Category: Traditional + People’s Choice Award
Winner: UM
Client: Shock Top
From left to right: Rick Kusch, director, connection planning, UM; Ian Millar, strategist, connection planning, UM; Mieko Nagao, brand manager, Labatt Breweries; and Julie Grant, marketing communications manager, Labatt Breweries.
The craft beer marketing has been booming, and Shock Top approached UM to orchestrate a relaunch that would capture people’s attention. UM responded with an integrated campaign that leveraged tradition out-of-home media in creative ways. By incorporating audio, UM was able to spark memorable conversations between potential customers and Wedgehead, Shock Top’s mascot.
“We took a look at various channels and one of the things we came up with was a large-scale mural with an animatronic moving mouth,” says Ian Miller. “Some days we had our comedian who voices Wedgehead there to interact with people in real time, but for the most part it was recorded lines that would be triggered when people walk by a sensor.” These murals were in Beer Store parking lots, engaging people right before they were about to make a purchase.
“We had static restobar and restaurant washroom posters that would talk to you when you walked up to either the sink, mirror, urinal, anything like that. We also had a couple transit shelters that, when you pressed a button, it would talk to you as well. So we used various ways to get some impact in traditional out-of-home.”
Their objective was to disrupt people and they definitely managed to surprise and delight people when they least expected it
. The campaign led to an 88% increase in brand awareness and a 180% in Shock Top’s status as a top three favourite brand.
When asked what he is most proud of about the campaign, Miller replied: “I think it was definitely just getting the opportunity to use traditional in a creative way. Anyone can call up vendors and say ‘here’s our budget, what will we get?’ There are certain campaigns that need that, but for this one specifically we had to combine generating awareness with wow factor.”
Other finalists in this category: ClearMotive Marketing Group and Johnson Insurance
This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Direct Marketing.
