Title	JCDECAUX: THE MISTAKE
Brand	JCDECAUX
Product/Service	OUTDOOR MEDIA
Category	D01. Launch / Re-launch
Entrant	BBDO BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM
Idea Creation	BBDO BELGIUM Brussels, BELGIUM

Name	Company	Position
Toon Vanpoucke	BBDO Belgium	Art Director
Morgane Choppinet	BBDO	Creative
Sebastien Devalck	BBDO	Creative Director
Arnaud Pitz	BBDO	Creative Director
Klaartje Galle	BBDO	Associate Creative Director
Isabel Peeters	BBDO	Account supervisor
Marleen Depreter	BBDO	Account manager
Veerle Colin	JCDecaux Belgium	Advertiser’s supervisor

The Campaign

Most marketing directors think JCDecaux only offers 2m², that’s why JCDecaux sent them what they expect: a miniature 2m² billboard. But there was one mistake. They mixed up their brand product, with the product of their biggest competitor. With this, they attached a letter, where they pushed their buttons a little more. When the marketing directors read a little further JCDecaux revealed why they did this: they wanted them to know how JCDecaux feels every day. Because when most advertisers want to book big formats, they think they have to go to our biggest competitor. But they could easily also go to JCDecaux for that. JCDecaux also has a wide range of big formats. That’s why JCDecaux made the same mistake marketing directors always make with them, and deliberately mix up their brand product with the product of their biggest competitor.

Campaign Success

JCDecaux chose to sent a box to Marketing Directors with a miniature 2m² billboard and a poster of their previous campaign. But there was a mistake: JCDecaux intentionally mixed up their brand product, with the product of their biggest competitor. There was also an attached letter where JCDecaux pushed their buttons a little more and revealed why they did this.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

here was a 15% increased demand for bigger formats. That was exact the increase JCDecaux needed to sold out all their biggest formats for the upcoming 6 months.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

JCDecaux needed to promote their biggest formats to marketing directors, as most of them were not aware JCDecaux has bigger formats than their 2m² billboards.

Historically, JCDecaux has always been most famous for their 2m². They installed their first bus shelter in 1964. Today, JCDecaux offers a wide range of formats. Advertisers and marketing directors, however, still tend to be unaware of this offering and go to the biggest competitor to buy these formats. They still mix up our offering with our biggest competitor’s offering. And that hurts.This insight was the starting point of our campaign. In a direct mail, we deliberately mixed up the advertiser’s hero product with the one of their competitor. This way, we maximized the stopping power of the medium and triggered the reader to continue to read the attached letter. In that letter we explained the set-up of the “mistake”. Being confused with a competitor is not fun at all. That’s something we understand. It was the perfect introduction to introduce our complete portfolio and raise awareness of all formats.