Imowssages
Viking
Issue 33 | December 2014
Agency
Publicis Conseil
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer: Olivier Altmann Creative Director: Olivier Altmann Art directors: Alexandra Offe, Didier Aerts Copywriters: Didier Aerts, Alexandra Offe Art Director Assistant: Camille Vernier
Production Team
Creative Technologist: Julien Chaillou Digital Producers: Aurélie Mazodier, Minda Bouanda, Bastien Chanot Production: Le Lab Marcel Technical Chief Le Lab: Christophe Serret Lead Programmers Le Lab: Vivien Ripoche, Cédric Fressin
Other Credits
Advertisers: Régis Guimont, Gilles Olleris Account managers: Stéphane Gaillard, Grégoire Verdet, Adeline Blanc
Date
March 2014
Background
Challenge: Standing out from the crowd! All brands of lawn mowers advertise in spring, but none really stands out. The main challenge was to make Viking's iMow robotic lawn mower stand out through an original and unusual campaign.
Objective: Giving the iMow robotic lawn mower maximum visibility in 2014. The target audience was drawn from new customers.
Strategy: As all brands of robotic lawn mowers promise 'more free time', Viking has decided to differentiate itself through a message that completely breaks from the competition : mowing the lawn can be fun.
Idea
Concept: Demonstrating virtually that the iMow can mow the lawn for you, offering users a new experience: mowing messages on lawns and pitches throughout the world through Google Maps. Wherever you are, you can program the iMow robotic lawn mower to mow your messages on pitches as iconic as the Maracanã stadium, on the White House lawn or simply in your parents' garden.
Viking and therefore created an easy to use, intuitive and fun website, www.ecriresurlapelouse.com, using Google's satellite images for a very realistic experience.
The campaign allows iMow and Viking to emerge in the robotic mowing market thanks to its originality and its fun operation in a segment rarely perceived as being 'sexy.' In 2014, Viking creates a buzz by breaking the traditional communication codes of the sector, engaging with a target that is particularly interested in sport (football, rugby, tennis).
Historically, Viking has always adopted a quirky and cheeky tone in their advertising, this campaign is therefore in line with the previous ones: it allows Viking to introduce the public to its robotic mower by showing how fun it is to use.
Results
Results: The campaign has just been launched and, in just a few weeks, more than 160,000 people have already visited the website.?Tens of thousands of messages have been mowed and shared on social networks with an average of more than one minute spent on the website.
Peaks in traffic are correlated with the display of campaign banners on l'équipe.fr, as was the case for example on the day of the Champions League match between Real Madrid and Bayern Munich, when supporters of both teams had fun mowing messages of encouragement.