Here at Hoffman | Lewis, we pride ourselves not only on how creative our work is but also how effective it is. Novel, huh?
Well, as obvious as it may seem, not all agencies maintain both standards.
You’ll see work on their website that sure looks pretty, but if you ask how it was received, you’ll get a shrug and a reminder that, well, it sure looks pretty.
Or, perhaps worse, they’ll pepper their presentations with ironclad case studies leading to . . . wait for it . . . wait . . . build-up . . . steady climb, then sharp drop off to mediocre work, leaving one to wonder whether they thought more about the creative process or the process of defending the “creative.”
This is not such an occurrence.
A year after launching Touchstone Energy’s Together We Save campaign, agency and client are both extremely pleased. In fact, Hoffman | Lewis is currently developing a second wave of materials for the campaign. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out the spots for a refresher. And read up on some of the analytics below to see how the campaign is working thus far.
- The Together We Save campaign for Touchstone Energy Cooperatives is the only national energy efficiency advertising campaign
- The site has averaged over 10,000 unique visitors a month
- Users have calculated nearly $19,000,000 in potential home energy savings
- The site’s message resonates globally, with regular visitors from all over the world, including Canada, India, United Kingdom, China, Malaysia, Mexico, Germany and Australia
- The greatest number of referrals to the site (next to organic search results) come from emails forwarded from friends after visiting the site
New Missouri tourism campaign takes road trip to Humorville.
When you start with a line like, “Don’t take less of a vacation, take a vacation for less in Missouri,” you’re bound to get dads pulling kids on skis behind lawn tractors and couples taking a spa day at the local public fountain, right? No? Okay, let’s back up.
Fact #1: Hilarity is not a natural byproduct of extensive research and focus group testing. Fact #2: Tourism ads must consist of wall-to-wall destination shots. Fact #3: Don’t trust facts.
Going into this campaign, team H/L delved deep into research, finding that although the recession had impacted traveler motivations, 70% of them still expected to take a vacation and that value was a top driver for making travel decisions. Armed with this knowledge, several different concepts were created, four of which went into testing. As the process unfolded, it became clear that not only was a value message important, but that humor more effectively drew people in and broke through the clutter.
So let’s recap… By following all the rules of conventional tourism marketing, we created a campaign that breaks all the rules of conventional tourism marketing. Funny how that works out. Enjoy.
Poof. Adios. Gone missing. That’s the verdict on the Kidnapped Chicagoan—according to several posters plastered in and around The El and buses throughout the windy city.
Each poster playfully points out that one of Chicago’s 2.9 million people has disappeared and directs the reader to KidnappedChicagoan.com to find out where he is.
Once there, the viewer gets a whirlwind tour of the mystery city (St. Louis, in-case you couldn’t tell) along with tweets, Foursquare updates, a streaming ‘Kidnap Kam’ and plenty of other content to dive into.
This is the first-ever campaign from the St. Louis CVC directed exclusively toward Chicagoans. And it’s a bold one, forgoing the traditional imagery of the city with a big St. Louis logo in favor of an intriguing message to pull you into the story of one man’s journey to the gateway city. Wait. Just noticed “gateway” is an anagram for “getaway.” Maybe we should’ve done “The Great Gateway Getaway” instead . . . Na. This is way better.
