Fresh

When our long-time client, Wacom, approached us with a new line of touch enabled tablets, they were looking for an integrated marketing campaign that would drive sales and exposure for their new product. Wacom was thinking about abandoning traditional print-based advertising in favor of doing only web-based advertising, which was a major change for them. We took this opportunity to dive in as a team and come up with something truly different. What we ended up creating was a truly integrated marketing campaign that took one central idea and expressed it in several different ways. The results were more than any of us could have expected.

Planning

As with most of our projects, loads of background research was done on our primary target audience and main communication objectives to help narrow down the design decisions. This research also informed the other parts of the campaign, like the video work by the Wexley School for Girls in Seattle and the rich media banner ads done with the help of Swirl in San Francisco.

The Pitch

We made two stop motion pitch videos: one explored the idea of connection between human and technology while the other was about technology making your life easier. Both of videos were made by the entire design team pitching in to make a very short deadline. Even our intern got in on the fun and was thrown into the fold as a model on her second day. In the end Wacom went with the “What if real life were this easy?” pitch and then the real work began.

The Microsite

Collaboration was at the core of everything we did on this project and that really came to light when the site design began. Designers Tom O’Toole and myself were tasked with creating the microsite. This phase began while the design direction for the products packaging was being developed by Wacom’s internal team. Without much in the way of assets to base the design look on we created a home page and sub page for the site based on the user profiles we created at the outset. It generated a different outcome than Wacom expected and we needed to start over with the design.

They loved all our initial ideas, but we headed down a light and fun direction and they were thinking a more dark and “cool” direction. This time we started with some preliminary package designs. We were also able to hook up with Wacom’s house photographer and did a photoshoot to get our hands on some custom assets we could use. This  made the design process faster and more successful.

The first Home Page we designed

The Video

While all this was in the works we were collaborating with the Wexley School for Girls on some video assets that would be used in both rich media banner ads and on the microsite. The initial idea began with our pitch video and its stop motion, first-person style. We created some user personas to give them a better idea of who the work would be speaking to. Based on these, Wexley did some scripting, storyboarding, and the ball was rolling.

Wexley began doing story boards for three different videos based on the three main user personas. Once the story boards were signed off on production began. Charles, our Senior Account Executive, traveled up north to provide any guidance to their team and was an important part of the doughnut-eating phase of the project. Seriously, he was the link between our creative team and the vision of the guys at Wexley. He was the glue that held together the concept and final videos. When the initial cuts came through, we knew we had found the right team to work with. The work was pretty amazing, and when we got our first look at the final product, we were outright estatic. See for yourself.

Mobile

As design began to wrap up on the microsite, we ramped up the mobile team to create an entirely different design for mobile devices based on the original site. Stephen Aase, a member of the design team, worked with Charles to create a unique site architecture focusing on how the tablet is used, where you can find it, and the video assets. Using the same look and feel, he created an intuitive, easy to use interface that funneled users to a form that sent out an email prompting them to visit the main microsite.

Rich Media and Email

While design was in progress with the mobile site and the microsite was in production with our resident code ninjas, Christine Baker and Noel Hougland, we started email design and some rich media banner ads. With our long history as an email marketing company we had the email covered but needed a little guidance when it came to rich media banners, so we turned to San Francisco-based Swirl.

Launch Email Campaign

Banner Ad

Understanding that everyone wanted video to be a big part of this campaign, Swirl got us in contact with the rich media ad network Video Egg. Video Egg helped us create a great banner experiences via their own networks as well as supplying these ads to other ad networks.

Takeaways

This had all the makings of a showcase campaign. The eROI team worked together well, partnered with other great agencies, and made an already excited client even more so. The moral of the story here is that a successfully integrated, multi-faceted marketing campaign is truly a collaborative effort. With the emails sent, the banner ads live, and the microsite working, all there was to do was pat ourselves on the back and wait for some results.

Working on something like this is kind of a strange experience as a designer. You work your butt off for months and then once it’s live you’re on to the next thing. You stand back, proud of the work you and the team have done, and oftentimes wondering what will happen to that site you lovingly designed. Well, in this case, it performed wonderfully, was entered into a few marketing and design competitions, and won. Holy cow, it won an award! How do ya like that?

With all that forethought, careful planning, brilliant design, and flawless execution one would have thought it may have fallen to the wayside with the other projects that experienced the same parameters but this one was different. This one was special… What if real life were this easy? Big thanks to the team at Wacom for trusting us. We had a great time.