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BIV Magazines: Adpages 2008 Campaign Secrets Preparing Moroccan food (or tips for an ad campaign) Alvin Wasserman A few weeks ago, I invited a few friends over for a home-cooked Moroccan stew. I had recently been seduced by a tagine: a conical, ceramic cooking device traditionally used on open fires and currently making its way into places like Williams and Sonoma, Sur La Table and other foodie emporiums I regularly explore to satisfy my passion for things consumer, retail and of the moment. Scan to the day of the dinner party. I rise early and, armed with a Moroccan cookbook, begin preparations for the evening’s repast. I unwrap the tagine and read the instructions. Hmmm … it turns out the preparation needed to “season” the clay dish calls for immersing it in water for at least three hours, followed by an olive oil massage and a slow bake in the oven for at least five hours. I fill the bathtub then postpone dinner to Sunday. There is a parallel here with the first stage of a campaign: the “Discovery” phase. In Discovery, you audit the existing research. You review your brand fundamentals and ensure their continued potency and relevance. While the tagine soaks, I continue my discovery and open the Moroccan cookbook. Trouble. I discover one of the first ingredients in almost every recipe is preserved lemons. It soon becomes clear that there are no preserved lemons in any supermarket within 20 kilometres of my house. It often happens in the Discovery phase that one doesn’t have everything needed to execute the campaign by the book. Such is life. The solution? Widen your search. There may well be some non-proprietary or syndicated research available on your target. Your media resource at the agency or elsewhere may have PMB or other studies: the Internet may yield something on a deep probe. Consider observing your target market up-close and personal. Listen to the sales force that does so regularly. I went with my instincts and, based on the premise that Greece is located near to Morocco, I figured a Greek grocer may have the goods. Bingo! Instincts are always good to go with if you’ve had enough prior experience to compensate for lack of data. Back to the kitchen: preserved lemons in hand, I learn a key ingredient in the dishes that are the most interesting to me involve something called Ras el Hanout, “a complex and distinctive mix of about 20-27 spices and herbs.” This special ingredient is akin in advertising to the Analysis and Prep stage, where strategy is applied to identify the unique insights that will make the campaign potent and distinctive. It takes a special mix – imagination, talent, resourcefulness and a relentless discipline – to stick to the brand and target market relevance to drive success. This is why advertising agencies were invented. I found the Ras Al Hanout mix at Gourmet Warehouse and added a few favourite spices. One of our recent WorkSafe campaigns involved youth at risk for workplace accidents in new jobs. During the Analysis and Prep stage, we realized we could not reach this vulnerable group in time through traditional advertising with enough weight or impact. We cooked up a social networking campaign. It involved a custom website apart from the corporate url, pressure wash postings, event presence at concerts and fairgrounds, posters, staged PR events, roving vans with street teams and fun props that people would notice and keep. The Ras el Hanout of the campaign. The final stages in the kitchen and at the marketing table are in E and E: Execution and Evaluation. In the case of the WorkSafe youth campaign, we netted huge traffic to the new site, got user generated work-related stories in the hundreds, re-purposed and found a wider audience for existing safety videos by industry, and began a long journey towards relevance to a very tough, very hard-to-reach target audience. In the case of the recipe I was cooking: a final challenge. The tagine cracked despite the seasoning. I improvised with a reliable cast iron pot and everyone pronounced the Moroccan cuisine an absolute delight. I’ve recently developed an interest in Indonesian curries. •Alvin Wasserman is president of Wasserman + Partners Advertising in Vancouver. |
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