Winner: Aveeno and Ogilvy PR
Campaign: Aveeno Positively Ageless Fountain of Youth
The Mission:
With a new line of anti-aging facial care products hitting a very competitive market segment, Johnson & Johnson's Aveeno brand needed some killer buzz to get consumers
interested in their new "Positively Ageless" products.
The Hook:
After tapping Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide for help, the communications team came up with a completely outside-the-box teaser for the January 2007 launch: an online
experience created by Julian Beever, the British street artist whose skills have earned him the alias of "Pavement Picasso." An added bonus: Ogilvy brokered a partnership between
Aveeno and Keep America Beautiful, an organization focused on community beautification, and challenged Beever to create a "Fountain of Youth" on the pavement of New York City's
Union Square.
Positively Viral:
The "Fountain of Youth" campaign proved to be a digital juggernaut worthy of more than just cyber buzz: Ogilvy filmed Beever's Union Square street art and posted the "How the
'Pavement Picasso' Does It" video on YouTube; the team used Flickr to create a photo gallery of Beever's past work and updated images of the "Fountain of Youth" as he made
progress. They also initiated a conversation among bloggers via completely transparent outreach amd created a del.icio.us account to hold all bookmarks to relevant stories.
Lastly, they supported all digital activities by tagging coverage and building an online event directory.
Impeccable Timing:
"I think the smartest thing we did was let the visuals tell a story," says Rachel Foltz, director, external relations, Ogilvy PR. "The team made a very specific choice to make
it a time-lapse film with only music, and simply show the process of the artist and how Aveeno creates beauty and supports the creation of beauty."
Best in Show:
By creating a comprehensive and creative online experience, the PR team made Aveeno Positively Ageless a hit on and offline. The transparency with bloggers, coupled with the
unexpected use of a street artist to grab attention and convey the brand's message, generated most-viewed, most-discussed and most-linked rankings on YouTube - not to mention the
overwhelming response in the blogosphere. PRN