Aviva’s Big Picture campaign is a great piece of marketing. Lots of the latest thinking in marketing brought together: emotion, engagement, story telling, charity, change the world, word of mouth.
You’re asked to send in your picture and story and if chosen you may get your picture on a large building somewhere in the world. And a £1 will get donated to a worthy cause – cue pictures of school children and third world underprivileged on behalf of Save The Children. The web site shows a huge picture on the side of Sea Containers House by the Thames – this picture strangely applies in Paris, Singapore and Warsaw, Delhi and Mumbai links as well – obviously didn’t get that far yet. Multiple full pages in the London papers I’ve noticed over the past few days too.
But when you look at it more carefully, is there something missing from this brilliant marketing campaign?
£250,000 in donations in total. against what must be tens of millions on the campaign? The balance of interest is evident.
Save The Children don’t mention the campaign on their site. Was anyone thinking about them, or just about Aviva?
The “rules” page says “This page has been created for a wide audience and although we’re an insurance company, that isn’t intended to be the focus here.” The language is interesting – audience vs community.
You can’t post comments at the website, only vetted posts. The Facebook page doesn’t let you comment unless you’ve posted a picture, neatly filtering the dialogue. Is there any genuine interaction going on here. The posts are sooo complimentary. The site is at pains to say its not about Aviva, But how can Aviva hear its customers talking to each other about the issues of Save The Children?
Maybe one or two features of great marketing are missing – transparency and a genuine interest beyond the brand
What would this campaign look like if Innocent or Ben & Jerry ran it? Give the tens of millions to the charity and spend £250k letting people make videos of what it does. Give the wall space to Save The Children and let them spread their message with a small cred for Innocent in the corner. Get the same impact without spending the millions and concentrate on making a better return from their pensioners rather than their shareholders?
Send me your challenging thoughts please
