To woo is to seek the favor of someone else—often—but not always, tied to romance in some way. Creative agency Woo, based in Los Angeles, has teamed up with world renowned sex therapist, talk show host, author and professor Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, for a campaign celebrating the art of wooing. The campaign, set to run through the rest of 2022, has a message of “Wooing Never Gets Old.”
The 93-year-old icon of frank talk about sex and relationships will be featured in the agency’s billboards in and around Los Angeles, as well as in a long-form interview between Dr. Ruth and Woo CEO/CCO/founder Valerie Moizel. That interview digs into what makes relationships work, the pillars that make them last and then applies those insights to the brand-customer relationship and specific aspects, like purchasing and loyalty.
The campaign will also feature short-form Dr. Ruth content designed for social media, as well as additional content and events throughout the year with other experts and trendsetters in the relationship space.
“For our 25th anniversary, we wanted to celebrate the initial spark of the agency which was the pure art of making truly emotional connections between brands and consumers. We call that art ‘wooing,’ and it’s what inspired the name of the agency 25 years ago,” Moizel told Adweek.
To embody and explain the term, the Woo team thought about who the queen of wooing would be and it landed on Dr. Ruth as the obvious choice.
A Dr. Ruth billboard for agency Woo’s 25th anniversary.
“She has built her incredible career talking about the importance of wooing. She just used different terminology,” said Moizel, who added that Westheimer was vibrant and funny, with smart insights on relationships that also helped with agency relationships.
“She taught us all that going back to the basic fundamentals of making deep connections and putting work into nurturing and building relationships is everything. As marketers, we can sometimes get lost in the avalanche of new technology and tools and, we forget that, at the end of the day, we’re still people and our emotions are what move us the most. The process of wooing, and playing to those emotions, is slowly becoming a lost art. We need to bring that back,” said Moizel.
The long-form interview will be available later this month through She Dynasty, a Woo agency podcast where Moizel interviews accomplished and influential women.
Woo takes an emotion-centric approach to advertising and marketing and that has earned the agency numerous Telly, Hermes and Addy Awards over its 25 years for brands including LA Fitness, Microsoft, Intel, Bosch, Lenovo, Grand Marnier, Office Depot and Disney.
Woo recently helped launch Cardi B’s new Whipshots brand, a vodka-infused whip cream.