Good Production is Spreadable: Evian Case

A few years ago I was speaking with Knox Duncan (now at Wong Doody in Seattle), and he said when he worked on Nike at W+K the the production budget was bigger than all of our agency billings combined when we worked together at my last shop. This quote resurfaces a lot in my mind, particularly lately, as the percentage of production to media seems to be decreasing when it should be opposite.

Good production is spreadable in a new media world. Evian just spent a lot of money on production for an online ad which was posted on You Tube to promote their Live Young positioning. MSNBC described the campaign like this:

The piece is called “Skating Babies,” an online ad for Evian bottled water that’s rung up nearly 5 million hits internationally on YouTube in little more than a week. Among those myriad viewers is TODAY’s Natalie Morales, who has two young children, including a son who’s nearly a year old. Her oldest son loved the ad, she told co-host Matt Lauer, who also admitted to having watched it with amusement.

I can always tell something is popular when my wife tells me to watch it and something that I didn't find on an industry Blog. This is exactly what Propagation Planning should produce.

Is it hard to move a larger part of your budget to production to earn media and spend less in paid media? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

Comments

[Kate Whatley - Social Forces]

Yes, it's very hard to explain the transition to marketing decision-makers right now. Beyond the production cost issue in and of itself, the core problem seems to be an overall misconception of what social media is and is not.

The fallacy, often spread by agents within our industry who ought to know better, is that "viral marketing" means getting something for next to nothing. To many, "viral" is a dream equation of cheap production, free media, and automatic word-of-mouth. The latter of these is the most dangerous misperception in our view.

Effective social media marketing takes insight-based strategic planning, appropriate production, personal engagement and in many cases, supplemental purchased media.

It's not cheap. But it still provides an outstanding value. Rather than selling social media as a "less costly" alternative, our industry needs to focus on making it a "more efficient" solution. In terms of consumer engagement, it's not "half off" but it might be "buy one get two free."

[Griffin Farley]

Thanks for your thoughts Kate. I completely agree with you.