The brief
Bianco, a Danish shoe manufacturer and retailer with branded outlets in eight countries, runs annual campaigns - edgy and with a twist vis-a-vis the product. Last year's campaign -”The Devil Inside” - featured a dark universe drawing on the classic horror movie "The Exorcist". Only this time it was a case of a woman obsessed with her Bianco shoes.
The banners were designed to draw the shoe-obsessed woman into Bianco's universe of infinte foot-disguises present at bianco.com - through an offer that is hard to refuse: "Pick your shoe". View banners
Print/outdoor: Thomas Hofman, art director at &co.
Film production: Bacon
Media Agency: OMD
The challenge
The challenge is to combine these rather weird campaigns with the target group - not first-movers and trendmakers but rather women between 16 and 40 years of age, who belong squarely in the high-street fashion segment.
"... value to many shoe-lovers"
The banners' goal was to draw traffic to bianco.com - the main corporate site. At the site you can view ”The Devil Inside” movie. And you can benefit from the wealth of acitivies on the main site, which are not specifically related to the campaign, but of value to many shoe-lovers.
The strategy
Research carried out for this campaign showed members of the target group had a great interest in shoes, and would be inclined to participate in quizzes, competitions and polls on that subject.
Based on that, the campaign pull became banners on media websites (news, lifestyle) which lure women to choose between three different shoes.
The shoes presented in the banner are in each case chosen to match the banner-carrying site’s target group.
As the user approaches the pick-a-shoe icon on the banner it changes from a traditional polished fashion design to take on a Faustian, threatening look – the devil inside every woman appears and tells the user to ”pick your own shoe”. Which then sends the user forward to the bianco website.
The solution
msn.no – drop-down streaming ad
Msn.no has a widespread audience and no gender majority. That made the short movie trailer an obvious choice in stead of the ‘Pick a shoe’ concept.
side2.no - ownership
The side2.no ownership fully taps the possibilities of online media. “Shocking the audience” was the original idea for the campaign, and the large scale transitions from light to dark atmosphere, takes it back to the basic concept - shocking the audience, in a unique way not possible in outdoor or print.
kingmagazine.se - mens fashion
For the kingmagazine.se add, the ‘Pick a shoe’ concept was implemented, but with a difference. kingmagazine.se predominantly targets a male segment, which made it possible for the ad to use the campaign’s dim atmosphere to a much wider extent.
msn.se, msn.dk, msn.no - MSN Messenger
The MSN messenger ad is a success story about the ‘Pick a shoe’ concept’s adaptability to smaller formats. And emphasizes the target groups interest in shoes as well as quiz participation. The MSN Messenger ad gained a 1,59% click-rate in Denmark – nearly nine times the average.
Detnye.no - partial ownership
The three ads for detnye.no, were booked separately but frequently overlapped. The ads were for that reason built to work separately, while being able to take advantage of the time spans where two or more were running in parallel. In these cases the ads would trigger each other to ‘go off’ simultaneous – generating larger attention to the message.
Tv2.dk - video streaming ad
Tv2.dk has a million unique visitors weekly and like msn.no has no gender segregation; therefore the movie trailer approach was chosen here as well. When visitors placed their cursors on the ad, they were exposed to the trailer.
The results
Click-rates for The Devil Inside 'pick a shoe'-banners were an impressive 0.65 percent compared to the 0.10-0.20 percent norm for banners on media sites.
This translates to an effect on media spend three times above the norm.
The terminus
No temporary two-month campaign site: all roads lead to bianco.com. This allows for more continuous relationship building between the company and those who were attracted by the campaign.
"... all roads lead to bianco.com"
The crucial value-adding element in this campaign is the elimination of distance between campaign and brand and products. While the campaign builds brand and interest, products are the corporate site’s business, so the shoe-loving woman (or man) needs to go there. And spend time there to benefit from all the offers available, which in the end builds loyality.
Specifically, the average time spent on the corporate site is five minutes and three seconds. This has grown from an average of approximately two minutes.
The archive
After a visit to the campaign/corporate site, Bianco works systematically on extending this relationship:
Site is updated weekly with new models, breaking with the common tradition of presenting two to four collections per year.
"... previous campaigns which still have considerable branding power."
Streaming video of commercials with viral potential and shots from fashion shows are shown on the site. The same goes for previous campaigns which still have considerable branding power.
All shoes and accessories are grouped after styles and colours enabling the user to flip through the collection for inspiration.
A trenspotter-blog from New York City, a Bianco-panel availble for questions on shoes and fashion, news every week and an ”Ask a friend”-option.