• by Staff Writers , October 10, 2007

These campaigns leveraged specific channels to bring clients' brands to consumers in surprising ways.

Arc Worldwide

Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Chris Cancilla, Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director; Tony Fuller, Creative Director; Kyle Baer, Senior Art Director; Dave Kuhl, Copywriter; Brian Bennet, Senior Copywriter; Katie Wienke, Art Director; Stella Kusner, Account Director; Michelle Sobczak, Account Supervisor; Adriana Janutka, Account Supervisor; Amy Mikel, Account Supervisor; Heather Van Stechelman, Senior Account Executive; Ben Poster, Art Director; Mike Javor, Associate Creative Director; Michelle Lund, Planning and Research Supervisor.

With one in five American kids classified as overweight and childhood obesity on the rise, the Center for Disease Control tapped Arc Worldwide to develop an integrated communications channel plan that would motivate tweens to get and stay active by doing something all kids love to do: play. Armed with the essential insight that when kids find a ball they tend to play with it, Arc literally built its channel plan around bright yellow balls - 500,000 of them, which were stealthily mailed to opinion leaders to spark a viral buzz, and anonymously dropped by the hundreds into parks and playgrounds. Each ball carried a unique code and instructed kids to play with the ball, enter the code at the VERB Web site, blog their stories, and pass the ball on to another kid. The efforts were fueled with PR, a nationwide mobile tour that brought an obstacle course to heavily trafficked kid locations, and a heavy online viral campaign that generated 17,000 blog posts. Of the 500,000 balls dropped, 21 percent were passed on. One ball was passed 31 times, while another traveled 39,940 miles.

Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners

MINI USA

Lynda Richardson, Media Director; Sankar Patel, Associate Media Director; Dave Pierotti, Associate Media Director; Todd Levy, Media Supervisor; Kevin Greenberg, Media Supervisor; Becca Knopf, Media Planner.

To launch the all-new 2007 model of the mini, the team at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners developed a communications channel plan based around a faux movie starring the new car. The flick, stylized after kitsch '70s classics "Starsky & Hutch" and "Night Rider," featured the mini as "Coop" - one-half of the action team Hammer & Coop. The storyline traversed an array of communications channels including cinema and online movie trailers, out-of-home "spectaculars," movie posters, MySpace pages, Second Life integration, search engines, PR, magazine editorial content integration, and point-of-purchase exposure in dealer showrooms that appeared to be teasing a new action film, instead of a new car model.

Smith Brothers Advertising

Heinz Ketchup

Smith Brothers: Michael Bollinger, Client Services Director; Tracy Dowdy, Management Supervisor; Lindsey Smith, Co-Creative Director; Bronson Smith, Co-Creative Director; David Heidenreich, Interactive Strategy Director; Brian Moore, Interactive Creative Director; Karin LaFramboise, Traffic and Production Director. Heinz Ketchup: Dave Ciesinski, Vice President; Patrick Macedo, Brand Manager; Peggy Brickman, Associate Brand Manager; Morten Haugaard, Associate Brand Manager.

Smith brothers' "top this TV" campaign for Heinz utilized an innovative "reverse" media approach to the traditional communications channel plan. Instead of utilizing TV to drive consumers to the product, the agency devised a campaign that utilized the product to drive consumers onto television. Creative messages on ketchup bottle labels and restaurant ketchup packets challenged consumers to create and submit their own TV ads. Submissions were showcased on YouTube and the winning spots were aired on national television. The effort generated impressions on 50 million bottles and 200 million ketchup packets that elicited more than 8,000 consumer-generated TV spot entries.