A year in the life of Advance
Here’s CEO Jens Krog with a quick review of the year just gone.
2011 was a tough year for the economy and a tougher one for the industry but I’m proud to say that we’ve come out the other side a wiser and even a bigger agency. As I write, most forecasts indicate another challenging year ahead and we’re focused on making sure we continue to evolve our offering.
Clients need agency partners to work faster, smarter and cheaper. These pressures are not new but have been accelerating in recent years to the point that the industry is barely recognisable from just ten years ago.
The digital transformation is the most obvious change but while we’re retooling to ensure we up our online skills, we’re just as interested in the way the contract between advertisers and consumers is being transformed. We’ve always said the best communication is a great product or service and this simple saying is truer today than it’s ever been.
We’re intrigued to see how the relationship between brands and people continues to evolve in the months and years ahead. We hope and believe the transparency of the Internet will continue to push companies towards more responsible practices and we think more of our time will be spent helping clients stay on top of societal changes, as well as those affecting the way brands communicate.
Anyway, here’s a quick look back at some of our 2011 highlights as an agency, and here’s to a great 2012.
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Our LEGO team had another busy year with the launch of LEGO Friends on December 26 the culmination of several years of intense work. We’re proud of our contribution to what was one of the company’s most important launches for some years.
The LEGO Universe experience was bittersweet. We invested a great deal of energy in this project and we can be proud of what we achieved. We were deeply saddened when LEGO decided to close the game but our time on the project made us smarter and strengthened our gaming credentials.
One of our most high-profile projects was our Caroline Wozniacki campaign for COMPEED. The partnership has helped the brand re-establish its athletic heritage and given it an injection of star quality.
Our campaign for Øresundsbroen was hugely effective with over 35,000 motorists signing up for the half-price bridge pass in the first few weeks alone.
Elsewhere, we’re continuing to do interesting work with Coloplast. The company is on a mission to be more customer-focused in its communication and this has led to some powerfully compelling work with the voice of the user increasingly central.
Customer insights are also at the core of our thinking behind the creation of the Bloom retail brand for Widex. This was an extremely challenging project that involved the creation of a brand for over 500 retail shops around the world in a very tight timescale. Hearing loss is daunting and complicated – our goal was to create a brand that made it seem less so. We’re still on the journey but we can be proud of what we’ve achieved so far.
I was also proud of the work we did in helping P2 communicate its switch to digital. We made a great little short film with a limited budget and in rapid time.
We also had a solid year in terms of new-biz, being awarded the business for two global product launches from Nycomed (now a Takeda company) and winning CoRo Foods in a pitch. Perhaps more significantly we didn’t lose any business, a plus in a year when many agencies lost clients or closed altogether.
On a personal note, my highlight of the year was our agency masterclass at Hyper Island. The three days we spent there gave us a massive energy boost and brought us closer together. We came back full of hope for the future and full of ideas about how to work smarter and more creatively. It was a great way to end the year.
Hero Factory brainstorm
We’re launching an exciting new Hero Factory project soon that will have some social media elements built into it. Yesterday was spent preparing, building and experimenting… (more news soon.)
LEGO – Blast From the Past
A while back we stumbled across an archive of VHS tapes that had been locked up in a cupboard and forgotten about. We had them digitized and, to our delight, they turned out to hold many of the old LEGO commercials we’ve made over the years.
We got in touch with the Brothers Brick – one of the best LEGO fan sites around – and they agreed to serialise the commercials on the blog together with the exclusive backstories of how they were made. For many of these old commercials, it’s their online debut! So if you’re a fan of vintage LEGO, keep an eye on the Brothers Brick over the next few months.
To give people a chance to see all the videos in one place, we’re also gradually posting them in a special Blast from the past playlist on our YouTube channel.
Case story: COMPEED
The Digest
Working as the principal strategic and creative partner for the last decade, Advance has played a key role in developing COMPEED from a technology to a Pan-European brand grossing USD100m a year.
The Details
Johnson & Johnson acquired the COMPEED brand from Coloplast in 2002. Since then, J&J has continued to build the brand throughout Europe with Advance as lead agency on all communication and all media.
From the start, COMPEED has had to negotiate a highly complex path to success. Its portfolio of plaster products encompasses both physically and emotionally demanding conditions (principally blisters, corns, wounds and cold sores), its target groups hail from the worlds of fashion and sport, and it operates in markets of varying degrees of maturity. Our initial task, then, was to find a red thread that would give the brand its reason for being. Knowing just how effective its products are, we focused on performance.
Some early print and TV work:
Key to the development of the brand was a tight strategic platform, developed jointly with the client, which incorporated the highly attitudinal payoff – Be Unstoppable. We had successfully positioned COMPEED as a highly effective enabling product (COMPEED believes nobody should be stopped in the pursuit of their passion) but it was this payoff that gave the brand its flavour.
As a brand, COMPEED has never rested on its laurels. In 2009, the decision was made to reconnect with its sport heritage. A two-year sponsorship deal was signed with the ATP. The following year, a similar deal was negotiated with women’s tennis world #1, Caroline Wozniacki.
Both deals gave COMPEED renewed impetus with the athletic half of its target market while Caroline Wozniacki’s burgeoning profile added credibility and exposure. Advance’s job was to put together the strategic and communicative platforms to maximise the brand’s return on what was a significant investment. The sponsorships gave COMPEED a wealth of collateral:
After a decade of consistent growth, COMPEED has become a must-have product for dynamic, high-achieving individuals who refused to be stopped in the pursuit of their passion. Advance continues to play a key role in its success.
Toys ‘R’ Us shoot – Behind the Scenes
Tim snapped a few fun pics at a recent shoot for Toys ‘R’ Us:
The green room – lots of Skittles on the rider.
Big numbers already for Øresund bridge campaign
We’re happy to report that our campaign for Øresundsbroen is doing its job with a record 35,000 motorists signing up for the Bridge Pass that gets them 50% off the price of the toll.
Account manager Mette had this to say: “We’ve been working with Øresundsbron for less than half a year and we’re delighted that our work has helped them achieve such great results already. The campaign worked across TV, print, digital and dialogue and we’re proud of the fact that we were able to demonstrate our skills in all those areas.”
Markedsføring’s report is here.
Here are a couple of the TV spots from the campaign:
River deep, mountain high
A few pics from a recent shoot for Coloplast that took us to the top of the Alps and the beautiful Normandy countryside. We’re looking forward to sharing the final videos.
Hero Recon in Wired
Some nice press for Hero Recon in Wired’s GeekDad blog last week. Hero Recon lets Hero Factory fans customise and build their own Heroes online. And lots of fun it is too.
Caroline Wozniacki + COMPEED
Our work for COMPEED featuring tennis champion and current World No.1 Caroline Wozniacki will be hitting TV screens soon but we wanted to share some of it here first.
Below you’ll find the first TV spot and a little behind the scenes-type movie we made while filming in LA. The campaign rolls out across Europe over the next days and weeks and we’ll have plenty more to show you soon.
LEGO Universe – Cinema Trailer
Here’s one of our latest promo trailers for LEGO Universe. This one’s running in cinemas around the world. It shows the entire backstory to the game, telling how the maelstrom came into being, and the start of the quest to save imagination!