Bucket Brigade

Giving away cash is a sure-fire promotional winner. But it’s so often a prescription for a boring campaign.

So when Auckland, New Zealand-based WOW Rapp Collins needed to come up with an innovative way to award cash in a national program for the Mobil Max loyalty card, we went looking for a big idea.

Living at the bottom of the world, we like to turn tradition on its head. Thus, inspiration came in the form of a bucket — a shiny, yellow, plastic bucket, to be precise.

Rather than make the money the focus of Mobil’s advertising and promotional collateral, we decided to make the bucket the star. The fact that the bucket would be stuffed with cash was treated humorously as a secondary draw-card.

The core strategy had three key elements: give away cash prizes; use an advertising-driven approach to ensure massive appeal; and make the cash giveaways an instant prize rather than forcing people to wait to win. We gave away two prizes of $10,000, five of $1,000, 10 of $500, and 20 of $250. We also had thousands of smaller prizes such as candy and snacks.

Spots on television (the primary advertising medium) featured the bucket shot in spotlight under a disco ball and a background track of cheesy music. Radio commercials had mock game-show contestants choosing between a $10,000 prize or the “fantastic yellow plastic bucket.” An informational microsite on Mobil’s Web site and a variety of point-of-sale elements including signage, posters, shelf wobblers, and shelf talkers at Mobil service stations supported — as did ad space on the loyalty cards themselves (to communicate with existing members).

The campaign used humor and irony to get the message across. It also played on Kiwi game-show icons and the nation’s pragmatic ingenuity: In New Zealand, buckets are held in high esteem as a versatile tool.

Designed to raise awareness and increase membership for Mobil’s Max program, the “Bucket-load of Cash” campaign captured the public’s imagination: The first question asked by winners was, “Do we get to keep the bucket?”

The outstanding results from the effort included massive awareness and high audience enjoyment and involvement. More than 35,000 new members signed up for Max as total sales revenue increased $27.2 million over the previous four-week period. Return on investment was more than 300 percent.

A Clever History

The irreverent attitude expressed in the “Bucket-load of Cash” campaign had its origins in previous efforts for Mobil Max, which launched in New Zealand in early 1999. We all know that cash, cars, and travel are the three classic motivators in promotional marketing. But with Max we’d always resisted giving away cash, although we have had big successes with travel and home entertainment giveaways. These promotions — executed in wacky, funky ways — had helped Mobil reverse previous declines in market share.

Early in 2000, however, Mobil’s competitors were hitting back with their own loyalty and bonus programs: BP was giving away a car, Shell was offering the chance to win a holiday in Fiji, and Caltex was dangling exclusive mini-Nintendo games at a discount price.

We decided, therefore, that the time had come to do the cash thing — which Max members had said in research they would be keen on winning. But we wanted to keep the campaign in line with the offbeat attitude of previous work. The end result proved you can take a traditional offer and turn it on its head with strong creative.

And we’re glad we did: The campaign helped WOW Rapp Collins (a unit of Omnicom’s Rapp Collins Worldwide) become the first New Zealand agency to win a Globes Award.

Which proves that buckets can be used to carry great ideas, too.

Brent Kennedy is managing partner of WOW Rapp Collins in New Zealand. Contact him at [email protected].