The FMBE awards – my personal top100 (10-6)

10. BEcause, Pampers (2005, Roadshow)

A win at FMBE was the first award for a campaign that saw its most recent incarnation last year and has a huge track record of award success, peaking in 2006-7 when Sleep Like a Baby took over from this World of Babies tour. The agency and brand team defended their 2005 win with gold in 2006 as well, our first chance to recognise creative legacy, The common link is to educate adults about babies and toddlers in a fun and engaging way and show link that directly to Pampers’ sales message.

The device, a car park tour of connected pods, each with an experience has been copied and copied but, unlike flash mobs and their kin, it is a face to face technique that never gets tired so long as the storyline is inventive.

This was the campaign that single handedly put the supermarket roadshow on the creativity map whilst not compromising effectiveness per contact. Indeed the campaigns have been directly linked to improving Pamper’s market share stranglehold.

9. MADE, Fab (2008, Brand Strategy)

The Fab ice lolly was reinvigorated by MADE’s Design a Den tour which also showed the way forward for brand experiences online as well as off. This was a magical set of events that turned around a bleakly wet Summer to see sales up and a market share decline reversed. MADE showed a complete understanding of their role in the marketing mix with this campaign. This was the first time that a brilliant creative roadshow was seen as they absolute centre of the brand strategy and it delivered a set of undisputable results generated from independent assessment. It was up for campaign of the decade in an award special in 2009 and was the silver winner, narrowly edged out by a Mini campaign that had started in 2001.

8. The Brand Company, FosterGrant (2008, Merchandising and Compliance)

The Brand Company’s field marketing efforts for sunglasses manufacturer FosterGrant  was an almost perfect justification of the art of outsourcing to improve results. Sunglasses are not so easy to merchandise and generate significant logistical challenges – a massively weighted sales season to maximise on. Objectives included securing orders after 40%+ store visits and increasing the number of products per sales order by 15 per cent. The team duly delivered with ROI up by 50 per cent yoy. The client relationship was the clincher. According to the brand’s commercial director, the agency “gave us the confidence to pursue business growth.”

7. Circular France, Telethon (2008, International)

Looking back, 2008 was an exceptional year in this category. Number 7 in my chart won silver. Number 6 won gold.

Collecting a silver seems slim pickings for Circular’s outstanding annual effort that, in 2008, already had 19 years of legacy. For the two crucial Telethon days in France, Circular mobilises a team of 8000 brand ambassadors to activate the Telethon support of 11 major brand owners in supermarkets and hypermarkets – for instance delivering 500,000 CRM contacts for Danone.

The grocery store activity collected EURO104 million in 2007 alone.

Circular France in the online directory

6. OgilvyAction, Maxwell House (2008, International)

Surely the sampling activity to beat them all? This was the campaign that gave Thanksgiving Day drivers a coffee ‘On the House’ at toll booths instead of paying the toll – a fantastic method of breaking through the cluttered messages that normally hem in other sampling activities. Toll booths samples 106,600 drivers out of 2,156,600 in total – a small percentage of the full amount, but of course it was also the moment of creative genius that caught all the news stations and local press unawares on a low news day. Massive coverage followed of over 40M impressions. What other method of handing out coffee samples could achieve that?

The baseline – consumption of this market leading coffee up by 12 per cent reversing a ten year decline.