Cases

Creating an authentic word of mouth campaign by giving a fan-base something to talk about

Issue

In January 2007, Johnson & Johnson's (J&J's) Aveeno® brand was set to launch its new line of anti-aging facial care products, Aveeno POSITIVELY AGELESS™ into an already over crowded marketplace. Building awareness and a "buzz" for the new line through traditional public relations would be a daunting task, and J&J asked Ogilvy PR's 360° Digital Influence group to develop a strong, online word-of-mouth initiative as part of the brand's overall marketing campaign for the new product line.

Insight

The 360° Digital Influence group recognized that the cosmetic and anti-aging market is an extremely over saturated market. And although J&J's Aveeno is a well-known, trusted brand, it would be difficult to penetrate such a crowded market and draw enough attention to the new product launch.

At the same time, we needed to create something that people could share with friends and talk about. Building buzz means creating something of value to a particular group. It's not enough to just put a brand message out there and how customers want to talk it up. The experience must be engaging to a particular audience.

Ideas

We wanted to tap into the fanbase of an existing artist and give them something they couldn't ordinarily get themselves and give them something to talk about.

We teamed Aveeno up with world-renowned British street artist, Julian Beever, and Keep America Beautiful, an organization focused on community beautification, to launch Aveeno's new POSITIVELY AGELESS product line. Beever, well-known for the artistically complex and hyper-realistic street drawings that he has created around the world, would create a "Fountain of Youth" on the pavement of New York City's Union Square to get consumers talking about the new product line and start a "buzz" about the overall POSITIVELY AGELESS campaign.

Julian had a loyal following. Blogs talked about him. YouTube featured videos of him creating his artwork. We wanted to build on that awareness and engagement.

We created a social media campaign that started with a video and a unique approach to outreach and activation.

Viral Videos and You Tube

As Beever created his latest pavement tour de force, the Digital Influence team filmed the entire process and then packaged it as a time lapse film running just over four minutes. The film, "How the 'Pavement Picasso' Does It," was posted on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfn8Dz_13Ms). This gave fans and those intrigued with his work something they couldn't easily get for themselves: eight hours of action condensed into four minutes.