Event Review: Advertising Week 2009
What makes a great campaign?
Three successful public sector advertising campaigns were presented by their creative directors and clients.
Prevent-it Campaign
Wearing bubble wrap suits and helmets, Robin Heisey, Chief Creative Director and Darrell Hurst, VP, Business Director, at Draftfcb Canada presented their 3-year Prevent It campaign for the Workplace Safety Insurance Board (WSIB Ontario).
There were 101 workplace fatalities in one year before they started the campaign. Research showed that safety was taken for granted and the public felt that sometimes accidents do happen. To get the issue on the public radar, they focused on challenging people’s attitude and changing actions.
In year one, the public had a website to go to, Prevent-it.ca, so people could start to understand the issue and what they could do about it. The creative, “Shop Girl”, was a woman falling off a ladder, who then explains why it wasn’t an accident; call to action was the website.
In year two, they continued to build on changing public perception with victims explaining why they were about to suffer from a fatality, with “Top Chef” and “Family Guy”.
In the last year of the campaign, the creative, “Window Washer” focused on what happens when you have awareness and take action—no fatality.
Now, the public believes that you can prevent accidents. In 2008, there were 74 workplace fatalities. They are on “the road to zero” fatalities.
Watch the WSIB commercials here.
HPV Campaign
Marlene Hore, Creative Director, Partners and Edell highlighted the HPV campaign that was targeted at grade 8 girls.
It was a controversial move to go after 12-year girls. The argument was that the best time to prevent cervical cancer was before girls have sex. They had to get approval from the Office of the Auditor General and many others before starting the campaign.
At the beginning of the campaign, they had to position the HPV vaccine to parents of grade 8 girls, who owned the decision for their daughters to get the vaccine. So the campaign focused on telling them to protect their daughters from cervical cancer.
As 12-year girls started getting the vaccine, their experiences started to sabotage the campaign. They were texting how painful the needle was to their friends. So, grade 8 girls were afraid of the needle, and at age 12, they did not fear death.
In year two, the statistic that 3 out of 4 girls would get HPV, was the focus of the campaign. By connecting this statistic to the fact that HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer and leads to death, made the vaccine worth the pain. This was also helped with the launch of Girl Talk that answered girls most frequently asked questions.
Was the HPV campaign successful? In the first year, 25% of grade 8 girls got vaccinated and in the second year, 57%. That’s 40,000 girls vaccinated in total—success!
PowerWISE Campaign
Barry Campbell, VP, Partner, Sr. Creative Director and Dan Pawych, Creative Director at Allard Johnson, as well as Kevin Powers, Director of Communications for the Ministry of Energy, sat down together and did a parody of a Larry King Live show to highlight the 3-year powerWISE campaign.
The goal was to raise awareness of energy conservation by showing the public not to take electricity and energy for granted. And, that by doing something everyday makes a difference.
The campaign was ramped up when they got Dr. Suzuki on board. Knowing that talking to kids and the world we are leaving behind for them was important to Dr. Suzuki, they did a commercial with him and kids called “Treehouse”. They also started associating it with “every kilowatt counts” as an additional boost to the campaign.
In one week, for example, there was an 8% increase in traffic to the powerwise website. This was due to the commercial “Habitat” with Dr. Suzuki going into someone’s home to caulk the drafts around the windows and sending the viewer to the site for tips.
The powerWISE campaign successfully increased awareness of energy conservation by 25% since 2005. Its success continues with other provinces picking up the commercials, which originally started in Ontario and it is being linked with other government programs.
So, do great causes that create positive social change make a great campaign? When you look at the campaigns above, whether it’s preventing accidents, cervical cancer or energy waste, the answer is yes.
What do you think makes a great campaign?
Maria Koukopoulos has more than 13 years of writing experience in the fields of media relations, public relations and marketing in the technology, corporate, and non-profit sectors. Her first passion is writing, having a flexible skill-set to write for a variety of audiences. Her second passion is promoting Canadian people, events, products and services.
Maria runs her company, Media Scribe, and is currently a member of the International Association of Business Communicators in Toronto and is the Director of Communications for the Alliance of Independent Practitioners.
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