Pitch Guidelines was a specific project, as it targeted players in the advertising industry. The client was HURA, and the agency was iZone which built a Facebook campaign around provocative messages on walls around the city that were intended to “educate” advertisers on how to run a pitch in line with the new HURA guidelines. The campaign was included in Top 25 BalCannes projects, and you can learn more about it in our conversation with its creators below.
We came up with the idea … after hours and hours of reading the brief, reading HURA’s brochures, and a couple of hours on top of that of collecting cans of beer around the office.
Our guiding thought was … to make something dry and serious into something interesting and entertaining. “Regulations, Rules, Guidelines, Pitches” – all these are just some of the dry terms surrounding an even more boring context. From the beginning we knew we had to do something contrary to that if we want to grab the attention of our audience. And we succeeded.
During the realization, the biggest problem we encountered was … there was not too much of those. Copywriting was challenging because it had to reconcile the message with the “vernacular” puns, but after some grinding and ironing, everything was fine.
The greatest contribution of this campaign was … the fact that pitch invitations that came after the campaign were in line with the recommendations, sometimes even followed with the question “Is everything by the book now?” :)
And it is special because … we didn’t underestimate the audience and its cognitive abilities. There is no need to draw everything to people. It’s much better when the initial provocation is followed by that “Oh, I get it…” moment. Because of these few seconds between these two moments, the message remains embedded where it should be – in the consciousness of its consumer.
When it comes to our project, we are most proud of … the client who agreed to provocations, cuss words, “edgy” references, and the like. :)
If we were to go from scratch … we would do everything the same. Perhaps we would expand the campaign to other, “traditional” media.
Throughout the process we learned that … people really care about walls, because there were comments that we are vandals. :)
What you certainly didn’t know … you should ask ?
From the BalCannes we took … We weren’t at BalCannes (physically), nor did we pick up a lion, but this year we’ll do both ;)
