When we discuss what doesn’t make creative hot, we’re usually talking about a campaign that doesn’t earn an acceptable response rate or a concept that doesn’t seem to relate to the product or service.
On occasion, the issue is a campaign that doesn’t have the courage of its creative. Case in point: Mountainsmith’s recent branding effort.
Mountainsmith makes backpacks for camping, hiking – or just tramping around town. According to the Golden, CO-based company, that’s what differentiates its backpacks from the rest. So, to exploit what Mountainsmith cites as the packs’ comfort, fit and innovative features in a new campaign, it hired Scream, a marketing communications agency in Denver.
Scream created a solid integrated branding campaign consisting of space ads, a catalog and a Web site, with the theme and tag line of “Goes where you go,” followed by “Packs so comfortable, you’ll never want to take them off.”
The gag here is visual. Photography features people wearing Mountainsmith backpacks while sleeping, playing pool – and, yes, using the bathroom. Don’t worry: the image does not show anything untoward.
The catalog doesn’t have an order blank, but does include toll-free numbers and the URL (www.mountainsmith.com) as well as a list of retail outlets.
The Web site allows visitors to submit stories of their adventures with Mountainsmith backpacks. It also offers a list of brick-and-mortar retailers and links to e-commerce sites that carry the company’s products.
What we have here is a catchy campaign that uses a number of direct response come-ons without providing any apparent DR payoff.
You get the catalog, you like the product, but you can’t buy until the stores open tomorrow. Or you log on, like what you see, but you can’t order until you link to one e-commerce site or another. (Sites that, by the way, also handle products competing with Mountainsmith.)
In other words, the campaign is a traffic builder that’s more likely to lose traffic from customers who won’t go through all those extra steps to buy a product.
It’s almost enough to make you scream.
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