Tag the weather
Gillette
Issue 27 | June 2013
Agency
Saatchi Stockholm
Creative Team
Copywriters Petter Dixelius Amalia Pitsiava Digital creative Erik Hiort af Ornas Art Director Lisa Engardt Designer Maria Wester Planner Per Jaldeborg Account Manager Maria Lindskog-Klasen
Date
January 2013
Background
The Swedish winter could last as long as five cold months. During this period, Gillette Venus had a major competitor. The weather. Buying a razor and shaving your legs is not a priority when the temperature is -11°C.
Taking inspiration from judo, where fighters used their opponent’s force to their own advantage, the brief was to use the terrible weather to get women involved.
Idea
Women were invited to take pictures of the weather in Sweden and the colder, snowier and more miserable the conditions the better. Because three fashion bloggers in sunsaturated Miami, Rio and Sydney would judge them every day.
Photos uploaded using the hashtag #venuscompetition were given a bad weather score depending on historical data from the same location. If a girl’s photo was of the worst weather ever experienced at that place, her shot got a high score.
14 finalists were chosen by the jury, who video blogged their pic of the daymotivations during the competition. The finalist photos were printed on canvases displayed in an exhibition on the roof top of Hotel Breakwater in Miami Beach where local jury member Steffy Kuncman presented the winning photo on Facebook via a Bambuser stream. The winner got to escape the Scandinavian freeze and fly to Miami.
Results
All participants got a weather-based discount on the purchase of a Gillette Venus razor, which changed depending on how nasty the weather was at the time.
As well as getting nearly 160,000 unique visitors to www.tagtheweather.se, reaching 91% of all Swedish women aged 18-35 through Facebook and Instagram, online sales of Venus Pro Skin Sensitive razors went up 570%. Online sales of blades +100%.
Our Thoughts
Instagram is really big in Sweden (though quite why remains a mystery) and here’s the proof of it.
It’s one of those ‘here and now’ ideas that doesn’t ask too much of the people it’s trying to engage. A lot of UGC is just too hard. Make a video and submit it or even scan a QR code with your smartphone to go to a website. And vote. And tweet. No thank you. Whereas to take a photo and upload it is not only dead easy but on a cold winter’s day a fun thing to do if it could get you to Miami.
For me, this isn’t so much a demonstration of how social media works but of how people work. Good stuff from those clever Swedes.