Shawan Downs Steeplechase Race
Situation?
The Shawan Downs Legacy Chase is an annual steeplechase horse race that draws a traditional crowd of conservative horse racing enthusiasts. The Land Preservation Trust, which hosts the race on protected land in Maryland, was looking to broaden the audience it attracts.?
Approach
Creative agency Planit designed a campaign that had “some shock value,” admits Trevor Villet, associate creative director at Planit, as a way to appeal to a broader audience. “But it wasn’t shock?value just for shock value’s sake,” he adds. The campaign’s burlesque show images in print ads, Web banners, microsite and guerilla pieces for men’s and women’s bathrooms carried a suggestive tagline: “Leather, Whips, Chaps, Studs…Good clean fun never sounded so dirty.” The positioning made potential event goers take a second look at what could be a nice day outing with their family, Villet explains.?
Results
Poor weather conditions greatly hampered attendance at the outdoor spring event. However, the event organizers received a 14% increase in calls about the race. Shawans Down will use a similar promotion for the event in 2009.?
-Cara Wood?
Gerber?
Approach?
The “Start healthy, stay healthy pledge” campaign from Gerber and Nestle challenges parents to pledge a more nutrition diet for kids. Pledges are created at Gerber.com/pledge, where parents can also upload photos and share their profile in a widget, created by Clearspring Technologies.?
Results
Since the campaign’s launch in March, more than 27,000 parents have made a pledge through the widgets and spent almost 8,000 hours viewing them. The I Pledge widget has been installed more than 100,000 times and has been seen by about 700,000 unique visitors.?
-Dianna Dilworth?
Kodak
Approach
Kodak turned to Catalyst Direct for an integrated business-to-business campaign promoting its new digital scanners and including multiple variable data print versions of direct mail, e-mail, PURLs and a microsite. The “ScanMate/What’s in your inbox?” campaign targeted 29,000 small businesses and personal workgroups in the legal, medical, real estate and accounting sectors.?
Results
The effort, which took ?place in the first half of 2008, produced an overall response rate of 3.5% and 15.5% of responders made a purchase. ?
-Kevin McKeefery?
PRIVATE VIEW
Julie Petroski
VP, group ?creative director?,Targetbase?
Sticks and stones might break your bones but whips excite the folks at Shawan Downs. From the big tease of “Leather. Whips. Chaps. Studs” at hardridingmaidens.com to the whip-cracking sound effects on the banners, they pique the viewer’s interest — and perhaps make horseracing sexier — but what confused me was the payoff of “All day fun for you, your friends and your family.”?If you’re aiming for temptingly risqué, don’t try to be wholesome, too. It would have been great if they had sexed up the fonts and the music. A little “bow-chicka-wow-wow” would have added to the humor.?
Getting parents to commit to better nutrition to their children seems obvious, but the “Start healthy, stay healthy” effort from Gerber makes it fun and active. The scrapbook imagery and kid-appropriate colors make the site worthy of exploring. Being able to make your own pledge and post it is a nice idea and having the widget know when new content is posted seems like a smart way?to encourage repeat visits.?
Busy office workers can certainly relate to inbox overload, and the die-cut imagery in the Kodak ScanMate piece makes for great impact in the mailbox. But where’s the connection between the mailer and the Web site? The only similarity is in the photography: The way the person using the scanner is looking at the paper being scanned. Even the Kodak logo is treated differently on each.?
