Case studies
View a selection of our client case studies below. Click through for more information
BT Heart to Heart
Take a look at our short film showing how we brought back the warmth to BT, while delivering marked business results by including the nation in planning the second biggest wedding in recent memory
Turning prospects into customers
Watch our short film to see the award winning campaign Maxus created for Mercedes-Benz., turning prospects into customers.
Fiat Bad Boy
Take a look at our short film showing how our campaign for the Fiat 500 turned a girl‟s car into a car for boys and girls through our understanding of boy‟s competitive nature, their love of anarchic fun and their desire to be the original distributors of online content that reflects this.
Live Cinema Ad
Take a look at our short film to see how we created a 'live' cinema ad for our client Triumph.
"Saturday night out at the cinema with my best mates. We're going to watch Sex and the City 2 - V.excited. Couple of drinks (Cosmos of course) to get ourselves in the mood then settle down with our popcorn to watch the ads and trailers. Hang on, the lights are coming up again - what’s happening? Brilliant - a fashion show! Lovely ladies in stunning underwear strutting their stuff, using the aisle as their catwalk. Actually here in the cinema, how cool is that? Everyone's clapping and cheering, I certainly didn't expect to see this. The underwear was by Triumph – didn’t know they made stuff as good as this, I'll have to check them out. Pick up a postcard on my way out, enter the comp - hope I win. Even if not, they now send me interesting stuff and fashion news each month. Result!"
Oakley - Flagship Store
Watch our short film to see how Maxus increased traffic to Oakley's Covent Garden flagship store.
Increasing the performance of their store by 19% year on year during the campaign period.
FT "Recession" campaign
Background: Recession Hits
Research has shown that companies that maintain their advertising budget through bad times prosper more in the long term.
With an impending recession on the horizon in order to protect their ad revenue it was important that the FT, as the leading financial paper, send an authoritative message to the advertising and broader community that cutting media budgets was not the way to survive the tough times ahead.
The Big Idea
There was much debate about ad spending in the recession, especially in the industry, with many sources urging companies to continue spending if they wanted to thrive.
We wanted to bring the impact of budget cuts to life. The big idea was to strip back poster sites to their bare boards, posting only a small copy panel on the top right posing the question: ‘Global Downturn. What’s the first mistake business’ make?’
Making it Happen
Our campaign needed to reach the business community with a focus on those with influence over marketing budgets. Ad-rail 48s are traditionally the home of financial advertisers, and hence many of the FT’s advertising clients, and so were ideal for the bold message.
Persuading the media owner (Titan) to get onboard and strip back the sites was not an easy job as the campaign appeared to show their premium sites unsold and drew attention to the issues facing them as media owners in a recession. It was also a challenge technically to strip back the boards and took a team of 20 billposters 200 hours in total to strip back our 100 sites.
The campaign also ran in media trade press acting as a reminder message for the industry and driving people through to a specially built microsite providing case studies on advertising through a recession and intending to provoke debate in the industry.
Results
The campaign performed fantastically. Whilst costing only £88k the PR generated was estimated to total over £180k. The media and marketing industry the campaign targeted certainly took interest with coverage and discussion of the campaign featuring in national papers such as The Guardian alongside key media titles such as Media Week and Campaign – the latter where it was voted number 1 poster of the year!
Most importantly the FT has continued to outperform its competitors. In Q1 2009, the FT showed the highest increase of 170% in terms of display advertising volume (January to March, week by week). This increase is 305% higher than its nearest competitor, the Guardian!
Ubisoft - Imagine Campaign
How Maxus helped Ubisoft connect with 6 - 12 year old girls and help them explore their dreams.
Background
Imagine is a range of videogames for girls 6 – 12 that aims to help them imagine what they would like to be when they are older. Ubisoft wanted to establish the Imagine range as the number one gaming brand to help 6 – 12 year old girls explore their dreams.
Imagining the problem
The problem was communicating Imagine as the games range aimed at young girls and their imaginations. Girls are bombarded with adverts and brands from a very young age; our task was to standout and offer the girls something new & exciting, not just in comparison to other video games but all brands that are competing for their free time.
Problem solved
Girls in this age range are branching out from their family groups and starting to engage in other social communities – eg. Brownies or after school clubs. We wanted to engage the girls in environments where they are already using their imaginations, thinking about becoming a ‘grown-up’ and taking part in an online community. We identified Binweevils.com and Swapitshop.com as perfect online communities which allow girls to pretend they are growing up by replicating adult activities.
