BRANDSTORMING: KOŠÍK, OREA OR PARTNERS BANKA SHARED CAMPAIGN RESULTS

How successful was the rebranding of Košík and what is next for Partners Banka and Pokáč. This was also heard at this year's Brandstorming conference.

New case studies, the influence of AI on advertising creation and the golden rules of brand building were presented in the programme of this year's 11th edition of the Brandstorming conference, produced by Tuesday Business Network of Internet Info. The event took place at the beginning of April in Prague's Jalta Hotel.

Adam Špina, chief strategist of Ogilvy, reminded that it is impossible to build a brand on short-term activations. He began by showing charts borrowed from Les Binet that illustrate the difference between short-term activities focused on sales and those that build their own pop-culture microcosms around brands. The need for a long-term perspective is obvious, yet Spina mentioned a clear reverse trend: last year, Effie winning campaigns devoted more time to short-term activations compared to those focused on the long-term goal by a ratio of nine to four.

He cited Heinz ketchup, among others, as a prime example to follow. The popular ketchup brand decided to reverse disappointing business results by putting its irrational love of the cold sauce at the centre of all communications. Or what else to call the fact that singer Ed Sheeran has the Heinz label tattooed on his arm? The brand purposefully sought out seemingly funny but seemingly insignificant moments and linked them to ketchup consumption. Why are hotdogs sold by the dozen but buns only by the eight? Who was the man who was shipwrecked in the Caribbean Sea and survived on ketchup for three weeks? Let's get him in the news by hunting him down to stock up on more bottles. Does your favorite restaurant have our ketchup? Tip them better and put a note on the receipt saying it's on Heinz. Lots of "user generated" content has been created. And increasing sales, too. "Globally, sales were up 12 percent, North America was up six percent and out-of-home consumption was up 22 percent," Spina said.



On the Czech scene, Ogilvy is pursuing the same goal with its client T-Mobile. The communication concept #mezisvymi, elaborated into many forms with a single line of powerful internet connectivity, helped drive higher brand affinity and positive sentiment.

Skoda Octavia: Imagination through AI

Jiri Nevečeřal of Socialsharks showed last year's case study for a teasing campaign for the new Skoda Octavia. "It's hard to attract attention to something you can't show yet. We were all about attention, reach and audience engagement," Nevečřal mentioned the initial conditions. The agency decided that if it couldn't reveal the new model to people yet, it could at least ask them what they thought it should look like. The campaign thus illustrates how to use artificial intelligence functionally, not for use alone.

As part of the accessibility and to make the user experience as smooth as possible, Socialsharks chose the Messenger communication platform and programmed the bot to generate visual content so that fans could prompt Skoda Octavia models according to their preferences. This had significant pitfalls in the form of security and a clearly defined pitch so that the results matched the Octavia design or at least the masks typical of the carmaker's latest models and no competing brands appeared in the prompt results.

"We anticipated that people would try to crash the bot, and that's what was happening. But we always managed to sort it out and fortunately no trouble happened," Jiří Nevečeřal commented. According to the creators, the level of difficulty of the whole process was equivalent to writing a text message. The motivation to share the results of the prompting was supported by the campaign's automatic participation in the contest. And the agency used all the available formats offered by social networks so that the algorithms could choose which one they preferred.

Rebranding Cart: Consistency is key

Klára Tanzerová, marketing director of Košík.cz, summarised the key moments of the year-long journey of rebranding this online shopping platform. According to Tanzerová, the rebranding was not a random decision. The company had reached the ceiling of online marketing performance and needed a new impetus and a more distinctive differentiation from the competition.

One of the main reasons for the change was the brand's interchangeable visual concept with other players in the market, such as Penny or Kaufland. The new visual therefore builds on a combination of purple and beige colours, complemented by green, orange and red. The logo has been modernised and simplified.

The rebranding process involved testing several designs in collaboration with agencies. The result was not only a new visual, but also a major change in marketing strategy. In May 2024, Košík launched a new marketing mix, allocating half of the ATL budget to TV advertising. In addition, it continued with online performance marketing.

The advertising concept is based on eight customer typologies that represent different buying needs and behaviors. The TV spots with distinctive music and fast editing were designed to attract attention and improve brand recall. Tanzer said the company was prepared to tweak the style if necessary, but testing showed that the concept performed beyond expectations - it outperformed benchmarks common to brick-and-mortar retail in all key metrics.



New brand assets in the form of a branded fleet of cars, new courier uniforms and bag redesigns also played an important role in helping the brand be more visible on the streets.

Claim "Big Coupons. Bigly" was born out of extensive testing of more than a hundred variants. It reflected the customer motivation of 'wide choice', which was cited by 95% of those surveyed. At the same time, an important objective was to subtly highlight customer habits and offer an alternative.

Tanzer pointed out that the transition to brand building is challenging and requires patience and internal company readiness. The first results began to appear after about six months, but today Košík is seeing steady growth and improving performance. The key success factor, she says, is consistency and discipline in implementing the chosen strategy. "We must not move anywhere and must proceed without hasty changes and with a long-term perspective," she said.

