A few weeks ago some mysterious spectacular appeared in Mexico City. They didn’t have a signature, they didn’t have any apostilled marks: nothing, except an apology message to Laura. Surely you have seen them and/or heard of them.
Some of the billboards that were read said something like:
“Laura: can you unlock me? I need to talk to you”, “Forgive me, Laura. I was an idiot” and some more.
Obviously at the beginning, when I read about the case, my first reaction was: “I want to know how this ends.” But my second reaction was: “here it smells like there is a campaign behind it”. Surely many of us think so too, especially since it is a tactic that is often used a lot for a teaser, for instance. On top of that, the ads were carefully written and punctuated, which further aroused my suspicions.
Now, to be honest, I expected (we expected) a beer launch campaign, perhaps, or something from the World Cup, or probably some other brand behind it. But to everyone’s surprise, it was the company JCDecaux Mexico, one of the largest outdoor companies in the world, with the creative idea of the Montalvo agency. In the words of Pepe Montalvo himself: [Hicimos la campaña para] “…demonstrate the power of the external environment and show that it can go viral”.
In this sense, it seems to me a very good execution. Many of us left thinking that it would be “one more campaign” or “an teaser more”, but to the fact of being very well aligned with the objective: to demonstrate/generate virality from the media offline makes the creative idea have more weight.
Now, at this point, I would like to enter into controversy. Although it is a good execution at the creative level, at the level of storytelling… would that campaign really have gone viral without digital media? Practically all of us who saw it was precisely in a digital medium. On TikTok, on Facebook, on Instagram and sometimes on Twitter. Yes, it also had a big effort with impacts on digital media with seeded content, but I return to the question: would it really have gone viral without online media?
This is where I launch the controversy: was it really an effort offline? A few years ago, for example, I remember very well one of the campaigns of teaser more effective offline. Suddenly, a phrase appeared on all the bus stops in CDMX: Do you know what a kiss is? Not only there, also on television. I don’t remember very well, in the end, the brand (badly), but I do remember that everyone talked about that effort, even long before digital media. In that case, of course, the influence of OOH media was experienced. But I find it hard to believe that the JCDecaux Mexico campaign was achieved and positioned so much solely by non-digital tacticians.
With this I do not mean, that it is clear, that “traditional” advertising does not work. In fact, it is very good to have the positioning. I always say that an advertisement on TV generates a branding that you will not be able to have it in other media, including digital. Billboards, when they are ingenious, also help a lot to generate a good positioning, among many other positive things, of course. I only have the doubt if the virality was really achieved from a 100% campaign offline.
I think there is currently a general effect of “disconnecting” people, after spending so much time in a pandemic with digital media. People are eager to go out on the street, to live other “non-digital” experiences, to “disconnect” in general at the slightest provocation. In this sense, it becomes a powerful tool to carry out BTL activations or efforts in traditional media. At least as complementary efforts to what we already do from the digital world. This campaign plays precisely this: they seeded a story in a traditional medium and then amplified it in other media.
This activation also demonstrated something interesting: the new mass medium of communication is no longer TV, but the Internet. But I will talk about this in another column.
What do you think?
We’ll read next time.