Office equipment manufacturer Brother UK launched a mockumentary video campaign to raise the profile of its labelling machines.
Pooja Kondhia reports
Labels aren’t exactly the most fun or creative pieces of stationery around, if any items of stationery can be described as such, which is something label machine manufacturer Brother UK is well aware of and wanted to change.
Brother UK launched a spoof video campaign, with its marketing agency Code ComputerLove, to raise the profile of its labelling equipment among businesses and office managers in a memorable way. The campaign included a competition to encourage viewers to watch and share the video in social media channels, with a holiday to Mexico as the prize.
James Lawton-Hill, head of marketing at Brother UK said, “Our intention was to shake up the labelling market with innovative and surprising marketing activity that clearly communicated product benefits, but with a sense of humour. A key consideration was to keep the product at the heart of everything we do – with the main objective to raise awareness of Brother labelling devices and to support sales.”
Spoofing around
The mockumentary video, central to the campaign, was designed to cut through competition, engage with the target audience and convey brand personality by putting an alternative spin on how the manufacturer marketed its labelling machines.
The video features over-organised office manager Brigitte Duncan who labels the majority of things in her office, from her staff holiday planner, to the microwave and even the doors and stairs.
A major challenge Brother UK faced was in bringing the character to life. Brigitte was designed to be ‘a bit kooky’, but still had to appeal to the target audience.
In the lead up to the launch, Brother UK hinted at the video campaign through a series of posts on its Facebook page. After the launch on 28 January, a full takeover of the page was unveiled including a new cover photo, the video embedded on the page, pinned posts and an app to host the competition.
Promotion
Themed posts were designed to encourage engagement and drive video views. The video was also used across a number of other owned and paid-for channels as well as being given PR support. The advertising was primarily on Facebook and YouTube, which was handled by Carat Manchester.
Brother UK found Facebook was the best fit, as it allowed the user to stay on the same site on which the competition was being hosted. The ads on the social site were continually rotated to enable optimised delivery to the target audience. YouTube advertising was implemented in the form of its Trueview offering, which pushed the ad out before content was streamed, giving viewers the option to watch the ad or skip to their content after five seconds.
Within a week of the campaign going live the video had received almost 10,000 views.
Brother UK opted to put video at the heart of its campaign because it felt branded video content offered an engaging way to communicate key messages. It had previously seen success with video and this recent campaign was launched off the back of its consumer-targeted ‘Route 66’ TV campaign, which helped increase sales of the company’s label printers by 53 per cent in 2012.
Lawton-Hill says, “Our ‘Route 66’ campaign proved the value of investing in our labelling range, and this latest activity is an extension of that.”
The campaign ran until the middle of February but Brother will look at bringing Brigitte back to life in future campaigns.
To view campaign video click here
