My Big Fat Greek Ad Campaign
Devising this ad campaign felt like convincing a friend to fund and ride in a rocket of my design. Byron Sharp’s “rocket science isn’t rocket science” quip is some comfort here!
Not rocket science:
✔️ distinctive brand assets at the core of the message
✔️ creating ground around a category entry point to build memory constructs tied to the brand
✔️ primary video for full category reach, secondary videos for specific segments
And to top it all off, using “differentiators” as mere plot devices in the service of shooting for awareness and salience.
(Scroll to the bottom of the page to view the video)
The biggest company you’ve never heard of
Flynn is the largest trade contractor in North America that deals with the complete building envelope: roofing, cladding, and glazing. Their roof repair and maintenance division alone was a $120MM business. But more than three-quarters of respondents to a survey of category buyers in US markets indicated that they had never heard of Flynn before:
Very familiar 7.14%
Somewhat familiar 8.82%
I’ve only heard the name 6.72%
Not at all familiar 77.31%
This reflected the observation made by many people within Flynn, ranging from comment to outright complaint, that prospects didn’t know who Flynn was. This was particularly and understandably true of Flynn’s US acquisitions, where brand transition work had typically amounted to changing the logo on the front of the building and “co-branding” on email signatures for a time. Flynn would usually add a repair and maintenance department post-acquisition, but with little outreach to the local market beyond a social media post.
That repair and maintenance division would be the focus of my awareness campaign. Achieving the most base level of name recognition and awareness would be a goal. Redistributing that 77% would be an objective.
What awareness would mean
In my pitch to Flynn executives, I outlined a definition of success for the campaign. Overall, it was to be an awareness campaign. But this is a vague description, and begs elaboration.
And there was more to the awareness goal than just name recognition.
While we would look to boost distinctiveness, we also had a few points of legitimate differentiation to convey. And these points of differentiation were not necessarily known even with Flynn’s current customers. Many of them didn’t know about Flynn’s web app for managing roof system portfolios. Many companies with national building portfolios — current customers and prospects alike — didn’t know that Flynn has coverage across North America. And while many companies advertise 24-hour emergency response as Flynn does, for some of Flynn’s competitors this means you leave a voice message on a phone line, and you will get a response within 24 hours. Flynn’s offering involves an always-open call center responding to calls day or night, and coordinating a response immediately.
So campaign success would range from cold calls being warmer, to all category buyers knowing Flynn a bit better.
Effectiveness
Data2Decisions’ research on effectiveness factors in advertising points at two standout “multipliers” of advertising profitability: market/brand size and quality of creative execution.
Certainly every item on the list has its place in terms of impact, but as my dad used to say when we would race his sailboat together, don’t bother getting a fancy new winch handle made in Italy if you haven’t scrubbed the bottom of the boat! One has much greater impact on results.
Obviously market size is beyond the marketer’s control. But within market size, big companies can play where smaller players simply cannot. They have the budget to potentially reach all category buyers, thereby maintaining customer acquisition rates that smaller companies cannot match. Being a billion-dollar company, Flynn could leverage its ability to spend to a degree that full category reach could be achieved and sustained, and, to exploit this advantage still further, blend the message with recruitment messaging to utilise mass media opportunities.
Flynn has a few competitors which can leverage their size in this way, but do not. Many more could leverage creative effectiveness, but either choose not to or are unable to do so. The blue collar of industrial B2B marketing communications is paradoxically so tightly buttoned down that it often chokes to get any sort of meaningful message out. Construction companies can be the worst offenders, stiffly surrendering little more than name, rank, and serial number (or, completed project name, square footage, and completion date).
Is it memorable?
If your advertising goes unnoticed, everything else is academic. — Bill Bernbach
In his talks and blogs, UK-based ad man Dave Trott has noted that four percent of advertising is remembered positively and seven percent is remembered negatively, leaving 89 percent that is not remembered at all. If that statistic roughly translates to Canada, where we spend about 9.5 billion dollars on digital advertising, that means 8.5 billion of it is wasted on lousy ads. Never remembered. You might as well do nothing with it. You would truly rather be in that seven percent that’s remembered negatively. Safe is death.
Good ads build recall. It’s basically coming to mind in those situations where our services are needed.
