Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Marko Matejčić, MediaCom Hrvatska
Gilad Kat is Communication Planning Director at MediaCom Israel, and, along with Client Director Shimi Hamias, the brain behind many successful P&G campaigns in Israel. With the campaign I don’t roll on Shabbos, he played with the interpretation of God’s word and interpreted it so it helped boost sales of Gillete’s deodorant formula for 48h protection, while Baby Face campaign used innovatively used haptic technologies to simulate the skin contact between a baby and an unshaved dad.
This wasn’t their first brace step into the unknown, but a result of years of learning about the phenomenon of launching exceptionally successful campaign launches of new brands in Israel, but also their equally fast demise.
Gilad set the thesis “When a brand fits in with the cultural truth of the market, it has a much better chance of surviving and thriving,” which has been confirmed through MediaCom’s Cultural Connections study, that identified a number of cultural attributes relevant to Israeli consumers. By aligning the P&G brands with the cultural framework, even before this campaign he achieved impressive results, including year-on-year growth of individual brands by 35%.
With a total of 12 shortlist nominations, 2 silver and 1 bronze Lion, Gilad and Shimi are largely responsible for the title of MediaCom as the media network of the year in Cannes.
In the first interview after the conquest of Cannes, Shimi and Gilad exclusively for Media Marketing talk about the key questions that their campaigns asked.
Media Marketing: Isn’t it really risky to take the word of god and interpret it in a way that translates into buying more Gillete deodorants? Haven’t you been concerned it could backlash on you? Were there challenges getting P&G to say yes on campaign?
Gilad: Our strategy consisted of two phases. First, Phase one saw us recruit the rabbinical authority to raise awareness of malodor affecting the quality of praying, using the original biblical quote, this phase was unbranded and not even directly linked to the category (only hinted).
Phase two was activated once malodor became a hot topic in the community. We launched the experiential side-by-side battle of synagogues promoting the Gillette 48hr formula as the perfect solution for Shabbat. The client supported us in this idea and in fact was an integral part of the team from day one.
Media Marketing: You’ve stated in case video for that Orthodox Jews number one media channel is synagogue notice boards which you’ve combined with radio and print sponsorships of candle lighting sessions. What were your initial expectations? Did you expect that Gillete deodorants market would rise from 3% to 15% in ultraorthodox Jew community? What was the best performing channel for you?
Shimi: We were surprised and the speed of growth, we expected this to take much longer than it actually did. Radio and Print exposure is monitored by single source surveys (TGI) but the notice boards and the rest of the more “guerilla” style activities that we did are not so it is difficult to pick one channel that was most effective. In a post campaign survey that we ran we found out that 72% of the Orthodox were aware of the campaign and of the side by side demo we performed.
Media Marketing: The insight for BabyFace campaign was that babies interact with parents through skin contact is powerful. But you’ve excelled at execution where you’ve enabled mass scale first hand experience with sandpaper print ads and haptic touchscreens. This campaign had proven results and innovative use of technology, so can we expect to see this campaign going global?
Gilad: Yes, there are quite a few markets that expressed interest in this, some markets are testing specifically the use of the haptics screens in points of sale and some are looking to adapt the campaign as a whole. We believe that in more and more Gillette markets there is an understanding that if we want to be relevant to men today we need to feature a richer representation of manhood that shines a light also on its more emotional aspects. The US started already several years ago to take the brand in this direction by linking it to Father’s Day with the “Go Ask Dad” campaign which highlighted the relationship between teens and their dads as well as last year’s multi award winning campaign “Handle with care” which promoted the launch of the first ever assisted shaving razor by highlighting the reversal in relationship that occurs when men get older and their kids start to take care of them. In that sense BabyFace is just another link in the chain, highlighting first time dads and the sacrifices they are willing to take for their newborn, including shaving off their beard…