Coat manufacturing companies have conspired to make Minnesota winters brutally cold so that residents have no choice but to bundle up in parkas, overcoats and the like. That’s the wild conspiracy theory created by BVK, Milwaukee, and featured in the agency’s recently wrapped interactive advertising campaign for Trans Global Vacations.
Each component of the multi-layered campaign–which included radio ads, print ads, a billboard and street marketing efforts–drove people to FightBigOverCoat.org, the Web site for a fake fringe group fighting coat companies, then on to Trans Global Vacations’ real Web site.
The hope, of course, was that consumers would decide to escape the winter cold by purchasing a vacation to Cancun or another sunny destination via Trans Global Vacations.
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In creating each element of the campaign, consistency was key. “When you are not working with a ton of media dollars, it’s really good to be consistent,” BVK creative director/copywriter Jeff Ericksen said. “All of the elements have to tie together.”
For example, one of the radio ads spun the faux tale of a group of hikers who discovered what they believed was a weather-changing plane hidden out West of the Twin Cities. The ad directed listeners to FightBigOverCoat.org for more information.
A billboard placed on the main highway leading out of Minneapolis and into the suburbs simply read: Down with down. Fight BigOverCoat.org.
Improv actors hired to portray members of the anti-coat fringe group protested on the streets of Minneapolis. Dressed in thermal underwear over which they wore summer attire–one guy had on a Speedo–the “protestors” chanted slogans like “Stop the fleecing of America with fleece coats” and handed out packets of hot chocolate emblazoned with FightBigOverCoat.org.
With a flexible client willing to allow the agency to create new elements on the fly, BVK was able to “do some things we hadn’t planned from the start,” Ericksen pointed out. Most notably, BVK created print ads featuring the fictional Upper Midwest Coat Manufacturers Association’s (UMCMA) response to its critics.
In ads that ran on the weather page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the UMCMA tackled the arguments made by its opponents and even threatened to sue them.
Because the campaign was in progress, BVK was able to incorporate photos of the outdoor billboard and the protestors on the street into the print ad, linking everything together.
While there weren’t any television commercials to accompany the Trans Global Vacations campaign due to time constraints, Ericksen said BVK would recommend incorporating them if Trans Global Vacations chooses to resurrect this campaign–which was successful in that it led to an increase in winter vacation bookings, Ericksen reported–next winter. “This gives you a great platform to do cheap TV because this underground, grassroots organization called FightBigOvercoat.org wouldn’t have a million dollars to spend on TV anyway.”
Additional credit goes to BVK art director Scott Krahn and copywriter Matt Wilcox.
Tricept, a company within FunJet Vacations, parent company of Trans Global Vacations, programmed the Web site with Kelly Ladwig serving as producer. (BVK did the writing and art direction for the Web site.)
Steve Kultgen of Independent Studios, Milwaukee, engineered the radio spots.
