Someone to zip you up
Issue 20 | September 2011
Agency
McCann Erickson Israel
Creative Team
VP Creative: Eldad Weinberger; Creative Director: Shahar Filer; Art Director: Mayaan Froind; Copywriter: Sahar Lewenstein
Other Credits
VP Clients: Ifat Wieder-Arad, Hagar Barzilai; Account Director: Shaj Aimagor; Account Supervisor: Tai Pe’er; Account Managers: Matan Kaplan, Lee Spungin
Date
July 2010
Background
JDate is Israel’s leading dating website. They wanted more female subscribers in tel Aviv and decided that Tu B’ay, the Jewish Valentine’s Day, was the ideal time to talk to them.
The problem was that singletons in Tel Aviv may want love but they are also sophisticated and cynical. They don’t fall for the usual stuff about Prince Charming.
They needed to be engaged in a new place – and with a smile.
Idea
Women can do most things on their own but no matter how independent they are, they all struggle with the zipper.
This insight led to JDate approaching Mango, the popular fashion store chain, to use their dresses’ zippers as an advertising medium.
Two weeks before Tu B’av, during the busy July sales, a JDate tag was added to every dress with a back zipper. The tag reminded them to find someone to zip them up on the upcoming Tu B’av. It also provided the means by which women could zip up their dresses by themselves in the fitting room.
As a final offer, anyone who registered got a month’s free subscription to JDate.
Results
More than 300,000 women were exposed to the campaign in the stores and 2,000 tags were taken.
JDate’s traffic went up by 13% in July.
Unique users was up by 14%.
New subscribers rose by 15%
The campaign was covered by trendy women’s magazines and by many of the important fashion bloggers in Israel.
Our Thoughts
The word ‘insight’ is much abused in advertising. I saw a brief recently in which the consumer insight was: “On Friday evenings young men like to go and let off steam in the pub with their mates.”
This isn’t an insight. It barely fails to make it even as an observation.
Real insights are rare. They are those moments of revelation when you see something incredibly obvious for the first time.
As a creative person handed a real insight all you can do is screw it up. The team at McCann’s Israel certainly did not do that. Handed the insight that even the most independent girls still need help zipping themselves up, they still had a lot to do and they did it magnificently. Result, one happy client, I hope.