It's great to have a clever campaign idea, and the creatives at Publicis Mojo in Melbourne certainly had that.
Their client, a popsicle company, pushes the idea that its Frosty Fruits are refreshing, and they were going to take it further, playing off the idea that the popsicles are an antidote to the madness that befalls people during the hot summer days of Australia.
"We wanted to twist what was essentially a well-worn ‘refreshment’ proposition into something more insightful about the Australian summer," says Leon Wilson, creative director at Publicis Mojo. Thus the theme: Prevent Summer Madness.
The initial idea was to do a traditional out-of-home campaign putting up posters. Each would show a victim of summer madness doing something wacky. An outdoor campaign made sense because that's typically where popsicles are consumed.
The problem was money. The budget wouldn't allow it.
So as the Publicis creatives thought about it, another idea emerged: Build a statue.
So they did.
The much-larger-than-life statue is of Dave, and as the picture to the left shows, Dave is out and about wearing nothing but a leopard-print thong, ready for the beach. An official-looking plaque at the base explains how all this happened to Dave, along with the tagline “Prevent summer madness” and the Frosty Fruits logo.
“This seemed to be a good demonstration of the heat impairing people’s judgment,” says Wilson.
The statue was up for four days in Sydney in December, when summer begins in Australia. Another went up in Melbourne a few days later.
Being in high-traffic areas, the statues got lots of visibility, but to increase their exposure further the agency ran a radio campaign encouraging listeners to visit the statues and have their pictures taken for a chance to win a summer holiday. When they got there, they received product samples.
“The response from the foot traffic was significant,” Wilson says. “School groups were posing for photos with the statues, as well as tourists, couples, young people and old people.”
