Why do we roll our eyes at commercials whose storyline is completely removed from the brand and the product? Why are other ads so forgettable, even if they offer real value to the consumer? Because, in both cases, the ads leave the job half-finished. They are either bland and unengaging, or they don’t give us a reason to care about the brand/product. Effective commercials need to do both.
One of our core tenants at CDA revolves around the need for a strategic foundation that finds authentic alignment between the brand’s business objectives and the wants & needs of the audience.
Before we even consider a creative approach, we do extensive research to make sure we are ideating from the strongest foundation possible. Otherwise, brands fall into one of two traps — ads that are either irrelevant and unengaging for the audience, or they fail to drive meaningful business impact. Balancing the creative direction of a project with a strategy that aligns with the goals of a campaign is a challenge advertisers constantly struggle with.
Raycop: “Clean Scene Investigators” by CDA
Last October, Creative Digital Agency (CDA) was brought on to help international vacuum company, Raycop, expand into the North American market by producing a video spot for their newest product launch. Raycop, originally founded in South Korea, achieved 12% market saturation in Japan, yet faced many of the challenges familiar to brands breaking into a new market.
Not only was Raycop entering a market that already had dominant competitors (ie. Dyson), Raycop’s key value proposition was highly-technical, and the product required a learning curve for its audience to appreciate.
CDA had two challenges. First, they had to introduce and inform this new product to an audience that was unaware of its existence and, second, they had to find a way to convey educational content about the product without losing the audience’s attention.
“The challenge was that we weren’t just launching a new vacuum, we were launching a whole new way for people to vacuum,” says Kevin Almeida, Managing Director at CDA, who wrote and produced the spot. “Raycop is completely re-thinking the way people clean their homes, and they needed a video that was entertaining and memorable while still managing to educate consumers about all the new technology at play.
CDA came up with a storyline that disguised the explanation of the product’s value proposition as a funny mystery to be solved. Parodying over-the-top TV police dramas, we follow two detectives at a crime scene that was left “too clean” to catch the perpetrator. In retracing the perp’s actions, they discover – to their horror – that Raycop’s new vacuum is so effective, they may never find evidence at a crime scene, ever again.
“That’s how we hit on the concept of police solving a crime,” says Kevin. “It gave us a high-energy, emotionally-engaging narrative framework to keep viewers hooked while also sneaking in nearly two minutes of technical information about the product.”
You can check out more videos CDA’s team has produced here, including Speed Stick’s spot for Super Bowl XLVII.