2023 AdNews Awards - Best Agency Case Study
THE CONCEPT
Air conditioning units. What once was seen as the ultimate luxury has recently become something of a household essential. Global warming has sparked a steady increase in Australian temperatures, with summers regularly reaching scorching heights of 40 °C (104 °F)+. So when Panasonic - a now established client of ours - approached Awaken to launch a campaign for their already-on-the-market air conditioning unit, we knew creativity would need to play an integral part in raising this product above the rest. Luckily, injecting creativity into the seemingly simple everyday item is what we at Awaken do best.
As with all high-impact campaigns, emotion needed to play a part. So, how could we get people to feel something towards this inanimate object? After some brilliant brainstorming, the Awaken team decided to tap into people’s ideology of home comfort, and on the flip side, their fears and anxieties around discomfort (in the hope of preventing these). Could Panasonic AC be their saving grace?
Panasonic’s brand priorities for this campaign were to position Panasonic as a premium/functional air conditioning company with great features such as nanoe X. Also to call on the AC’s air purification technology which actively cleans the air whilst heating and cooling.
Our task? To bring these selling points to life through an engaging, memorable and customer-centric campaign, communicated to our target audience in a visually impactful way
DATA & TARGETING: Our target areas for this campaign were streamlined to four key regions - Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria to build upon the company’s existing presence.
Our target customer? Both male and female homeowners aged 25 - 54 who were looking to renovate or upgrade old systems.
Previous to our campaign, Panasonic was tracking as the 4th most popular air conditioning brand on the market, but we hoped to change that.
THE STRATEGY
When we think of air conditioning, of course the initial thought is tackling heat, and that would understandably need to play a key role in our campaign, but we knew the potential for this air conditioning could offer homebodies much more.
To address the brief, and focus on Panasonic as a trusted and reliable brand, Awaken came up with the concept of Extremes. Extremes are unfortunately part of the Australian climate and culture. In recent years, Australians have become accustomed to extremely hot summers, cold winters, bushfires, flooding and drought.
Research conducted also showed the target audience for these air conditioners was fragmented depending on their needs. As such, we decided to pitch our campaign to five common personas (touching on the desire for home comforts and opposing discomforts which we seek to avoid).
These 5 key persona’s were:
For those struggling with heat - a summer creative, offering viewers the chance to ‘stay Arctic cool’.
For those with animals - a pet creative, positioning the AC as a chance to tackle allergens and odours.
For those experiencing damp issues - A mould creative, promoting a drier, fresher living solution.
For those who are always cold - A winter creative, bringing the option of warmer climes back into your home.
For those suffering with hayfever - A pollen creative, with tagline, ‘stay dry and fresh.’
We would visually show this in an ‘over the top’ way to reassure customers they can rely on Panasonic, even in extreme conditions - Panasonic Air Conditioners have the ability to take you to the opposite extreme, should you want it to. To ‘turn boiling to arctic’ for example.
Building on this concept, we were also able to seed in the Panasonic air conditioner’s USP, highlighting how Panasonic can out-perform other brands by showing extreme allergen events (mould, hay fever, animals), and in turn how nanoe X technology can help protect your family by purifying the air.
It was also noted upfront that the most important asset would be a 15’ visual as this would run in the highest rotation (based on the budget). So this version had to be strong as a stand alone advertisement. That said, our concept has created an opportunity for multiple campaign executions for a variety of target audiences, and for different seasons, as well as providing a campaign that can be built on year-on-year with the potential to create further versions for future campaigns.
EFFECTIVENESS & SUCCESS
With Awaken’s creative ‘Extremes’ campaign, we were able to target not only different personas, but tap into the key concerns surrounding home heating, cooling and purification at relevant points in the year. With this year-round campaign strategy, we managed to reach customers at a number of different points in the quest for home comfort, whether personal in terms of allergies, home-focussed with regards to heating control or damp issues, or weather related (extreme winter chill, or extreme summer heat). The result of this was a shift Panasonic’s positioning in the air conditioning category from #4 to #3.
From a conversion perspective, this campaign was largely a success as we far surpassed our goals. We achieved 51.9K clicks to site (+2652% higher than forecast), for an average CPA of $2.63 (-99% more efficient than forecast).
We were tasked with increasing the number of audiences requesting a quote for Panasonic’s air conditioning installation over the winter period. Thanks to our clever winter creative ‘turn chilly to tropical’, an increase in website visitors of 63% YOY was achieved.
THANK YOU