A Fine Mess
It’s one of the oldest confrontations in the annals of mankind: The scolding parent versus the child with the messy room. Surprising that it didn’t inspire a promotion before now.
Ardmore, PA-based Gregory Communications finally found a way to exploit the time-tested tidiness tension between parent and child with a promo uniting Rochester, NY-based Eastman-Kodak Co. and cleaning service franchise Maids International of Omaha, NB. Both companies “were looking for promos that would get their brands out of thebox,” says Gregory account executive Anthony DeFazio. “Our idea was to bring them together in a campaign that would raise the brand awareness of both.”
Maids International operates in “a mature industry no one wanted to write about,” says DeFazio. Eastman-Kodak is a recognizable name. But the venerable photographic company was looking to draw attention to PhotoNet, a digital-imaging service from its Herndon, VA-based PictureVision Inc. subsidiary available at 40,000 retailers worldwide. Kodak wanted an effort that would spotlight the new PhotoNet Online Web site.
Gregory liked the pairing of Maids with Kodak. But how do you unite two widely disparate brands? “We thought, `What if we had a messy kids room contest,'” says DeFazio. “We could use Kodak to digitize photos taken by homeowners across the country of their kids’ messiest and cleanest rooms.” Gregory thought the human element – the eternal struggle to keep toys and school uniforms off the bedroom floor – would have natural consumer pull. So the agency approached both companies.
Gregory first had to show Maids International the value of a joint promo, stressing the creative approach of aligning a small company with 360 franchisees with a mammoth brand like Kodak, a Fortune 500 company that could provide significant added value to any marketing effort.
For Kodak, the attraction was that the PhotoNet software pitch “would be getting into the homes of qualified PC users and high-income homes,” says Keith Fleming, PictureVision’s director of marketing. “Maids has direct access to high-income, PC-owning families. What better way to target than to go directly into their homes?”
The two companies talked last August and September to determine who would deliver what, and what was required to make the program really work.
“We put together pieces for our franchise owners,” says Maids’ director of p.r Gery Whalen. Maids’ teams were charged with explaining the program to their customers, and telling them about PictureVision. They told homeowners the kind of pictures Kodak wanted, and delivered free cameras throughout North America, along with brochures containing claim cards with instructions on how to submit the pictures for the contest. “In essence, for Maids and for their end-users, it was a turn-key package,” says Whalen.
Pictures began arriving two weeks after the contest began in January, and continued coming until the March deadline. There were more than 200 submissions, most of which depicted messy rooms. “The parents finally were getting a chance to strike back,” says DeFazio.
Grand prizes – a free year of maid service – were presented to the Kann family of Williamson, GA, for the messiest room and the Czelusniak family of Malta, NY, for the cleanest room. Thirty-five other families received Kodak digital cameras, subscriptions to Family PC Magazine, and free Kodak PhotoNet service for one year.
“The contest allowed us to leverage ourselves as the professional in residential cleaning,” says Whalen. For Kodak, the promo put PhotoNet in front of new eyeballs. “A lot of the families in the contest weren’t familiar with PhotoNet or even how to digitize an image,” says Fleming.
Fleming says the campaign’s best return came through media exposure: The winners appeared on both Oprah and 20/20.
Lucky Jerry Springer didn’t call, too.
