Best Single Venue/Market Event (Consumer)

Program Name: Make-A-Messterpiece
Client: Procter & Gamble
Agency: Gigunda Group

Year after year, TV ads try to sell the benefits of one paper towel over another. And year after year, those ads fail to deliver the one thing that can cause a consumer to pick a particular brand over a lower price point: relevant, memorable hands-on experiences. Last year, P&G’s Bounty brand broke the mold and ventured into the experiential space with its first branded semi-permanent family experience called Make-A-Messterpiece (MAM). The program will change the face of CPG marketing forever.

Housed in a 10,000-square-foot studio in an affluent Chicago suburb, Glenview, IL, the branded environment invites moms and kids up to age 12 to embrace the “Thrill of the Spill” by making it OK to make a mess. Part kids museum, part pop-up experience and part opportunity to make a mess somewhere besides home, Make-A-Messterpiece offers stations and activities where moms and kids can play, create and get dirty, no holds barred, and then clean up with the help of nearby Bounty clean-up stations. MAM brings Bounty’s brand purpose to life by “taking the brand from being in the business of cleaning up messes to putting them in the business of inspiring messes.” It also aligns with every mom’s passion point: unleashing her child’s potential.

Staffers (everyone at MAM is a certified teacher) greet visitors and invite them to get messy at any of several activity zones. At Drum Roll, kids put on a raincoat, boots and goggles (because the drums have paint in them) step into a sound booth and drum to the music, making the paint fly. The Little Sprouts area invites younger kids to paint with spaghetti. At Bubble’ology, colored bubbles explode on paper while staffers explain gravity and color mixing. Other stations let kids create slime balls, bug splats (with yogurt and berries) and finger painting. All the while, moms and dads can hang out in Club M, a living room with Starbucks coffee and snacks.

When the messes have reached their maximum, kids and moms head to the clean-up station that resembles a huge roll of paper towels to soap up and dry off with Bounty towels.

The campaign kicked off in September going after 250 million media impressions and a boost in brand equity. Due to its popularity, it extended its run and to date has exceeded 640 million impressions—more than 256 percent of its goal. The MAM studio’s qualitative and quantitative results are cleaning up, too, boasting average visit times of 1.5 hours, 74 percent repeat visits, 10 birthday parties per week, 28 percent coupon redemption and a 90 percent favorability rating.  

Program Name: TouchSmart
Client: HP
Agency: Momentum Worldwide

In March 2009, HP unveiled its first TouchSmart multi-touch laptop in New York City with a high-energy dance troupe performance designed to encourage consumer interaction with the product while associating touch technology with the HP brand. HP targeted the New York market for the activation in order to tap into the city’s built-in national stage.

On the day of the event, consumers visiting Times Square encountered acrobatic troupe Anti-Gravity as it performed an intricate choreography with a giant prop in the shape of a hand. The extended index finger on the hand reinforced the “touch” message. At the climax of the performance, a human pyramid of acrobats created a giant HP TouchSmart screen that changed at the touch of the prop finger.

After the show, attendees could meet the acrobats and demo TouchSmart TX2 laptops. The brand actively engaged with 138,000 consumers, and almost 6,000 people demoed the product with brand ambassadors.

Program Name: Human Race L.A.
Client: Nike
Agency: OnBoard Entertainment

In the fall of 2009, Nike took over the University of Southern California’s campus to appeal to the students with a running event, charity fundraiser and piggyback on the upcoming football game with conference rival Oregon State.

The multi-platform event revolved around three main activations: the Nike Hub at Phi Psi, a Nike-dedicated space within an active fraternity house on USC’s Greek Row; the 2009 Nike+ Human Race 10K in Los Angeles, known as the “Day the Trojans Raced the World”; and the Ultimate Nike Tailgate before the USC-OSU football game. In the eight weeks prior to the game, Nike hired 16 student brand ambassadors to act as staff, pace leaders, Nike+ coaches and race participant recruiters.

All told, more than 8,000 students ran in the races and helped raise in excess of $40,000 for the charity.