Rose Index
Rose Exchange Rate Site
Issue 49 | December 2018
Agency
Leo Burnett Moscow
Creative Team
Client Service Director Ilya Khruschev Senior Copywriter Evgeniy Shinyaev Senior Art-Director Mikhail Tkachenko
Production Team
Producer Oleg Gridasov Production Film Service Director Felipe Gomez Aparicio
Other Credits
Strategic Planning Director Kirill Yorish Strategic Planning Manager Aleksandr Popkov
Date
March 2018
Background
Once a political holiday, March 8th is now International Woman’s Day and an opportunity for Russians to show their feelings to their loved ones and to please them with various gifts and flowers.
Usually, fathers, sons and lovers leave it till the last moment to buy their flowers and, knowing this, florists take advantage of the rush and crank their prices up.
The Village, an online magazine for smart Moscow citizens, wanted to stand up for its readers and help prevent them being exploited.
Idea
Using the currency exchange rate sites as a model, The Village created a Rose Exchange Rate site where the price of a single flower was tracked daily via a special algorithm, which analysed the prices of more than 500 Moscow flower shops.
Between March 1st and March 8th, the result was updated every hour, so readers could observe the alarmingly steady increase in the price of a rose and get directions or links to places where they could buy the cheapest bouquet in town.
Results
Massive posts in social media, with people sharing the links to help their friends save money. Media interest spread the story far and wide so that even more men ordered their flowers online in advance, saving money and annoying the greedier florists out there.
That’s how The Village proved their motto: spreading information that makes life in the city better.
Our Thoughts
Today, it is increasingly important if brands want to survive, let alone thrive, that they create ideas people want to be part of.
Advertising is moving from B to C to C to C.
If you can get people to share links, as The Village did here, then you’re onto a winner.
It’s not so much that this is free, it is that it’s noticed. 800 million people are said to have installed ad blockers on their phones and devices so the only way to get through to these people is by way of social media. And the only way for brands to get any sort of traction at all is by doing interesting things rather than saying stuff.
This little campaign is a perfect example of what large advertisers should be aiming to do. Be useful to people. Only then will their brands come to mean something.