Hiding in Plain Sight

Welcome to the first edition of Truth in Advertising, a blog dedicated to digging deep, finding a brand’s truth, and reaping the rewards that come with authenticity.

The following case study starts at the most fundamental level — a product’s true reason for being.

It’s the fall of 2010 and the agency I founded with my partner Tres McCullough, Fathom, has been briefed by our client to come up with some big ideas to make their newest cell phone a household name.

With a relatively modest budget compared to larger and more established category competitors, LG was looking for disruptive ways to draw attention to its new “enV” line of phones and their novel keyboard configurations. As with previous product launches, LG identified very specific target metrics for this launch — improve unaided brand awareness by 15%, generate over $5 million in PR value, and increase recommendations for the product line by 20%.

Because the phone’s “QWERTY” keyboard was designed to replicate a laptop keyboard, the client’s brief stipulated that any campaign we came up with should be aimed at business professionals accustomed to using their phones for e-mails and who, they believed, would be the group to find the most value in a familiar keyboard configuration.

It was during our team’s product immersion that the first truth emerged—speed was the true benefit of keyboard familiarity.

Then came the second truth — faster typing means faster texting, where speed is prized.

Then the third — the group who texts the most is teens who are also the most brand loyal and socially influential segment for cell phone manufacturers.

These truths prompted a series of “what ifs?”…

What if we positioned this phone as the perfect texting phone for the speed-hungry teen segment? What if we created a speed-based competition that turned the everyday behavior of texting into sport? What if the brand went on a mission to find the fastest “texter” in the country?

For the client presentation, recognizing the core idea was to take a different approach than the brief had asked for, the team built the case for our recommended speed / texting / teen positioning by leaning into the product truths they discovered while using the phone. From there, they mapped out the proposed format for the texting competition in explicit detail — the number of competitors, how the brackets would work, where it would be held, how it would be filmed, how we’d invite the media and other influencers, how we would re-purpose the content on social media, and on and on.

Despite our team’s passion and persuasion, the clients were stuck on the original strategy of launching it as a phone for business professionals and couldn’t quite appreciate the magic of the competition idea. Our recommended pivot to a younger texting market was a bridge too far and we were asked to go back to the drawing board.

My partner Tres, who had been the creative catalyst for our team’s insights and approach, was especially adamant about the power and potential of this idea to break through, so he invited the clients to come visit our offices to witness the concept in action with the Fathom team as real life contestants. To their credit, they agreed to the meeting and to keeping an open mind.

Tres and the team had carefully planned every detail. A field of eight Fathom employees went head-to-head in pairs to see who could text a given phrase fastest. There were real winners and losers in each elimination round, culminating in the finals showdown where Fathom’s fastest texter was revealed. It was a fun show with genuine drama and the client team seemed to be soaking up every second of it. It was also a good reminder of the power of using prototyping to build confidence in a novel idea’s true potential.

Because they had seen the authentic power of the idea first hand, and their product’s ability to credibly pull it off, the client team came around to the idea and agreed to invest in a pilot program — The LG National Texting Championship was born.

A few months later, the actual competition came to life at a theatre in New York City. Hundreds of contestants and dozens of members of the media gathered to see how this unique contest would play out. After two days of head-to-head knockout rounds, a 13-year-old who had traveled with her family from central Pennsylvania to compete for a $25k prize, won the final round and was crowned the first LG National Texting Champion. She was lightning fast at texting and also a natural with the media, which was loving every bit of this story.

After the event, we orchestrated a media road show with dozens of national and local TV outlets where our champion arrived with her golden trophy, armed with her new LG phone, and ready to beat any newscaster or show host who dared to get in the texting ring with her.

The program built the desired buzz for the brand and much more, generating a 30% increase in unaided brand awareness (2X the goal), $15 million in PR value (3X the goal), and a 90% increase in product recommendations (4X the goal). “Texter” was a big hit.

That first pilot ultimately evolved into an extremely valuable and exclusive brand franchise from which LG executed a series of sequels, expanded it globally, and built awareness, authentic excitement, and whole new levels of engagement with this prized younger demographic for several more years to come…and it all started with a simple idea rooted in an authentic product truth, as most big marketing ideas do.