Integrated Campaign Spotlights Marketing Superheroes
New York, NY – May 29, 2003 The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today launches a new integrated branding campaign aimed at helping marketers understand how they can best employ interactive advertising to more effectively reach their business goals. The campaign, devised by marketing communications agency Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners, highlights successful marketing case studies from brand leaders Volvo Cars of North America, Frito-Lay, Inc., and Kimberly-Clark and features the tagline “Interactive. The Active Ingredient”.
The first wave of the integrated advertising campaign will appear in print, outdoor and online publications beginning May 28. The campaign profiles marketing executives who have helped their brands become “superheroes” by tapping the potency of interactive in tandem with an overall marketing plan. Using a stylish, witty motif that overlays photos of each executive onto a “superhero” costume, the copy lists their “superpowers” – the campaign innovations that specifically contributed to achieving brand objectives. The ads encourage corporate marketers to explore the power of interactive advertising by downloading complete “superhero” case studies at www.iab.net/superhero.
The first two “superheroes” are Cammie Dunaway, Vice President and General Manager of Marketing for Frito-Lay, Inc., and Phil Bienert, Manager of CRM and e-Business for Volvo Cars of North America LLC.
The campaign will additionally feature e-mail marketing, event and public relations strategies.
“We are thrilled to have partnered with Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners, a clear leader in integrated marketing, to develop what is the most comprehensive marketing campaign to date for our organization,” said Greg Stuart, President and CEO, IAB. “Through initial campaign research, we determined that many marketing executives recognize the potential of interactive marketing, but continue to need tangible proof and creative examples of success to fully implement a media-agnostic plan.
“Thus, the creative communications seek to illustrate interactive’s possibilities and offer compelling success stories that will resonate with our target audience,” Stuart continued. “We hope that by delivering this message across many media, we ourselves can prove a successful case study – and continue to build on the upward trend of traditional marketers incorporating interactive into their media mix.”
“The “superheroes” campaign is truly an industry effort. Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners has donated all creative, production and media planning in concert with Media Planning Group. Top-tier media outlets generously donated inventory from their site or publication and Eyeblaster, Unicast and Viewpoint are donating rich media services,” said Kelly Colbert, Vice President of Marketing, IAB. “It’s thrilling to have so many leading companies rally behind this campaign.”
Media companies and online publishers donating advertising space include: 24/7 RealMedia, Advertising Age, AdForum.com, AOL, MediaPost, MSN, Netcreations, The New York Times Digital, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal Online and Yahoo!. Atlas DMT is providing all ad serving, tracking and analytics and Dynamic Logic is conducting an AdIndex study to measure the impact of the online advertising component.
“While all forward-thinking companies recognize the need for more integrated marketing, they look to organizations like the IAB for the tools and information to speed that process,” said Ron Berger CEO, Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners. “Our agency is happy to help advance the process, and to support the IAB as a thought leadership resource.”
About the IAB
Founded in 1996, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) represents leading interactive companies that are actively engaged in, and support the sale of interactive advertising. IAB members are responsible for selling over 75% of online advertising in the United States. IAB member companies include: AOL, CNET Networks, DoubleClick, MSN, Google, Overture, The Walt Disney Internet Group, Yahoo! and over 100 others. On behalf of its members, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices, fields interactive effectiveness research and educates the advertising industry regarding the use of interactive advertising. For more information on the IAB please visit www.iab.net.
About Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners
Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners is based in New York, with offices and operating units in San Francisco, Berwyn (Pennsylvania), Westport and Wilton (Connecticut), Boston, Washington, D.C., Mineola (New York), and Amsterdam. The agency provides integrated marketing solutions for some of the world’s most forward-thinking companies, including Intel Corporation, Nestlé, Reuters, Schering-Plough, VeriSign, and Volvo. Its clients are leaders in virtually all major categories, from fashion to financial services, technology to health sciences.