IQ News: Anatomy: Sparkling Campaign

De Beers integrates its millennium campaign, taking steps to preserve the tone and feel of the offline ads. By Kipp Cheng HISTORY A diamond may be forever, but shopping-fatigued consumers overwhelmed by the endless possibilities (not to mention the prices) need more than simply the promise of eternity. When international diamond merchant De Beers wanted to integrate its memorable "millennium" advertising campaign, which features the glittering stones in TV spots and outdoor print, the London-based company tapped J. Walter Thompson's digital communications division, Digital@JWT. The goal: a promotional push that would highlight the connection between the lasting quality and value of diamonds and the approaching fin de sicle. According to Richard Lennox, director in charge of De Beers at New York-based JWT, the online portion of the campaign, which officially launched today, was implemented primarily to drive traffic to JWT's Diamond Information Center (DIC) Web site sponsored by De Beers. At the site, adiamondisforever.com, users can learn everything they ever wanted to know about a girl's best friend, as well as sample an interactive "design your own engagement ring" (DYOER) program. Lennox said it was critical to De Beers that the online campaign complement the existing offline effort, also done by JWT, in both tone and style. "While the [online] execution is individual and particular to the Web," Lennox said, "its look and feel is very similar to the outdoor and print advertising campaign, so there is real synergy off- and online." THE SITE The original DIC site was created in 1996 by New York-based shop Interactive 8 (now Luminant Worldwide), but Digital @JWT has been the lead strategic and creative force behind the DYOER program since its inception in June. Kevin Wassong, director of Digital@JWT, said that getting the word out about the DYOER program was important, especially as the final days of the year count down. Because of the urgency, the promotional push could not rely solely on banner ads to reach consumers. "We had been looking to work with more rich media to promote the site and get a stronger response," said Wassong. "Our goal is to work toward convergence and to work on creative that's more dynamic and more engaging to consumers." STRATEGY Because banners, at best, have a limited ability to evoke the romance and elegance associated with the familiar De Beers TV spots and print executions, Wassong wanted to use rich media advertising to convey the look and feel of the traditional media efforts in a narrowband environment. Digital@JWT decided to use Unicast's superstitial, a pre-loading "super" pop-up window ad unit, and Comet Systems' cometized banners to promote De Beers' millennium campaign, as well as the DIC site. The strategy was two-pronged: A Unicast superstitial would promote a sweepstakes running on the DIC site that gave users the chance to win a trip to London to see the De Beers Millennium Star diamond, while a series of cometized banners targeted at men in their 20s and 30s would link to the DIC site from such sites as Golf Online, Maxim magazine online and E! Online. (The cometized banner ads transform cursors into sparkling diamond icons when users have the Comet Systems plug-in installed on their computers.) In addition to the Unicast unit and banner ads, Wassong said Digital@JWT also created micro-sites at Maxim magazine online and E! Online, which will cross-promote the micro-site in conjunction with a half-hour special about diamonds to be televised this month on the E! Entertainment cable channel. TECHNOLOGY With ever-declining click-through rates on banner ads, the use of Unicast and Comet Systems technologies helped encourage users to action, said Wassong. The ads have been running in soft-launch for the past week. The cometized banner ads for De Beers are running on the AdKnowledge advertising network, something of a coup for Comet Systems, which already has its special banners running on ad networks 24/7 and Flycast. Allie Shaw, vice president of marketing at Unicast, said the Unicast unit for De Beers offered more flexibility than banner ads, as well as being better able to target qualified audiences. "What we were hoping to see is more traditional brand advertisers saying, 'Hey, here's finally a useful forum when the banner space doesn't give me as much flexibility to do effective online branding,' " said Shaw. "I think the results from our use of rich media in this instance have been tremendous," said Wassong. "If you look at the industry norm that was just put out by Nielsen, click-through rates are currently at 0.35 percent and they are getting lower all the time." Doug Jaeger, associate creative director at Digital@JWT and creator of the De Beers online effort, said the viral nature of the application itself also should drive traffic. "When someone designs a ring, they are invited to send that ring to somebody else," said Jaeger. "A lot of women would send a ring to a friend and [by clicking on] that ring [the friend] would check out the same application. And the application itself requires a form to be filled in, which gives us a lot of demographic information." RESULTS "So far on the Unicast unit we have seen a 16 percent click-through and on Comet cursor we've had a 6 percent click-through," said Wassong, "so we're talking incredible results on this." Indeed--since the DYOER program launched in June, it has experienced a 1,000-percent increase in traffic. With the millennium countdown reaching its closing days, De Beers won't need to wait long to see whether its off- and online efforts pay off. "When we preach the story of integrated marketing," said Wassong, "we feel this is a really strong case study for that." n

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IQ News: Anatomy: Sparkling Campaign

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