Media Plan of the Year: Best Use of Out-of-Home

For its Washington Mutual Home Loans client, the Sedgwick Rd. ad agency gave new meaning to the word "home" in out-of-home advertising. Three life-size home facades were designed by a team of eight at Segwick Rd., crafting an off-the-board experience in the middle of downtown Chicago. Sedgwick Rd., a Seattle division of McCann-Erickson that offers creative, media and production services, created three edifices— first a cave, then a log cabin, and finally a modern home—to represent human dwellings throughout the ages. Each facade stood for three months, from September 2002 through February 2003, at 2 North Riverside Plaza, offering passersby a fun and fresh take on Washington Mutual's "Power of Yes" campaign."People are very passionate about seeing and visiting homes," says Sheryl Hudson, Sedgwick Rd.'s media director. "But the process of getting a loan is intimidating for first-time home buyers. Since purchasing your own home is exciting, this was a way to tap into that. We wanted to convey that WaMu could bring any dream you had to a reality." But to bring the campaign to reality, Sedgwick Rd., which has worked with Washington Mutual for more than 10 years, had to overcome the hurdles and logistics inherent in innovation. "In Chicago, everything is uniform and everything available in the out-of-home market is one-dimensional," Hudson explains. Unable to buy a unit of space from an outdoor company, Sedgwick Rd. was the first agency to build its own outdoor advertisement in the nation's third-largest market. "We have always been passionate about out-of-home—it's something we've really been able to do non-traditional, unique executions with," says Hudson. "And we've been able to break away from competitors through it."The agency had previously built a three-dimensional billboard in Times Square for WaMu Home Loans that featured a cutaway of the inside of a house."We started brainstorming on how to make something like that but more free-form—less like a billboard and more like an actual home," Hudson says.WaMu Home Loans chose Chicago for a variety of reasons. "We're the leading [home] lender in the state of Illinois," explains Dave King, senior vp/advertsing and brand management at Washington Mutual. "We wanted to do something unique in Chicago because it's the core of Midwest business." Washington Mutual was also preparing to introduce its banking and financial services to the market.By picking the heavily trafficked North Riverside Plaza, the team sought to reach as many people as possible. Those behind the plan considered such factors as traffic patterns and public-transportation routes.Because WaMu offers home loans for multiple income brackets, it wasn't seeking to attract a particular income qualifier, says Sedgwick Rd. media supervisor Miah Sullivan. Traditionally, WaMu Home Loans seeks to draw first-time home buyers, move-up buyers and refinancers. But in this case, "our focus was primarily on the first-time home buyer, and they tend to be heavy commuters," according to the supervisor. Sullivan says 17,000 people walk through the plaza daily, and 50,000 pass in and out of the North Riverside train station. The area "is a business district that gets a lot of foot traffic," says Hudson. The agency soon discovered that building at the location was no easy task, as it involved meeting multiple building codes, zoning laws and union regulations."In Times Square, it's easy to build something unique and different—it almost has to have sound and motion," says Hudson. "But elsewhere, it is so restrictive."Development, design and execution took a year of planning. Planners worked with the creative department as well as a property-management company, structural engineers, and even a movie-set designer. Because of the city's many restrictions, the year's development included weekly meetings to get various permits and union labor contracts approved. "There was a very complicated contract, and everything about this project was customized," says Hudson. Sedgwick Rd. rented the space on the plaza from Equity Office Properties Management Corp. Its creative and production teams fielded bids from construction firms."There were lots of hurdles to overcome—very labor intensive," says Sullivan. For example, weight restrictions on the plaza required more manual construction than the planners had expected; they had hoped to use machinery to build the set. Because of that customization, the ad exceeded the estimated budget, with creative running about $200,000 and the media budget running $153,000.In conjunction with the plaza display, WaMu Home Loans ran advertisements in Chicago media that included newspapers, television and radio. Each executed the company's "The Power of Yes" theme in a different way. But it was the outdoor creation that "gave us a signature media event in that market," says King."The quantitative results speak for themselves," says King, who estimates garnering close to 5 million impressions over nine months. The company also experienced nearly a 25 percent increase in loan volume in the area over the previous quarter. Brand awareness jumped 262 percent, according to WaMu's calculations.Following the success of the campaign, Sedgwick Rd. and Washington Mutual Home Loans are partnering again. Another 3-D creation is in the works, set to launch in September, says King. He won't reveal the next location or composition.But the next project will be a "unique model of sustainable, supportable differentiation," King promises. "It will move beyond the billboard and confined space to show viewers that they can build the home of their dreams." Aimee Deeken is an assistant editor at Mediaweek.

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Media Plan of the Year: Best Use of Out-of-Home - Sedgwick Rd.

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Aimee Deeken