Partners Banka: Pokáč will gradually retreat

A new brand Partners Banka has entered one of the most demanding segments, banking. Marketing director Jiří Chmelař presented the results at Brandstorming three quarters after the launch of the campaign.

Banks are among the largest advertisers in the market and their spontaneous awareness is typically above 60%. Entering a new brand into this category is therefore difficult. Partners Banka decided to target families with children and combine the world of banking with a consultative approach.

"We are not a bank with a huge media budget, so we had to be creative," said Chmelař. The communication strategy relied on an emphasis on recognisability - a visual identity with a turquoise background, 3D animation and a distinctive soundtrack. A distinctive element was the collaboration with singer Pokáč, whose positive image and strong reach on social media helped the campaign spread quickly. According to the bank's data, 83% of the population knows him, 68% perceive him positively and a third of people declared that they would consider buying the product he promotes.



The campaign in the first year focused on brand building with the deployment of TV advertising, PR and online video. Partners is betting on long-term planning: in the second year, TV will be limited to sponsorship, with radio and performance channels taking a bigger role. In the last phase, the bank wants to focus communication purely on performance and brand recall. "We don't want to be Pokáč's bank, but Partners Banka. We knew from the beginning that we had to have figured out how to leave the familiar face behind. We planned to downplay Pokáč in the second year, but it's probably too early. TV would be fine, but static formats on the internet need a face, so we will see Pokáče again this year," described Jiří Chmelař.

In just nine months, the company managed to achieve 90% supported ad awareness and in spontaneous awareness Partners Banka outperformed smaller banks and rival Unicredit Bank. Surprisingly, online sales also performed well, with 21% of clients coming from digital channels, double the expectations. The bank currently has 130,000 clients. Acquisition costs were expected to remain at a fraction of the market average, but their amount was not specified.

Another interesting fact from the campaign is that Pokáč donated his fee to charity.

Orea: "Óóórea" increased brand awareness

Orea Hotels & Resorts launched a new marketing concept, "Óóórea," in the fall of 2024 to increase brand awareness and drive revenue growth. This campaign was unusual not only in the hospitality segment, but also in terms of creative approach. The campaign is based on the emotion "óóó", which expresses the excitement and surprise that guests often experience during their holiday stays.

Creative agency Etnetera Motion designed a campaign that focused on capturing the "little surprises" - such as perfectly prepared coffee, prosecco on arrival, snacks on a trip or scenic views from hotel rooms. These experiences were paired with a simple "ooh" response, which became a key theme of the campaign and directly relates to the brand name.

The campaign targeted a wide range of guests - from families with children to couples looking for a romantic getaway. Its main goal was to increase brand awareness, which proved successful. Six months after the campaign was launched, there was a 30% increase in spontaneous brand awareness and a 20% increase in revenue. The share of traffic to orea.cz also increased and customer satisfaction (NPS) increased by 14 percentage points. In addition, Orea achieved triple the top of mind score compared to competitor Hilton.

Advertising is more effective when people are happy

Vojtěch Prokeš from Behavio Labs focused on customer attention. "The model of direct proportionality between share of voice and share of market is no longer working. It's no longer enough to just keep investing money in it," Prokeš said, adding that 85% of campaigns do not spend enough "attention spend", i.e. the space dedicated to a brand to effectively capture attention and become memorable. The minimum threshold for spots is 2.5 seconds, during which the consumer should see the brand, its logo, name, etc. He showed well-known local and international brands including Bati, Kofola and WWF that underestimated or outright literally buried the potential to grab the attention of passers-by with their poorly conceived OOH visuals: they had too complex an idea behind the visual and minimal room for branding. In places, the Heinz brand highlighted in the previous post didn't do well either.

We are talking about strong brands with big budgets. Smaller brands have an even more difficult discipline, as they have to "expose" their attributes to potential customers even longer and more visibly.

Martin Peška and Lukáš Cikánek from Pickerly recalled some useful rules using behavioural science. They are cheap but effective improvements. For example, that some form of quality seal delivered to a product campaign within Meta platforms reduced CPA (cost per acquisition) by 60 percent compared to the version without the "customer choice" label, etc. Or that people experiencing a life milestone are more attentive to ads and more likely to click on them. Without realising it, they are also more prone to change their habits.

Attention to the legal implications of AI

There were two papers on the topic of artificial intelligence. Lawyer Petra Stupková from Legitas pointed out the pitfalls of using AI in creating campaigns. "The responsibility for whether I am not stealing from someone with my prompt lies with us, not with the AI," Stupková pointed out at a time when the internet was flooded with thousands of prompts à la the Japanese animation studio Ghibli and the public debate once again turned to the ethics of using AI, copyright, the limits of originality, etc. Czech law is not yet able to cope with this phenomenon, but at least partial steps can be taken in the form of well-drafted contracts and well-treated trademarks. "You can do campaigns in the style of Manka and Rumcajs or use Marilyn Monroe. It's fun to play with that. But in terms of creativity, it's a road to hell," Stupková said.

Source: mediaguru.cz