Death And Glory

Forty five Scottish midges had to die in pursuit of our dream. But, unlike most midges, they gave up their lives for a good cause.

It is not every day that a pesky midge provides the inspiration behind an award-winning campaign but, when the team at Karol Marketing received a brief from client Vango to send forty five big name journalists to a municipal dump on the outskirts of Glasgow, we knew we had to do something very different.

Vango is the UK’s leading supplier of tents and camping equipment. The company wanted key named journalists from as far afield as Bristol, London, Manchester, and everywhere in between, to make the arduous journey to an unknown and unbranded (for security reasons!) warehouse based on the outskirts of Port Glasgow.

To add to the challenge, the warehouse was inconveniently located next to a municipal dump. On a hot day, it had an aroma all of its own.

So why the mystery? Why did we need to entice media moguls away from their desks and computer screens?

Well, the warehouse housed the most comprehensive selection of fully pitched Vango tents, all together with colour co-ordinated camping accessories like sleeping bags, airbeds, tables and chairs, all in one 3,000 square meter show facility, affectionately known as the Green Room in a concrete jungle. Nowhere else in the world could you see Vango’s full seasonal collection just in one place.

The problem is, that most journalists are very reluctant to leave their desks. Add to that the fact that, if sending information to them wasn’t enough, they could see pitched tent collections, side by side with competitor brands, in far more centralised locations like the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham and the EXCEL Centre in London. They just couldn’t experience one brand’s full collection. But hey, if you don’t know what you’re missing, you don’t miss it.

Anyway, at Karol we knew the cards were stacked against us. Says Karol’s account director Jenny Dawson who led the project, “Any invitation would have to be underpinned by something special if we were to entice the media.

“We wanted to connect cognitively with our target audience and we decided to play a game of intrigue. We needed to identify something special about Vango, something that journalists, hungry for a story would find irresistible.”

And so began the process of research, looking for interesting facts, something journalists didn’t already know about – or if they did, then presenting these facts in a way that re-engaged.

Some years before, Vango had brought to the mass market, AirBeam, the worlds first inflatable tent. Could this be Karol’s angle? But it was old news! How could we re-fresh it? How could we make it relevant?

Says Jenny, “We began by challenging ourselves to focus on and define the real benefit of AirBeam technology. This might give us an angle, a message around which to hang our communication.”

The answer was simple. AirBeam tents can be pumped up in just minutes. Quick. Easy. Fun. And, very useful if you are being eaten alive by Scottish midges at sun down and need shelter fast!

Hey, here was our theme! Midges ,the bigger the bite, the better!

Karol’s Managing Director Stefan Lepkowski chipped in, “Jenny and I immediately knew we had a creative angle. But what we also needed was a mechanic that put our message in context. We wanted an invitation that would be different, one that would make follow up phone calls easier. One that would lead to conversation and get our client talked about.”

And, so began Karol’s camping themed mystery mailers.

First out of the box was a quirky tomato ketchup (or is it mayonnaise?) bottle accompanied by a Vango orange tent peg and a “not what you expected” message all on a bed of real grass – the stuff you camp on!

A week later, a glass Kilner jar atop yet more turf arrived on journalists desks with a cryptic, hand written note saying that the glass jar contained the two ingredients necessary for speedy tent erection. Air and a midge!

Says Stefan Lepkowski, “Jenny’s campaign secured editorial features from over twenty journalists and generated over sixteen million opportunities to see and hear the Vango brand. She won a Chartered Institute of Public Relations award for her work and I am very proud of her and her team’s achievement.”

“Most importantly, I believe we have given the much maligned mighty midge a leading role in promoting a truly Scottish Brand – Vango!”