Roku is encouraging people to not forget the most important person on their holiday gift lists -- themselves -- in the brand’s first video advertising campaign.
The effort,
from the company’s newly hired agency Butler Shine Stern and Partners, gets around the awkwardness of giving oneself the best gift on the list by introducing a fictional character, Moxkat
Grvida, a 50-something Ukrainian, from whom the gift was sent.
“We don't know each other, but I am your good friend,” Grvida begins. He goes on to explain that he understands
that people want the Roku streaming device for Christmas. “But Christmas, she is fickle lady. Maybe you get Roku, maybe you might not,” Grvida says. Rather than take the chance, he
suggests buying the gift for yourself, wrapping it and putting it under the tree from Grvida, “your Ukranian friend you meet while studying abroad.” (Women, he suggests, can also intimate
that they were intimate with Grvida as well.) The campaign ends with the tagline, “Now This is TV.”
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“It's a funny hook,” Eric Lachter, director of marketing for Roku,
tells Marketing Daily. “We all know people who are looking for an excuse to get themselves what they want.”
This is the third holiday-oriented campaign for the brand, though
the first to employ video, Lachter says. While previous campaigns had employed digital and outdoor media, the use of video will generate more attention, Lachter says. “I see Roku as an
entertainment company, and I want our advertising to be entertaining.”
The video ad will run on entertainment and gifting Web sites, as well as on the company's YouTube channel and
Facebook page. The video will also be available through the Roku device itself (a first for the company), Lachter says.