Unilever Digital Marketing Campaigns top PMA's Summit

Yesterday I attended PMA's first annual Digital Marketing Summit which was held at an interesting location, the Bridgewaters at the South Street Seaport. It was a beautiful day so it was great to have a location like this that allowed the sun to shine through the windows and skylights as well as having a wrap around terrace that enabled us to walk outside during the breaks. It was however a bit technology challenged with sun glares hitting the presentation screen, videos not running on queue and mics that left somewhat to be desired. But all in all it was worth the trade-off.

Rob Master, North American Media Director for Unilever kicked off the morning with a history of some of the most successful digital marketing campaigns that all came from Unilever brands. Rob shared with us that overall Unilever has shifted from digital being just a part of the media plan to this year it being the centerpiece of their strategy. They've made an organizational commitment to this strategy and have agreed not to plan online in isolation. Their key driver is consumer engagement and they have consistently reached this goal through rich storytelling that has helped to bring their brands to life.

Their journey first began with the Axe brand when they created some entertaining and engaging content specifically for online which ended up going viral. They first showed these short form films, "mini-stories" as they were calling them, to focus groups and tried to explain what these online programs were. This resulted in the term "webisode" first being put on the map.

Dove's Calming Nights products followed up next with a campaign which featured three original webisodes directed by Penny Marshall and starting Desperate Housewives actress Felicity Huffman. These webisodes which could be viewed on dovenight.com showed Felicity dreaming of visiting classic TV moms such as "Leave it to Beaver" mom June Cleaver, "The Munsters" mother Lily Munster and "The Brady Bunch" mom Carol Brady.

Next followed the birth of the "Viral Video" with the creation of Dove's now famous "Evolution". This video had legs way beyond their wildest estimates and proved that consumers are in control. 

Rob then shared with us an Evolution video parody that was posted here on YouTube.  Instead of a quick progression of a woman getting more beautiful, it was of a man getting fatter, older and uglier. Dove embraced this video instead of trying to shut it down.

Unilever’s I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter brand created an animated webisode series which turned its main character, Spraychel, into a star. Spraychel ’08 used political humor and asked the public to vote for her vs. butter and “demand 0 calories and great taste”.

Klondike Bar ran a consumer-generated video contest asking "What Would You Do for a Klondike Bar?". Some great videos have been submitted that can be viewed here which prove that there are some huge fans out there that love their Klondike Bars. Final winner should be announced this week.

“In The Motherhood” is a program developed by the Suave brand which started out by asking women bloggers to write about funny moments of being a mom. From these posts Suave has turned these stories into scripts and created a series of webisodes. They showed these at ABC’s upfront presentation this year since they will be moving them to primetime on the network this season. Here’s a great example of content starting online and moving to TV vs. TV shows going online.

So Rob wrapped up his review of the past and present digital marketing campaigns by giving us his recommendations on the top three ingredients that should be included:

1.    Provide a cross section of media that helps to bring the program to life

2.    Include relevant links to pop culture that provide opportunities for engagement and amplification

3.    Make sure you have rich and innovative storytelling at the center of the idea

Thanks Rob for sharing all this with us and kick-starting our day.

Stay tuned here to read more from some of the other great presenters PMA had lined up for us this day. I’ll be reviewing what we learned from McDonald’s, Borders.com, Digitas as well as those mobile experts who told us how to start implementing mobile into our online campaigns.

Comments

[ravert]

As for the “In The Motherhood” tv show, the idea was much appreciated by the viewers and show became popular. There are several seasons of it - http://file.sh/In+The+Motherhood+torrent.html

[Jeff paul news]

These Digital Marketing campaigns are informative and a great source of inspiration with enhanced opportunities for the new entrants .