Intelligence Group Selects Top 2012 Gen Y Digital Marketing Campaigns

-- Broadcasting & Cable, 1/29/2013 1:58:50 PM

The Intelligence Group, publisher of the Cassandra Report, the ongoing study of young consumers, just announced the winners of the first Cass Digital Awards, recognizing the best youth-focused digital marketing initiatives of 2012.

The awards honor the companies and brands that "were able to best capture the essence and imaginations of Gen Y through their marketing efforts" in 2012, IG said in announcing the recipients.

"This is an exciting time for the advertising industry as so many brands are constantly breaking new ground in their efforts to engage elusive young consumers," said Joe Kessler, president, The Intelligence Group. "We felt that it would be worthwhile to take a step back and bookmark some of the cutting edge campaigns that are leading the way by putting their understanding of young consumers into play in daring and unexpected ways."

Kessler added that "the best activations have two important characteristics in common-each is true to the brand or product it represents and each displays an element of technology innovation or creative expression which we hadn't seen before."

The Cass Award winners were selected by a panel of Intelligence Group research "experts and trend analysts who have spent the last year investigating the most effective ways of engaging with young consumers."

The winners include: Pizza franchise Mellow Mushroom; JetBlue; Budweiser; Ikea; The Obama Campaign; Volkswagen; Target; Bodyform; Red Bull; Neiman Marcus/Target; Oreo; Grey Poupon; and Topshop.

Here's a complete list of the winners and a description by the Intelligence Group of each of the campaigns:

Best Live-stream Stunt: Red Bull Stratos Live Jump

The brand sponsored Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner in a record-setting dive to break the speed of sound. The dive was shown by more than 40 TV stations and 130 digital outlets, and some eight million viewers tuned in to see Baumgartner set a world record in aerospace history. A post-jump photo of Baumgartner, shared by Red Bull on its official Facebook page, received nearly 216,000 likes, 10,000 comments and 29,000 shares-in under an hour. And the day of the jump, Red Bull dominated Twitter, as Stratos accounted for half of the trending topics worldwide.

Best Small Space Solution: Ikea

To demonstrate its commitment to providing furniture solutions for those living in limited spaces-namely young, lower-earning city dwellers-Ikea crammed the contents of an entire warehouse into a 10.5 x 8.8 cm Web banner. Despite its small size, the resultant banner was patently shoppable and the retailer turned the once-thought-arbitrary sidebar Web banner into a functional, useful, even enjoyable interactive application.

Most Effective Use of a Vlogger: Volkswagen's "Don't Make-up and Drive!" PSA

Volkswagen tapped Nikkie, a famed "haul" vlogger, to create "a crash course to shine" tutorial, in which a typical makeup lesson is brought to an abrupt, potentially tragic halt in its simulation of a car crash. Within just five days of its release, the video was viewed almost 130,000 times. In the seven months since its initial release, it has received nearly 1.5 million views, and has sparked significant social media discussion across the Web to raise awareness.

Most Creative E-Comm Integration: Target's Shoppable Film

Target's fashion-savvy rom-com features a scrolling sidebar, which displays the items currently on-screen and allows users to click to either purchase the item or share it via social media, without disrupting the playback. The 12-minute mini-movie was rolled out in increments over the span of a week, enticing shoppers to return to see the romantic plot play out to its conclusion, and the items featured were sold in-store and online for a limited four-week run.

Best Online-Offline Stalking: Mellow Mushroom's Giant

Mellow Mushroom's giant felt mascot, an anthropomorphized stoner mushroom, followed consumers in real life, which rewarded select fans with a unique and memorable experience and created dynamic, original and eminently shareable content, in the form of amusing video footage of the giant mushrooms trailing their unsuspecting victims.

Best Use of QR Codes: Budweiser

Budweiser outfitted a local bar with a QR code-enabled clock that allowed happy hour socializers to extend the much-celebrated discount drinking hours by one minute for every Bud purchased. By summer's end, some 50,000 drinkers had used the clock to extend happy hour by a sum total of 6,000 minutes.

Most Clever Campaign About the Campaign: JetBlue

In JetBlue's Live Free or Fly campaign, the company ran a promotion that offered voters a chance to win a free flight out of the country should their favored candidate fall short at the polls. In the wake of Obama's victory, the airline followed through on its word, sending 1,006 lucky/unlucky Republicans on a defeat-driven trip abroad...with, of course, the option to return should they so choose.

Best Application of Peer Pressure: The Obama Campaign's 'Remind Friends to Vote'

President Obama's strategists executed one of the first-ever attempts at using Facebook on a mass scale to replicate the in-person, door-to-door efforts of field organizers. Roughly one in five people who were reached out to through the app ultimately acted on the requested civic duty-primarily because the pressure was exerted by someone they knew.

Best Brand Response: Bodyform Video Response

When Richard Neill posted a tongue-in-cheek comment on Bodyform's Facebook page, jokingly accusing the brand of lying for years about how joyful and adventurous "that time of the month" can be (when really it only turned his "loving, gentle" girlfriend into "the little girl from the exorcist [sic]"), the feminine hygiene product brand opted to fight sarcasm with sarcasm. After watching Neill's comment go viral, garnering some 100,000 likes, Bodyform posted a witty video response, featuring a fictional CEO admitting to having sugarcoated the harsh actualities of menstruation, and rehashing the reality in detail-all because Richard had unwittingly demanded the truth. The dry and biting video went viral, racking up more than three million views on YouTube and propelling the little-known UK-based brand into the comedic spotlight.

Freshest Ad: Oreo's Daily Twist

To celebrate Oreo's 100th anniversary, the cookie brand challenged itself to create a new and culturally relevant ad every day for 100 days. By the end of the campaign's three-month run, likes, comments and shares across Oreo's social media accounts had increased by 100%-rising from an average of 7,000 to 14,000. Through social media engagement and an element of "daily surprise," Oreo was able to keep fans tuned in throughout, giving them a "cookie lens" through which to view unfolding world events.

Most Exclusive Filter: The Grey Poupon Society of Good Taste

Grey Poupon turned away some fans who tried to like its Facebook page, "the Society of Good Taste," and implemented an algorithm that scanned profiles for things like entertainment preferences, vulgarity and vocabulary to determine which "likes" would be accepted and which would be denied. Though Grey Poupon arguably risked backlash for denying certain fans entry, it nonetheless created an interactive Facebook experience and gave accepted applicants reason to post about it on their own pages, in the form of a sharable badge proclaiming their worthiness and good taste.

Best in Show: Topshop Live Fashion Show

For London Fashion Week last September, Topshop transformed its seasonal fashion show into a bona fide social extravaganza, giving fans unprecedented access to live, real-time content, and drastically enhancing the availability of the many brand-new featured products. The Live Fashion Show ultimately attracted more than two million viewers, and Topshop sold out of some of its new lines even before the live-stream broadcast was completed. By lowering the barrier to high fashion, and essentially opening its doors to the entire world, Topshop turned a once-exclusive event into a globally significant experience that both engaged and excited new and existing fans.