Marketing Society Awards for Excellence 2011: Digitally led marketing

marketingmagazine.co.uk, Tuesday, 07 June 2011 10:00AM

WINNER Foster's

Foster's was suffering from low brand affinity, which it had found was reducing consumer loyalty and brand preference among its core audience of 18- to 34-year-old men.

The brand sought to remedy this by turning to comedy. It achieved this in one of the most engaging and original ways seen in recent times, by reviving Steve Coogan's inept broadcaster character Alan Partridge.

In an unusual move, Foster's parent company, Heineken UK, funded the production of 12 short episodes featuring Partridge and hosted them exclusively on the fostersfunny.co.uk website. To promote it, Foster's embedded a branded widget on the site, its YouTube channel and Facebook page, then advertised a sneak preview of the series via a digital PR and display media campaign.

It paid off, with 1.98m views in the official seven-week campaign period, and 56,000 Facebook fans signing up in the launch week alone. According to Foster's, those who came into contact with the activity now feel that the brand appeals to them more than twice as much as those who did not, while the increased affinity for Foster's has raised off-trade loyalty. Foster's also boosted its share of the UK lager market by 0.2% within a month of the campaign's launch - no mean feat in such a competitive category.

The judges concluded: 'They used insight with a big idea and digital platform well to create a consistent campaign.'

HIGHLY COMMENDED

TalkTalk

To maximise its sponsorship of The X Factor, TalkTalk devised a digital campaign centred on a microsite entitled BrightStar Studio.

This allowed people to record a music video using their webcam, and share it with friends via social media. At the same time, a dedicated Facebook page enabled TalkTalk to build up a database of fans.

The number of video submissions topped 108,000, while there were more than 1.1m unique visitors to the microsite during The X Factor's 17-week run.

Each week, TalkTalk aired the best videos in idents around the show's ad breaks. Brand awareness increased significantly among non-customers and TalkTalk posted a 22% rise in the proportion of families and younger consumers taking up its products.

The judges were impressed by the phenomenal success of the campaign.

Also shortlisted for Digitally led marketing: Doritos, King of ads and Late nights; Lloyds BG, Using data to deliver measurable impact on key perf. metrics; Skittles, Detonate the rainbow

Sponsored by Kitcatt Nohr Digitas

This article was first published on marketingmagazine.co.uk