One day, a lucky few of us will meet the one with every quality we ever fantasized about; our soul mate. There will be passion, desire, and love like never before. This will develop, and maybe we’ll become addicted to those powerful emotions.
But then later, perhaps we will wake up and not crave it so much. We’ll start to think it’s not so perfect after all, and maybe we can go a few days without it. Maybe we’ll even look at others and imagine a different kind of passion; a new kind.
Robert Sternberg, an American psychologist, once said, “Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade.” But does that mean, when passion fails, the end of a relationship? “Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still,” Sternberg continued. And that is what the folks at Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) in Dubai believe they managed to do with their Galaxy media campaign, “Fall in love again.”
The agency says it has rekindled a red-hot passion between Galaxy chocolate and those who once loved it passionately, but grew jaded. The campaign was launched in December 2008, won a Bronze gong in the Media category at the Cannes Lion awards in June, and continues to grow today.
For years, consumers described Galaxy as “Seduction by chocolate” (keep in mind the chocolate’s mostly female fan base). But its star began to fade, and the lustful relationship between Galaxy and its consumers cooled.
“What we realized from a business sense was that there were so many things coming into the market – more high premium chocolates, and more low cost chocolates,” says Cristina Charles, associate media director at SMG. “Galaxy was sort of sitting in the middle, which is a dangerous place to be; neither here nor there. So what we needed to do was reignite the love for Galaxy, keeping in mind consumers who had been around so long that it was part of their really passionate me-time moments. To do that, we really wanted to speak to them, in a way to get them more involved in it instead of just running a passive campaign.”
Mars, Galaxy’s manufacturer, conducted research across the GCC, the kind of research Charles says she has never witnessed in the region before. “It was a qualitative study, and the amount of information they got was phenomenal,” she says. “From that we found that all these women feel really powerful, they contribute to society and to family, they have a lot to say and have a lot of ways to say it, and one of the ways to say it is through poetry and blogging. So we looked in the market place, and found tons of poetry blogs across the region. So we thought: It’s something different, because you don’t really think of poetry as this huge art form, it’s more symbolic of something lost, or passion.”
And so, with research in hand and the desire to involve Galaxy’s forlorn fan base, SMG approached MBC1 with the idea of producing a Galaxy-branded segment during the MBC1 morning show, one where women who had submitted video recordings of their original poetry could compete to win a prize at the end of the show’s run. Within a couple of months Passion for Words was on the air. “Coincidently, it was around the same time as the [December 2008] attacks on Gaza, so there was so much passion coming out of these women, whether it was a completely unrelated poem or whether it touched on Gaza,” says Charles. “It was really amazing to see the outpouring of emotion.”
Charles explains that SMG wanted to really involve consumers, not just make the campaign about Galaxy. “It really is about the women, not the product,” she says. “It’s more about what it is that women want, feel, and desire, and Galaxy is an add-on. It’s part of that special moment, but not the moment.”
MBC1 allowed SMG and their creative agency TBWA to work with their studios, turning the set into a Galaxy-themed world with chocolate and gold colored backdrops. The first season ran for four weeks, the second season for 14 weeks, and plans are in place for season three.
Winners of the poetry contest receive a Galaxy indulgence pack with treats such as luxurious silk robes, bedding, and scented candles, and inspirational items to help them express themselves in whatever way they choose, including laptops, poetry books, calligraphy pens, and video cameras. While the first season was strictly TV-based, the second season saw a more integrated campaign, with SMG involving print publications and online media. Poetry was printed in regional magazines and newspapers, and the Web site offered information to viewers about the women taking part in the Passion for Words contest.
According to Charles, after the first month on air, frequent users of Galaxy increased by 5 percent across the GCC, motivating an additional 1.1 million consumers each month to purchase more than 9 bars of Galaxy chocolate each. In Saudi Arabia, the chocolate experienced a sales increase of more than 6 percent, while ad awareness grew by 16 percent. And most importantly in Charles’ opinion, more than 4,300 Arab women submitted poems on video.
The client immediately loved the media campaign that SMG came up with for Galaxy, and discussions went on between the client, the media agency, and the creative agency to determine how the “Fall in love again” theme would translate to the rest of the Galaxy brand. Charles says she cannot reveal the plans for Galaxy just yet; they will be rolled out later this year. But are they worried the passion may die out once again?
“The idea is that everything we do should interact more with the consumer,” says Charles. “We want to make sure that anything we do is giving them the power, the content creation, the ability to say, ‘I want this, this is what I’m about, this is who I am as a person.’ If it changes to something else in the next year, that’s fine. But Galaxy’s platform is always going to be about that indulgence.”
Cristina Charles, associate media director, Starcom MediaVest Group Dubai, on how she ended up at SMG Dubai.
I grew up wanting to be either a fashion designer or a lawyer. My family thought that law was the best route and so that’s what I studied at university. When I graduated and saw how long legal cases sit in court, I thought, “There is no way I can do this work.” I wanted to see ideas become something tangible, and law wasn’t going to give me that.
After a few interviews, I met with Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and immediately fell in love with the way they challenged the norm and embraced the bizarre, all with a results-based twist that was appealing to a recent college grad who didn’t want to wear a suit and work a nine-to-five job. So a week later, I started working in media buying at a KB&P. I only lasted a few months before I decided to take some time off and travel around the world before I had to grow up and become an adult.
I stopped in the UK for a few months and worked for a scholastic publishing house doing book launches and catalogues. It was really a weekday excuse to pay for weekend trips around Europe, but in the end it was a great job that let me invent experiences and I loved it.
When I got back to the US, I returned to advertising and got serious about media planning. I had the chance to work on international projects and domestic ones – everything from hair care, skin care, business routers and sugars to banking and pharmaceuticals. Around 2005 I moved to the Starcom Mediavest Group’s New York office where I worked on the P&G team. And when the opportunity came up to transfer to Dubai in 2007, I asked to be considered.
After coming out for a visit I knew I had to move here. The talent in the office here is inspiring and the media landscape is constantly changing – along with the consumers – at such a rapid pace. It’s simply exciting to be a part of a market that is growing every day.