Hidden Marketing Champs: Cillit Bang - The Postmodern Dirt-Blaster.

Cillit Bang was launched in Europe 2004 as a late entrant in a tough sector with established super brands like Mr. Muscle, Vanish or Frosch. Today it’s an established challenger brand in the household cleaning market with a continuosly rising market share and profit margins of over 25%.

So what did Bart Brecht, head of Reckitt-Benckiser (the company behind Cillit Bang) and his marketing department do right when they built this brand?

#1: The Name 

"Who in the world would call this product by such a stupid name?" wrote one blogger. "It must be a joke. Imagine going into a supermarket and asking for Cillit Bang!"

That might be right – but as an emerging challenger an outstanding weird name seems to be a great way to make you're remembered – especially when the top brands of your segment are known as „Mr. Muscle“ or "The General".

 #2: The Target Group 

Cillit Bang is a brand that was obviously created for a rising minority of cleaning product buyers: men. Thats why you will almost exclusively see men in all advertising efforts. And you won't see any countryhouse or super-clean family mansion but shared apartments and male single households - that's Cillit Bang’s brand world.
 
You see: while the competitionen was still aiming at the traditional family models Cillit Bang found an uncontested, easy to focus and yet still huge group to target.

 

#3: The Proposition 

The Cillit Bang brand colours might be pink and flashy (remember: there are still some established category rules that were learned by the consumers for years. This means you have to deal with them as a brand - somehow) – but the whole brand screams „MAXIMUM EFFECT! POWER! FUNCTIONALITY“. Cilit bang is the "Ultimate Cleaning Tool!"

One could say the brand promise is somehow very 90ies-ish: Cillit Bang would not talk about sustainability or sea-breeze scents – but it’s so damn powerful that you could even imagine its formula is barely legal or in some kind of chemical grey zone.

From my own perspective I can tell you: this message is certainly reaching the target-group that has basically two requirement for cleaning products: They should help end the job quickly and ‚destroy’ even the biggest challenges - if it reminds me of of some kind of 'magical chemical reaction' ("Bang") even better.

 

#4: The TV-Spots

In UK the agency JWT created some great spots that first seem to be a bit dull – on the second view they are genius – especially thinking abut all the small details of execution - and have clearly done amazing work at establishing the brand.

In a very postmodern way JWT sends the core-message („AMAZING POWER“) by exploiting dozens of category- and stereotypes like the fictional testimonial salesman Barry Scott, the artificial shelves packed with Cillit Bang Products in the background or the infamous product desmonstations.

In Germany Cillit Bang took a further step this year and created an even more post-modern way of presenting its product: integrating and re-modelling all clichès you could probably think of. Including two testimonials that could also be actors from a ‚Hangover’ movie and lines like „You recreated my bathroom, dude?!?!?!“

#5 The PR

 2009 Cillit Bang gained even greater notoriety when it was revealed that its combination of sulfamic acid and phosphoric acid was so powerful a cleaning agent that it had been used to clean plutonium residue from a nuclear power station in UK.

That’s not only the best „Reason to Believe“ you can think of – this is also the material memes are made of.

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2015’s Best Strategic Marketing Campaigns II

This is the second part of my WARC Top 10 classification. Here they come: #6 to #10.

#6: ABTO - Bentley Burial (Leo Burnett Brazil):

This campaign is basically a big PR-stunt with a twist – based on a smart strategic idea.

One day an excentric Brazilian millionaire announces on Facebook that he would bury his 1 Mio. Dollar Bentley  as a reference to the egyptian culture so he could drive it after his death. Sounds werid, right? Sounds like a good story! And the reactions were as intended: the public and serveral TV-stations responded heavily and the story became a real scandal. On burial-day dozens of journalists were heading to the millionaire’s mansion.

Suddenly the campaign twist: The whole event is just a metaphoric demonstration about the decadence of burying healthy organs instead of giving them those who would need them. Well, point made - public interest generated and leveraged.

#7: Smart TXTBKS (DDB Philippines):

The second case in the WARC top ten that is about using basic mobile phones to improve  life quality (remember the ‚Khajura Tesan’ case last week?)

In the Philippines school kids suffer from the weight of the various school books they have to carry everyday. As the quick win ‚E-reader’ is not affordable for the majority of families, a mobile provider starts to develop learning materials so small they can be put on sim-cards.

#8: Mercedes-Benz - #YouDrive (BBDO UK): 

This is about the old story of ‚making a rather conservative brand cool’ – but the campaign strategy and execution is pretty genius.
Mercedes-Benz ran a high-quality action-movie campaign – with the audience able to decide about the story’s direction using certain twitter-hashtags.

#9: Hornbach - The Hornbach Hammer (Heimat Berlin)

Hornbach – a DIY retailer – made a product the hero of a whole campaign and mixed it with excellent story-telling, a unique tonality and strong execution.
The ‚Hornbach Hammer’ was a limited tool made of an old Russian tank, which story was told by degrees starting with social media. When the product was launched, all 7000  units were sold after 5 minutes.

