POND’S flawless radiance 7 Day Challenge campaign earned a bronze at the inaugural South African Smarties awards on Wednesday, held at Randlords during the Mobile Web Africa conference.
Mich, Jord and Dorin got dressed up and headed to a rooftop party in Jozi, with their fingers crossed and a short speech prepared. The Smarties are a global awards program run by the Mobile Marketing Association and recognise excellence in innovation, creativity and results. All South African submissions were first vetted by an international judging panel before being submitted for scoring and inspection by the local judging panel.
Only 17 entries were shortlisted. POND’S 7 Day Challenge was the only entry in the Messaging category to qualify.
Tim Bishop is the Director at Deloitte Digital and Chair for Standard Bank MMA Smarties™. He had some insightful remarks regarding South Africa’s creative power and the opportunity domestic internet usage patterns offers in terms of pioneering mobile marketing techniques.
“It has always been very hard with our lower tech consumer market of SA to compete with the glam and glitz of global entries incorporating mass market new technology apps, wearables and fitness bands, but our clever, contextual use of this limited tech alongside the full understanding the wide range of consumers in SA really makes for really innovative campaigns that have true reach and success for the brands involved. SA has done well in the global awards every year, but now we can really focus on, and recognise the great work within our shores.”
Six bronze, five silver and two golds were awarded, with no Grand Prix’s. The 7 Day Challenge placed a text message mechanic at the centre of a multimedia integrated campaign that invited women of South Africa to see the lasting difference a week of daily changes could have on their lives. Read more about it here.
The campaign was live for three months and involved numerous elements, including a blogger outreach promotion, an SMS message, digital advertising, a microsite and Social Media content. Over 7000 people signed up to the 7 Day Challenge, with a conversion rate of 10.2%.
“POND’S has a broad range of products catering to a broad range of market demographics. Every campaign needs to be carefully constructed to ensure the execution fits the audience’s needs just as snugly as it matches the brand’s objectives. In the case of the flawless radiance 7 Day Challenge, the medium worked perfectly with the message, both in terms of target market and product. When the elements line up like that, success is almost guaranteed,” commented Nazeer Suliman, CCM Director for Sub Saharan Africa at Unilever.
The team thankfully didn’t need the speech, but it was a fun night. They ended off accompanying the organisers to an amazing jazz bar called The Orbit, watching stand up comedy from Loyiso Gola and Kagiso Lediga till the early hours of the morning. True story.
By all accounts, the 6am flight back to Durban was less than ideal.
