Unilever’s Omo in GPS-Enabled Boxes Launched in Brazil
3 August 2010 | By Anna Rudenko
Unilever is adding ‘surprises’ to two-pound boxes of its new Omo stain-fighting product in Brazil. Under the new promotion, “Try Something New With Omo”, which comes as a part of its international “Dirt is Good” campaign, the brand ‘implants’ a GPS device into the regular box, which makes it possible to ‘track’ the buyer and offer him or her nice prizes.
The device will enable the brand’s representatives to find the consumers, who have purchased one of the 50 winning boxes and hand them a pocket video camera as a prize, so that they could record the moments of family happiness. The campaign, which was developed by the Bullet promotions agency, was launched this week together with the dedicated website.
In the new hub, www.experimentealgonovo.com.br (“try something new”), Bullet-Omo squad will feature the footage recorded as it will be following the GPS-enabled detergent boxes, the pictures of the winners as well as a map with rough estimates of where their homes are. The hunt starts as soon as the box is taken from the shelf, and the team may come to the winners’ house at the same time as he or she will do (in case the winner’s apartment isn’t far away from the place where the team will be at that moment).
According to AdAge, the agency remembers about the high criminal rate in the country and is aware that it may not be easy to just knock at the door and give the prize, because people prefer to keep the door closed before strangers (especially those ones who make such offers). Still it hopes that everything will go smoothly—if the consumers don’t believe that everything is for real, the team will “remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping.”
“Anything can happen. We have to be innovative, but we don’t know what reaction to expect from consumers. It costs more than a traditional promotion and is riskier because it’s never been done before, but it’s worth it,” commented Fernando Figueiredo, Bullet’s president. The cost of the technology for the new promotional push is about 1 million dollars.
Expert Comments
Popsop.com
Tags: food, household detergents, Omo, personal care, Unilever
It is very interesting to see OMO and Unilever exploring the opportunities of new technology in retail, and especially seeing how Brazil is presenting itself as a forward looking market for innovative digital marketing.
But, the campaign is a very descriptive example of what we are seeing a lot of; where the innovation in technology is not followed by an innovation in creative ideas and execution. Where it could seem that the focus has been on identifying a technology, how to use it and how to avoid the new hurdles it creates and less has been invested in figuring out how it could introduce completely new ideas and concepts for advertising and marketing.
As we are moving from having to market our products on standardized format media real estate, in fierce competition with identical products, to finding ways into peoples lives and everyday situations, it is imminant that we also update our notion of what a brand and its marketing activities can and should do – not continue doing old stuff in completely new contexes.