms and one for news media platforms. The result was that the story was told widely across news and social media delivering reach and engagement that surpassed all expectations.

Whether the idea you need is about generating a debate, connecting with a particular audience, building hype, or simply standing out, all these ingredients are proven puddings (turned out just right).