Category entry points
Research published by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute shows that the memory links that make advertising work activate when buyers enter the market. So, if your advertising is better at building brand-relevant memory linkages around category entry points, your brand will be more competitive.
In my pitch to internal stakeholders, I noted that the vast majority of our potential buyers do not consider themselves “in-market” for Flynn’s services at any given time. While preventive roof maintenance is a proactive, any-time-of-year service, certain segments of our audience are more reactive buyers. For them, the category entry point comes the moment after a roof leak is discovered.
Even in more profitable segments, where audiences are more sophisticated and more proactive in using roof repair services, a significant weather event is typically a moment where our category becomes top of mind. In a matter of hours, our services can transform from a something like a grudging checkup at the dentist to the timely arrival of a paramedic.
Weather events, then, are a category entry point common to all Flynn’s market segments, if to different degrees. This is therefore the CEP I wanted to leverage in devising a broad-reach advertisement.
The audience
The Olympia concept came to me when considering a few people I had met whom I would consider prototypical of Flynn’s audience. Facility managers in particular seem formed from one mold. The majority are university educated (66%, by a 2004 survey), but more than that they share characteristics that could never be captured through quantitative research. Ethnographic research reveals them to be confident to the extreme — because they really must be — but never cocky. They are open to new ideas, but invariably defensive if challenged on what they consider to be a truth of their experience or trade.
The most interesting insight from ethnographic research was hard to put a finger on, but what I would simply call a worldliness on the part of facility managers. They have interests that require — and for which they readily supply — an investment in time and learning. They possess a compelling combination of book smarts and practical knowledge.
These insights do present one big warning sign: do not demean or belittle this group in the slightest. They will smell it a mile away. And word gets around.
I felt that my Olympia concept, delivered with smart and restrained humour, would appeal to this audience.
Firmographics
Nearly four fifths (79%) of respondents to a survey of facility management professionals identified as male. Flynn’s other audience for roof repair is property managers, who act as consultants and overseers, one level up from facility managers. This group is mostly female. This disparity worked perfectly for my concept, which has a female facilitating rescue (via Flynn) of a male facility manager.
The concept
Each video opens on a typical situation confronting a facility manager: a storm threatens, with a roof leak a likely result. The camera then rises up out of the scene, up through the clouds, to… (deep breath here in my pitch to Flynn executives)… Mount Olympus, where we see that the storm is the result of a board game being played by Zeus and his wife Hera (there was stunned silence from Flynn execs here, with a few jaws sitting very loosely, if not altogether dropped). Where Zeus moves a storm into place on the game board, Hera counters with a Flynn truck piece. In each scenario, the video ends back in the real world, where a Flynn truck arrives to save the day.
Zeus
Zeus is of course all-powerful. He represents every unforeseen or unexpected challenge that can befall the facility manager. Critically, though, while he can summon storms of any size at will, these are things that can be addressed. While there is no stopping Zeus, ultimately there is a cure for anything he can dish out.
Hera
Hera represents not the resolution itself, but the availability of a resolution through Flynn. It was important to make this distinction, lest we (a) insult the intelligence and professionalism of the facility manager audience, and (b) fail to recognize that there is often a property manager in a role much like hers (i.e. between Flynn and the facility manager). While not all-powerful like her husband, she is a foil for every move Zeus can make.
Distinctive brand assets
Many people at Flynn have quipped that it is the biggest company (CAD $1.2B revenue in 2021) you’ve never heard of. And yet, as soon as one is made aware of Flynn, you can’t help but start spotting its service trucks driving around town. Leveraging Flynn’s trucks as a distinctive brand asset was a high priority for the ads. Connecting the Olympia game board pieces to the real world truck at the end of the spot was a key part of the video, as it encourages the building of memory structures around a distinctive brand asset.
Branding the sky
As Dave Trott has rhetorically asked, what’s the point of the ad if the audience doesn’t remember the brand name?!
At the end of each video, we pan up from the Flynn truck to the sky, where, after a flash of lightning, Hera’s hand places the Flynn logo onscreen, mimicking her placement of a Flynn truck on the Mount Olympus game board, thereby tying that to the real-world scenario.
This is the final place in the video where I create ground for the building of memory structures, this time in association with the common “trigger moment” for our category of commercial roof repair. It doesn’t take much to encourage an association with rumbling thunderstorms and the almighty Zeus or some other heavenly power. This association has existed for nearly as long as humans have walked the earth. By having Hera place the Flynn logo atop the storm, I am hoping to tie the Flynn message to that timeless association. As I put it in my pitch, to “brand the sky”.
