Puma’s Love = Football campaign was taken around the country, literally, thanks to full service media agency, Starcom’s ingenious multi-media advertising strategy.
With the key objectives of generating awareness in the South African market for Puma’s Love = Football campaign, also promoting its new Power Boot and European soccer kits, Starcom selected three different mediums to communicate with consumers, namely print; online; and out of home. The out of home element of the campaign was broken down to include mall media; guerrilla marketing; and outdoor billboards.
Commenting on behalf of Starcom, Gordon Patterson, Group Managing Director of the Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG), says that 2010 is renowned for brands affiliated to football. With Adidas as an official World Cup sponsor, the challenge was for Puma to effectively launch its new football boots and national kits for the 2010 season in an extremely cluttered and restricted media environment.
South Africa does not have many media channels that focus primarily on football, Patterson explains. “We have a paid for channel that focuses on Football 24/7, but only 8% of the population has access to it. In addition, while the SABC has programming geared for the world cup, Puma cannot advertise on these shows as it is not an official tournament sponsor. Added to this, there are only five dedicated print publications that strictly cover football and as one can imagine, these too are cluttered with advertising from world cup sponsors.”
After thorough research, Starcom concluded that true football fans know that it is not just about a game, it influences their whole life; that you cannot define a football fan by demographic segmentation - they are all ages; genders; and races – but, what does hold them together, is their love of the game.
Starcom’s Jason van der Berg adds: “From this knowledge, we knew that we needed a campaign that would touch every aspect of a fan’s life, and not just while they were in the traditional football space.
The campaign rolled out over three months, commencing with a ‘generic’ print advert in
Kick Off and
Soccer Laduma magazines. This was followed by a front cover gatefold and a custom 42-page glossy magazine developed by Puma. The publication detailed the new boots; the different nations; new Puma kits; and the Puma legends of Africa to name a few. The magazine, entitled
From Africa With Love, was placed in stores where the products were sold and on local airline Kulula.
Six of Kulula’s aircraft noses were branded with the Love = Football logo, to create intrigue for passengers while boarding the planes, and once onboard, the magazine drew further attention to the campaign.
The second month of the campaign saw a mix of different out of home elements take shape in the largest malls across South Africa. These elements were backed by brilliant guerrilla marketing chalk drawings of the campaign logo in high traffic areas around each of the malls; on sidewalks; and building walls, generating high word-of-mouth exposure.
At the same time, the online element kicked-off on South African football websites that linked to the
pumafootball.com website. Relevant Mobi sites were also used, which linked back to the mini mobi site.
“The message that Puma is not like other brands, and that it does things in a unique way was communicated right from the actual product, to the creative executions, and finally, the choice of media that we used,” says Jason.
In terms of success, numerous blogging sites spoke about the chalkings and projections. 15% more impressions than planned for was recorded; the campaign achieved an average click through rate of 0.43, which is almost double that of the South African average;
Kick Off sold 5% more copies of its publication when the Puma magazine was placed with theirs, and all 20 000 extra copies of the Puma magazine were taken from Kulula planes by consumers who can refer back to it for future reference.