For my poster session I chose the "Hippowaste-Death of the Skip" campaign by Remarkable Group. The campaign won CIPR Gold Award in The Best use of Design category in Wessex region.
Just to give you a few facts about Hippowaste, it is a trading name for Waste Management Ltd., a national provider of innovative and integrated waste management solutions. It delivers convenient solutions to householders, businesses, trade users and local authorities nationwide. It is commited to creating and developing ways to dispose of the waste in an ethical, eficient and cost-effective manner.
Hippowaste's product, Hippobag, is and exeptionally strong bag that can hold large amount of waste and is ideal for both domestic and construction projects.
What they wanted to achieve was:
- to target businesses with a multi layered marketing communications campaign
- to secure meetings for Hippowaste's sales force
- to increase awareness of Hippowaste
Can you think of any other product or services that may seem very boring to a consumer? How to promote them? Can you think of other campaigns that were successful although the product was not particularly exciting?
I am looking forward to read your comments and have a bit of a discussion about this.
I think the Hippowaste campaign succeeded in turning a potentially dull product into a fun and revolutionary must-have for the waste industy. Another good example of this would be car insurance advertising - probably the most boring thing to have to search for online, but comparethemarket.com used comparethemeerkat.com to make people laugh and make them want to go to their website above others because it makes a dull task amusing.
OdpowiedzUsuńI don't think it was just this that made Remarkable's campaign successful however. They won the award for best use of design, and I think it was the design that made this campaign a good example of best practice. They made a good concept brilliant in their epic imagery, and managed to generate a buzz about the product by showing it visually as te beginning of a new era.
As Debbie used to say last year and as you said during your presentation, there is not such thing as a boring product but there is something such as boring advertising. Hippowaste managed to make the campaign fun and nice designed and that's what made them successful.
OdpowiedzUsuńI also think they were successful because they managed to make a product that is about waste and therefore dust and dirt look nice with their designs which made the product more interesting, attractive and worth buzzing about.
A campaign which I can think of which I saw when I was watchng the tv recently was the latest kleenex television advert, it was endorsed by Emma Bunton, Bob Geldof and Sven Goran Erksson. The idea being that each of them were doing something to let ther emotions out. I thought at the time that considering the fact it was an advert for something you blow your nose with it was quite good!
OdpowiedzUsuńRemarkable were really successful at creating innovative and appealing imagery to promote their product which to some could seem quite unnteresting, however I actually think that for the target market of construction workers, they were probably just as (if not more) intrigued by the actual idea of the product itself!
I think that the product could definatly be described as a boring product however the campaign brought it to life. They turned something quite dull into something that looks quite fun and interesting.
OdpowiedzUsuńAn example I can think of is quite similar to Emmas, Andrex toilet roll. That is definatly not a fun or luxurious product but with the use of the Andrex puppy makes it desireable!
Hope that helps!
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OdpowiedzUsuńI agree with the others that this product is definitely dull and lifeless. However this campaign brings the product to life by adding the humourous cartoon element to proceedings.
Another random example of a dull product that has been brought to life is milk. On its own a very dull and lifeless product, but when you add cowes playing football it generates excitement and interest in the product. Ben Shelley
I have had the opportunity of reading the interesting comments left by your colleagues and friends. I am intrigued as to eventual results of your study. I have had a short but eventful stint in the advertising industry as the asst. media buyer for zenith optmedia. We were regularly faced with various creative directors who struggled to produce useful advertising for boring products.
OdpowiedzUsuńThis grasped my interest and later at university I studied creative writing and advertising and found that products such waste management although seemingly boring are in fact the topic of interest as the whole world is talking about better recycling and the better management of waste.
It is such a important issue that the city governments and their contractors get you to do half the work and we happily do it, i.e. we separate plastic, paper, metal etc which the city or their contractors used to pay people to separate. Simply because the whole green campaign is so popular, I am not at all amazed that the Hippo Waste was successful.
You also ask if I can share examples an example of a product which is boring and impossible to market. I have just that example, financial services e.g. insurance products, investment products, banking products. These products are so boring that marketing them is a task. They are taught separately under the title of Financial services advertising only a few firms do it separately and that even for a very limited number of products such as life insurance advertising is easy to create as one can use scare tactics but others are difficult.
I would appreciate any commentary contrary to the above.
Hammad
HIPPO Waste - what a fun concept which has worked to turn waste management is to an attractive, playful and rather symbolic (Hippo = Strength) campaign. As the other comments rightly say, this isn't a new idea, it has been used in the past and is still in use today but what Remarkable have done is raised awareness of the company in a rather entertaining way - the design can also be applied to various marketing materials showing longevity and greater appeal. A remarkable job done in my view!
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