Production
I wrote three scripts describing three scenarios that allowed me to touch on three differentiators, even if these would be used as mere plot devices in the service of shooting for awareness and salience.
I had shared my scripts with Ed Limon at Winged Whale Media before pitching the idea to Flynn stakeholders. He gave me the confidence that the concept was in fact producible on a budget that would be less outrageous than the concept.
After I got sign-off from Flynn stakeholders, Ed proceeded with casting (we tempted fate by rejecting an actor who was actually named Zeus!), and we got to work on producing the props. One of our graphic designers, Prabjit Mudher, designed 3D models for game pieces, which were then printed in-house. For the game board, I sent a basic map of North America to print (my daughter, 11, very helpfully pointed out that the ancient Greeks would not have had such a map!), and I built a wooden frame and trim for it. I painted the game pieces and game board trim in my backyard using gold and marble spray paints. I ordered custom scale model trucks online.
Recruitment extension
Recruitment and employer brand have always been a hot topic at Flynn, with a field workforce of 3000+ and always looking for more workers.
Typically I would stay well away from targeting two audiences with one message, simply because you need two messages! But as I got into the writing of the video scripts, an opportunity to do just that presented itself.
I consciously crafted the “thank goodness it’s Flynn” tagline for its potential to extend to recruitment advertising. Abbreviated to TGIF to invoke that familiar “thank god it’s Friday” phrase, the extension of the campaign into recruitment activities would allow us to use mass media opportunities where both customer and employer brand audiences were present. It was a unique situation where one message could say two things to two different audiences, thereby giving us a more economical reach than would otherwise be possible.
(I did write the spoken version of the line using the word “goodness” instead of “god” as I felt use of the latter might be problematic in some of our US markets. I am all for being provocative to get attention (see my “Pimp My Lift” campaign) but in at least one US state this might have crossed the line from provocation to gratuitous offence.)
The three video scenarios
Scenario 1: 24-hr response
The video opens on a janitor and a building manager looking up at a roof leak. The camera backs up through the roof, up into the sky (we see there is a storm) and through the clouds to Mount Olympus, where Hera admonishes Zeus for sending a storm in the middle of the night. We see that they are playing a board game. Zeus delights in his move, but Hera responds by placing a Flynn truck on the board. Zeus complains that a middle-of-the-night repair isn’t possible, but Hera explains that Flynn’s call centre is available 24/7. Back in the real world, we see the facility manager call Flynn. A Flynn truck arrives, and Hera’s hand places a Flynn logo onscreen with the line, “thank goodness it’s Flynn.”
Scenario 2: Flying Extra Crews In
We see a facility manager is his office, looking at a radar screen that shows a storm in the vicinity. We transition to Olympia as before, where we again see Hera respond to Zeus’s storm with a Flynn truck. Zeus laughs, and places an enormous storm piece on the board. Back in the real world, the facility manager is stunned to see a hurricane-size storm appear on radar. But at Olympia, Hera simply brings a Flynn truck from another location to address the storm. In childish frustration, Zeus tosses all the pieces off the board. Our facility manager sees both storms erased from the screen, and sunshine floods his office. As in the other scenario, a Flynn truck arrives and Hera places the logo and delivers the payoff line.
Scenario 3: National Service
We see a facility manager in his office, working happily. We transition to Olympia, where Zeus opines that the fellow shouldn’t be so happily, with his portfolio of 20 buildings to manage. Zeus places a storm on the board. Hera responds with a Flynn truck, but Zeus in turn places a second storm halfway across the country. Hera moves a Flynn truck to meet the second storm. Zeus complains that it’s a thousand miles away, that the facility manager can’t be in both places. Hera explains that Flynn has locations coast to coast. Zeus decides he’ll exert his power and blow onto the board. Hera and our facility manager react to his bad breath, but otherwise there is no effect. Flynn truck arrives, and Hera claps the logo onscreen with the payoff line. There is a longer version of this video that includes a look at Flynn’s proprietary “FAST” app, which allows national customers to keep repair requests and data “under one roof”.
Credits
Concept, scripts, & creative direction: Brian Brett
Casting & video production: Winged Whale Media