#10: Virgin Mobile  - Fair Go Bro (Havas Australia) 

The mobile challenger brand Virgin Mobile found the perfect testimonial to present its ‚the fair underdog’ positioning.

They made a campaign with Doug Pitt – Brad Pitt’s rather unknown brother, who is like an „average-joe version“ of his brother (but still obviously a look-alike).
This magic story was able to communicate the brand’s proposition – and overshine the competition that was spending multiple times the budget.

Read the first part with Place 1-5: http://theyoungplanner.blogspot.de/2015/08/2015s-best-strategic-marketing.html

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2015’s Best Strategic Marketing Campaigns I

Every year the advertising and best-case database Warc.com awards the Top 100 strategic marketing campaigns worldwide (Klick). Though it feels like most people don’t know the award - and only a smaller percentage of the cases.

I've taken this is a reason to re-present you this years top cases  - including links to the video material and a first description/classification.

1. Unilever - Kan Khajura Tesan (Lowe Linthas/PHD India): Case Film <- 

In an Indian region with frequent power outages and low media coverage Unilever founded a 'radio station' that is received using mobile phone calls. The result: Millions of people just had to dial the number, hang up - and were recalled with chart-music, shallow entertainment they could listen to while working - and of course Unilever spots for soap or convenience food. That’s a basically a unique form of content marketing including an own channel for broadcasting.

2. Dove - Real Beauty Sketches (Ogilvy & Mather Sao Paulo): 3 Minute Version <-

 

This spot was probably the pioneer of 'your perception vs. true perception' spots including Alldays' "Like A Girl' (Klick) or the new German Targo Bank TVC (Klick). A forensic drawer confronts women with their negative-biased self-images.

I wonder why they did not play Beautiful by Christina Aguilera at the end - this could have added even more Kitsch. Anyway: Great strategic idea!

 

 3. Expedia - Travel Yourself Interesting (Ogilvy & Mather London): TV-Spot <-

In a category which in 99% of the communication efforts build on sunshine-pictures, relaxation-insights and discounts, Expedia uses the "halo-effect of travelling" (Travel yourself interesting) as its core message and adds a distinctive tonality to stand out - successfully!

4. Lifebuoy - Help A Child Reach 5 (Lowe India): 3 Minute Spot <-

This initiative for better hygiene in developing countries reframes the birthday of a five year old as a spectacular thing that should be celebrated - also with a well done execution that works with a twist. This way the viewer is probably rather emotionally hooked then if he would have seen pictures of suffering.

5. Pantene -Beautiful Hair, Whatever the Weather (Leo Burnett): Case Video <-

Well, I'm not sure if I like this one. In cooperation with a weather-service Pantene launched an application that tells people what kind of hair-product they should use - depending on the local weather. The smartest thing about it is probably the insight itself: weather-demolished hairstyles ruin self-confidence. Would people actually use this app?

Upcoming campaigns next week: Bentley Burial (Leo Burnett Brazil), Smart Txtbks (DDB Philippines), Mercedes-Benz, #YouDrive (BBDO UK), The Hornbach Hammer (Heimat Berlin), Virgin Fair Go Bro (Havas Australia)

My top 5 "brand worlds" of all time (+one newcomer)

First of all: What's a 'brand world'?

- It's simply spoken the space - real or fictional - in which your brand lives or is perceived to live. And no, it’s not your headquarter - except you're Google.

Linking your brand to certain sceneries is a powerful tool to increase retentivity and underline brand values. Why? - Because it’s how our brains and especially our ability to memorize works: emotions are bound to places and places are some kind of sensorial super triggers.

By the way there is also a more practical advantage: setting a brand world will help to boost overall consistency and help to constantly structure and inspire the creative process as a quick-check reference point.

Just do the mental quick-test: Close your eyes and think about a lemonade brand with a look and feel, social media stories, print motivs or TVCs  taking place...

• in an oriental village
• in a laboratory
• in London 1930.

You will immediately picture the lemonade differently, assign related brand values - and also have a general feeling about possible brand stories. I would love the oriental village brand!

This is my all-time "Top 5 of brand worlds":

löläöä

1: Marlboro’s Marlboro Country

 

2: Beck's Northern-German coast

 

3: Tommy Hilfiger’s preppy college campus

4: Milka’s Alps

 

 

5: Paulaner's Bavarian Biergarten

 

Newcomer: otelo’s Coma Lake Club

 

Consumer-Insight: Some are too true to be ever leveraged for advertising

Often the value of an consumer insight is described by the amount of "WOW" it creates. In advertising-reality this is only one side of the coin though. It’s a thin line between empathic understanding (as Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign used to demonstrate) and ideas that are so true that they won’t deliver. Because insights are not positively by nature. They can be shocking, demasking or evoke dissonance, that’s something every planner in any strategy department will experience at some point.

Cheers, John Follow @TheYoungPlanner