Winners & Shortlists

CAPTURED!

TitleCAPTURED!
BrandGRAPE
Product/ServiceDIGITAL MARKETING CONFERENCE
Category D02. COSTS/CREATIVE PERFORMANCE PR CAMPAIGN
Entrant Company GRAPE Moscow, RUSSIA
Advertising Agency GRAPE Moscow, RUSSIA
Credits
Name Company Position
Vladimir Garev Grape Creative Director
Artem Tsaregorodtsev Grape Copywriter
Victor Molodtsov  Grape Photographer
Arina Svetlitsa Grape Pr/Manager

The Campaign

Digital marketing conference is the biggest event for digital marketing professionals in Russia. However, people are not willing to pay for participating in such conferences because they are simply fed up with so called “local celebrities” or speakers with the same reports repeated conference by conference. To highlight that remarkable fact that only foreign speakers are invites we asked the leading professionals to take part in our ironic photo session. Popular marketing specialists became targets of our campaign showing that they have no chance to participate in DMC as this year only foreign experts are going to be invited.

The Brief

The main difference about DMC 2013 was inviting only foreign speakers. That is why our main goal was to stress the uniqueness of DMC, it's completely different professional level among the variety of russian marketing events. The main objectives were: - to create unique campaign, which will catch the attention of potential clients - to find effective pr-platforms Our target audience consisted of professionals of russian advertising market, who are not sure about the benefits of participation in marketing events. As our experience showed it was the major part of the professional field.

Results

DMC always was a reputable conference, but it never was as popular as we wanted it to be. Last year with a 0 dollar spent on media we had more than 900 participants and an increase in the ticket sales by 90% because of the campaign. These results let us reach the reputation of the most significant marketing event in Russia and they would have been impossible without thoughtful execution of PR strategy.

Execution

The most appropriate way to convince people buy a ticket to the conference was to promise them that it will be worth of it, being ironic instead of being pathetic. One morning three weeks before the conference Facebook profile pictures of ten leading professionals in the Russian digital market changed. At the same time strange banners appeared on the most popular marketing websites and information platforms. They all led to the page featuring the most popular speakers of the industry with a slogan “Choose a target!”. The user chose the speaker and took revenge - we literally gagged all that annoying “celebrities” to give the floor to foreign speakers this year.

The Situation

Digital marketing conference is the biggest event for digital marketing professionals in Russia. However, people are not willing to pay for participating in such conferences because they are simply fed up with so called “local celebrities” or speakers with the same reports repeated conference by conference. That's why it's not so easy to convince people that one more marketing event can be useful for them.

The Strategy

The main difference about DMC 2013 was inviting only foreign speakers. That is why our main goal was to stress the uniqueness of DMC, it's completely different professional level among the variety of russian marketing events. The creative solution was to make an ironic photo session under which leaders of Russian digital industry acted as models. Creative directors, owners of advertising agencies and well-known marketing specialists became targets of our campaign showing that they have no chance to participate in DMC 2013 as this year only foreign experts are invited. First of all we decided to launch a campaign on Facebook - to create an intrigue in marketing networks. Then the "strange" thematic banners, leading to the website of the conference, were supposed to appear on marketing media.