07 May 2021
The Cyprus Digital Marketing Awards 2020 ceremony, which took place on Monday, April 26 on Digital TV, was a proud moment for us here at Partners VMLY&R.
We are excited to share that we secured seven wins of the eight entries submitted, reinforcing the effectiveness of the VMLY&R global network’s philosophy which has become the staple of our strategic approach; the Connected Brands model.
Connected Brands are brands that put the consumer at the heart of their communication, and this perfectly describes the holistic communication approach we put into place for our clients. Connecting with the audience along the consumer communication journey, going where they are and creating connections along the way. With strategy that taps into consumer insights and truths, a creative approach that stands out, smart use of technology, in-house productions of video content, PR, performance marketing & media performance, and an immediate response to situations like Covid-19, we’re thrilled to take home an award for each category. A testament to not only the team’s expertise and creativity but also to the effectiveness of the Connected Brands approach that changes the game.
The seven wins are:
See more about each individual campaign:
The purpose of the Absolut "Dare To" campaign was to increase the intensity of the "momentum" we had created the previous year (Absolut Dare V1), which aimed to convey the message to the target audience to pursue their dreams freely, without feeling oppressed or limited by the "musts" of our society. This year we targeted people who were almost ready for their own dare but had not yet taken the first step. They would have the power to create the new current through which the change we sought would occur. Our goals were to increase engagement in all elements of the campaign compared to the ones we had the previous year and at the same time, to maximize the readability of the campaign messages in terms of reach and impressions.
We strategically concluded that our general communication message was "Be Truthful to You". Considering that the communication message of the V1 campaign was "What If You Dare To", for the second year we wanted to turn the question into a statement so as to give the push to everyone, to proceed with their own dare. From "what if" to "Dare To". For this purpose, we selected 3 artists as Absolut ambassadors. We created documentary style videos about the story of each ambassador, custom made photoshoot to create authentic content for the brand's social media, live tutorials where each ambassador shared his art live with the public, Instagram filters & GIPHYS, story polls & story questions. The goal was to inspire the audience and evoke engagement and interaction between the audience and Absolut. Something we achieved with very good results.
As part of our campaign for Absolut and after thorough research, we created a docu-series with which we conveyed the personal stories of Absolut brand ambassadors to the public to get our messages across. In order to convey the authenticity of the content to the specific young audience, but also to create an interesting storytelling, we avoided the usual interview / advertising videos and chose to break the stereotypes, using modern experimental videos that were more accessible to the Absolut target group.
Duration 1:30-1:40 each and with their own character, they kept the users longer engaged, thus connecting more the public with the brand. The completion rates of the episodes: 15.5K views up to 25%, 7.2K up to 50% and 3K views that reached up to 100% of the videos, on Facebook and Instagram. Reach (Unique): Facebook-78.7Κ, Instagram-148K, Frequency: Facebook-6 times, Instagram-9.5 times, Video views: Facebook-459K Video Plays, Instagram-1.1M Video Plays, Facebook: 265K ThruPlays and Instagram: 28K ThruPlays.
We were asked to create a Christmas campaign that would give a unique festive experience to users on social media and give the brand the image of a pioneer, relevant to current trends, and thus continuing Mr. Brown's tradition of surprising its large audience.
We created our own unique 3D Instagram filters and chose to communicate them through a competition on Instagram with generous gifts. These filters could "transform" the user into Mr. Brown, Mr. Brown Santa Claus, Rudolph and the elf. To promote the idea on social media, we prepared animated videos and stories which invited the public to try their favorite filter and participate in the competition. These creations were posted on both Facebook and Instagram pages of the brand to gain more audience. We also used traditional communication channels such as TV and radio to support the campaign.
The number of users who saw the filter and lived the Christmas experience reaches 35K in impressions while 18.4K people engaged. 2.8K photos were taken using the filter. It’s worth mentioning that the average times each person saw the communication for Instagram filters on social media was 4.05.
The American Academy Larnaca came to us with the request to renew its image. So we dedicated all our creativity and made something completely new! Initially we redesigned the brand identity, incorporating new elements and a larger color palette for a social media friendly - up to date - image. We created the new slogan "Let's Go Far" that would prepare students, parents, teachers, for a promising future. By creating two videos and authentic content with photographic material from the classrooms, the students, the school premises and the life in it, we showed, through social media and online communication, that beyond the educational part, there is a whole range of activities provided by the school so that a child can broaden his / her horizons and consequently… 'go far'. Through smart buying strategy, we targeted parents and students from the city of Larnaca, but also the public that visits the city every day. Then, we directed specific messages to specific channels, such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, depending on the age audience of each platform. In this way, we increased the base of our audience (110K users of Larnaca province) managing to achieve a total of 240K total unique people reached and 8.8M total impressions, and within a year we increased the likes on our Facebook page by 66% and our followers on Instagram by 30%!
Our goal was to communicate to the public the new deco & lighting collection for our customer Leroy Merlin, while at the same time, to bring more families and women to the store as well as to increase traffic in the store in general.
To achieve our goal, we hired 6 well known female instagramers / influencers, asking them to create their own, personal corner with products from 6 different styles from the new collection of Leroy Merlin. Boheme, Design pop, Design, Glamor, Industrial and Nature. Our campaign was entitled "Decoration is our style", and this is what we tried to show. Each influencer created his own corner, and invited her followers to like and enter a draw where each winner would win a coupon worth 100 euros from the deco & lighting department. The campaign ran for a total of 2 weeks and was completed in mid-October. During this time period, influencers uploaded stories when choosing products, setting up their corner and interacting with other influencers.
The response of the audience was huge, as a result of which we gathered 10,116 likes on Instagram, while the views of their stories exceeded 75,000. Ιn the next 2 months, there was an increase in traffic from women by about 10%.
The aim was to attract a large audience (traffic) that was interested in Investment solutions in housing and real estate to the new website of "Photos Photiades Homes". So we started creating a Google Search campaign. After thorough research, we targeted our audience through In Market & Affinity interests. We created 4 Ad Groups, specifically for: Plots, Houses, Apartments, Generic with different targeting each. Through daily monitoring, a Keywords redistribution was made based on the demand of the period and we added or subtracted accordingly. A catalyst in the performance of our campaign was the control of ad relevance, search terms, quality score so as to ensure low (CPC) cost combined with higher positions in Google searches. The Ad extensions we added to our ads helped our quality score a lot. We achieved over 5,000 clicks against 3,000 which was our target, a very low CPC at 0.17 compared to 0.30 which was our initial target and a high CTR of 7.55%.
With the uncertainty caused by the pandemic, especially in the early days, we knew we had to act in a timely manner. We immediately launched the digital campaign entitled: Homemade Creativity, for which we set two clear goals: First, to show our customers that we are ready at any time, to inspire confidence and security for the quality of our work despite the difficult conditions, and to give the message that this is a time of opportunity. Second, to internally create an inspiring atmosphere that would help the empowering mind-set of our team to remain creative and productive. We took advantage of trends and mechanisms provided by social media and within 36 days we prepared a volume of creative ideas with 8 feed posts, 2 videos and 8 series of Instagram stories. We created Homemade Creativity cover photo on Facebook and stickers on Instagram, we gave tips for better meetings at home, we put suggestions for movies, books, desktops and much more. In the end, we managed to secure the flow of our work intact and to get a lot of positive feedback from our customers. Through our pages we noticed a big increase compared to last year in Posts average reach. With the Homemade Creativity campaign, in the midst of a pandemic, we aimed to inspire safety and confidence in our customers but also to create a motivating atmosphere for our team.
