BLOOM

Integrated Campaign for Sandtex Exterior Masonry Paint
www.irelanddeservessun.ie

Background

Sandtex Exterior Masonry Paint conducts one major advertising campaign each year between late April and early May, as this is the time people think about painting the outside of their houses. Over the last 2 years, sales have suffered because the weather has been so terrible – you can’t paint the outside of your house if it’s raining.

We knew if we could keep people talking about the brand then we increased the chance of purchase once weather was good. As it happened, 2009 has so far turned out to be one of the wettest summers on record.

The weather. Sandtex’s fortunes are influenced by the weather more than anything else. Irish people love to talk about the weather – it’s practically a national sport.

We developed outdoor and press ads with the headline Bummer Summer ‘09? featuring a naked couple whose modesty is only preserved by some forecast cloud icons.

Social Networking would be a key element because of the talkability of weather. We chose Facebook because of its user profile. We decided to use Twitter as it’s on everyone’s lips as ‘the latest big thing”. (We believe that Twitter is the new Second Life however for the moment it is a valuable tool if used appropriately.)

We developed a website linking to Facebook and Twitter. We needed this for engagement, data gathering and redemption. We gave the site the catchy URL of www.irelanddeservessun.ie.

The website is a blog written by ‘The Sandtex Insider’ - an entertaining, straight talkin’, anti-marketing type of guy who knows that weather is the biggest challenge Sandtex faces. ‘The Sandtex Insider’ has set the site up under his own steam although this is presented in a tongue-in-cheek way that clearly has the reader as being ‘in on the joke’. The idea was to create a likeable character, featuring content that was fun to engage with. After all, it’s all about the content.

The campaign launched with outdoor (48 sheets and T-Sides), press and radio weather sponsorship stings to drive people to the site.

SALES: June 2009 volume was up 60% year-on-year, and so far for all of 2009 we have turned a 3% deficit into a 9% increase. Not bad for one of the wettest summers on record.

ENGAGEMENT: At the time of writing, we have over 10,000 active fans on Facebook. This is second only to Guinness in terms of fans of an Irish brand’s official page – more than Tayto, HB Ice Cream, Barry’s Tea and Bulmers. Activity on Facebook is key, and we get 30-40 comments on each of our postings. This level of activity has been constant for over 10 weeks now.

We have managed to extend Sandtex’s profile by almost two months more than the 2 week ATL campaign would have allowed.

We have 544 people registered to the micro site, and 277 following on Twitter.

SITE STATISTICS:

1. GET A GOOD IDEA: It’s all about the idea. The basic concept must be (a) relevant to the target market, (b) realistic for the product / brand to be associated with and (c) noticeable. Irelanddeservessun.ie ticks all of the above boxes.

Sandtex talking about the weather is coherent and logical. It works. It also taps into the zeitgeist. When the weather is bad, people need the campaign to cheer them up. When it’s good, they “thank” the campaign. And crucially, when they go into Woodies, Sandtex has more emotional pull than anyone else. No mean feat when you consider that the main competitor, Dulux Weathershield, has been on TV all Summer.

2. PR IS VERY USEFUL: Our ability to seed PR stories to the media based on site and Facebook interactions has proven very useful and has given the campaign even more longevity through mass media.

3. FACEBOOK: The Facebook page has performed way beyond expectations. We understand a fan on Facebook is not a customer, but as long as they are talking on our page then the brand is in front of them and they are therefore much more likely to buy our brand when they are thinking about exterior paint. Many of the comments on Facebook mention the brand name – the people enjoying the Facebook group are thankful to Sandtex for facilitating.

4. CHILD OF PRAGUE: We have had a few giveaways via the website so far. The first was to reward uploads to the site with an irelanddeservessun.ie t-shirt, beach towel or BBQ apron. The second was to give away a Child of Prague statuette to anyone who registered to the site and requested one. We’ve had about eight times the number of requests for the Child of Prague than the t-shirt and apron. Now I could interpret this as a slight on our t-shirt design, or a rise in the belief of the power of prayer… We did not see this one coming. Quirky giveaways trump more valuable giveaways, it seems.

5. THE LOOK vs. FUNCTIONALITY OF THE MICRO SITE: The micro site is very simple, but it does everything we need it to. We put more of the budget into the upkeep and social networking aspects of the campaign, and this has paid off. We made a virtue of the micro site’s simplicity – a hi-tech site would have not been credible to the story, and may have been less approachable.

6. SEX SELLS: We are now 8 weeks past the end of the Outdoor campaign and at some sites the posters are still up. Apparently the people who replace the posters are more likely to leave our poster up as “they like them more”.

By placing digital at the core of our concept we managed to take the client's challenging budget and extend the campaign from a 2 week outdoor run into an ongoing integrated campaign.