1.Situation
This article introduces the special category ” Only who does not work, does not make mistakes ”.
In this category I am including personal professional experiences with erroneous judgements, wrong decisions, poorly articulated projects that generated results contrary to expectations.
The first example that comes to my mind is from my activity in Graffiti / BBDO as Junior Executive Account on communication projects developed by the agency for Cosmorom (mobile telephony).
2.Task
Cosmorom briefed Graffiti/BBDO to develop a campaign for its prepaid service: Cosmo card.
3.Action
At the time of 2000 years, Cosmorom via the Cosmo card brought some interesting new features:
-billing per second after the first 15 seconds
-card valid for 12 months
-free of charge voice mail
These benefits are totally outdated today, but for that time they represented important competitive advantages for Cosmorom versus Connex / Dialog.
In order to promote these benefits in accordance with the brief received from Cosmorom, the agency had to develop an aggressive campaign with the scope that Cosmo’s card notoriety and benefits to be quickly noticed by customers.
In general, this communication goal is achieved through two specific actions:
-massive investments in media budgets (TV, press, radio, outdoor, online)
-creative concept and executional declinations to notice the spot in the advertising break, to attract attention, to generate mouth-to-mouth, controversy, debates and positive comments.
The agency decided to integrate both components in Cosmorom campaign development.
4.Results
Agency and client ran a campaign called ” Blondes don’t get it easy ” with three executions declined on TV, radio, press, outdoor.
Unfortunately, I did not find the TV spots used in the campaign reason why I described them below.
Clip 1: Billing per second
On the shore of a lake, a blonde calls at CFR Information Desk and asks the journey time for a train from Bucharest to Constanta. The operator responds in equal, almost metallic voice: “A second.” Blonde says “Thank you!” and shut the phone.
Clip 2: You can talk 12 months
The same blonde, balancing in a swing and talking on the phone. A male voice speaks to the audience: “What’s the difference between a Cosmo card and a blonde?” The blonde articulates something like, “Aaaa .. Iiiii .. Paai …. So ….”. There is the response from the male voice: “With Cosmo card you can talk for 12 months”.
Clip 3: Free voice mail
The same blonde, walking on an alley with banks, from the same park, talking on the phone with a slightly annoyed voice: “Why blondes want to pay for their voicemail?” The answer is given by the same masculine voice “For nothing!”
At that time, the Blondes campaign generated massive controversy, the general opinion related to Cosmorom and its campaign being rather negative as this campaign introduced in the general debate the issue of women’s negative discrimination based on the stereotype / prejudice that blondes are not smart.
5.Key Leanings
Advertising space is defined as creative, free, open, pushing the limits to the maximum, but crossing some milestones generates results contrary to the expected ones.
Looking retrospectively, the creative concept that speculated the idea of ‘’jokes with blondes’’ was not a proper choice, but the agency and client integrally assumed this campaign.
Notification: MYPRODUCT reflects my real professional experience and expertise as well as my subjectivity. I do have a profound respect for all the companies I collaborated to and for all the people I worked with. It is not my intention to approach any sensitive, confidential or offending information related to companies, projects or people. If you the reader deduct or recognise companies, projects or people in my examples, I kindly ask you to respect MYPRODUCT and my professional and ethic approach and to not share any detail, information, situation, name, company.