Live your dreams
Binweevils is a fully immersive digital world (similar to Second Life) for under 13s offering friends, nest (house), pets, shopping malls, cinema, games, disco and competitions, whilst Swapitshop is a replication of eBay for under 16s; users can use ‘swapits’ to purchase products, play games or exchange back into money (£).
On Binweevils we threw an Imagine party and, using login data, invited girls aged 6 – 12. The party was advertised in high traffic areas around the site and an extensive cinema pre-roll campaign was undertaken in the Binweevils cinema.
On Swapitshop we created a ‘frenzy’ page which is an eBay style auction for under 16s. For showing an interest (eg. clicking an ad) in the new range the girls were rewarded with currency (Mulch on Binweevils, Swapits on Swapitshop) which they could use for activities in their online community.
Results
The following online results were achieved with a fraction (£70k) of the overall marketing budget for Imagine (£2m) in 2008. The party on Binweevils had over 100k visitors in 48 hours, of whom a staggering 23% clicked through to the Imagine website. This is significantly higher than the industry average (c.5%), about 400% higher! There was an immediate sales uplift of c.40k units (roughly £1.2m revenue) after the online campaign commenced.
Over 90% of the games on Swapitshop were sold in the frenzy. The exit CPC of £0.30p would be an exceptional performance for any campaign. The girls joined an exciting email community on the Imagine website facilitating a closer relationship between Ubisoft and the Imagine girls. This revolutionary, innovative and exciting campaign was a great success and a category media first. Following the campaign some notable competitors of Ubisoft have replicated the strategy.
Marie Curie Daffodil Campaign
How we increased the reach of a campaign – at minimal costs – for Marie Curie
Background
Marie Curie Cancer Care provides free nursing care to cancer patients and those with other terminal illnesses, in their own home. Throughout March they run their Great Daffodil Appeal, to raise both money and awareness for the cause.
Online should be a key area for MCCC; for information, data capture & donation purposes. Thus far however, their website has been unable to properly fulfill these functions and online activity has been limited and not intended to drive traffic to the MCCC site.
This year Actor Stephen Mangham (of Green Wing, Free Agents, Alan Partidge etc fames) was chosen as the brand ambassador for the campaign, to provide a contemporary and humanized face to MCCC. Having a well received brand ambassador would be fundamental for the campaigns success and for encouraging donations. In terms of ATL activity however, Stephen could only be utilized for radio activity (featuring him singing along to the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun”) as budget could not be extended to accommodate new creative work.
Our task was to find a way of maximizing the Stephen association, tapping into his warmth and personality, without incurring extra production costs.
The Big Idea
Take the radio ad online and into an arena which wasn’t dependent on high spec creative ads or on driving people to the MCCC site. We would actually persuade Stephen to be filmed on a hand held camera “busking” along to the Animals’ tune and then host this on Facebook.
As well as amplifying the radio activity this would massively increase the reach of our campaign, at minimal costs. The “home-made” nature of the ad would fit perfectly in this environment and imbue it with a sense of realism.
Making it Happen
We would utilize Facebook’s new “engagement” ad technology which would encourage people to interact and comment on the clip. The comments were then fed into 5% of their friend’s newsfeeds, virally extending the campaigns reach – for free – and prompting debate.
Precise targeting was also key. Rather than just reaching a broad (and potentially unreceptive audience), we would create a unique target group – people who we knew had an interest in charities, cancer, MCCC and Stephen Mangham himself (with fans of Stephen’s programmes formulating part of our key word target).
In order to drive donations people were encouraged to place money into Stephen’s “busking hat”, (driving them to a donation facility within the MCCC fan page) meaning that their Facebook session would not be compromised. Similarly, those requiring further information were directed to the Facebook hosted, MCCC fan page, alleviating any need to leave the site.
Results
– 5.2m impressions
– 7,022 engagements
– 100% added value
– Receptive audience data analytics to be used in future campaign targeting strategies
Not only did the Facebook activity allow MCCC to have a cost effective online presence, irrespective of their own online functionality, it provided us with a rich data source of new MCCC “fans” - a great source of potential future donators, as well as information on those most pre-disposed to donating to the charity.
