Working hard can get you far, but working smart wins awards, as demonstrated by Leo Burnett’s creative team, SVP/CCO Judy John and SVP/CD Israel Diaz, who announced last month that he was leaving Leo for the new Canadian branch of L.A.-based David & Goliath. These industry vets (20 and 15 years, respectively) won the coveted top two spots by racking up international awards from the One Show to the Clios, including two Cannes Lions – a Gold and a Bronze – not to mention a slew of national trophies.
Their secret ingredient? They connected with consumers by inviting them into the ad process – without losing the insight. To keep James Ready beer a buck, they invited consumers to share billboard space – an easy way to orchestrate engagement without straying from the brand’s positioning. And for P&G’s Gain, they focused on the scent and used letters from real consumers in the creative – without giving away full creative control à la UGC efforts.
They also eschewed the obvious with great results. Got a cleaning product to promote? Forget about the traditional cleaning comparisons: they used humour on brands like Fairy and Cheer. And instead of pulling at heartstrings for the Alachua Humane Society, they appealed to our penchant for cuteness using bright colours and adorable cartoons.

You broke from tradition by not preaching cleaning power for a few of the P&G brands. Why did you stray?
John: Our philosophy around that is, cleaning is really the price of entry right now, it’s a commodity. Every cleaning product should clean, so it’s really hard to win there. We think it’s more about the emotional benefit – how does it help make your life better?
Diaz: There’s only so many ways you can say “whiter whites” and…it’s also marginal. So looking at it from an emotional standpoint, how a consumer might relate to it, leads you into more interesting creative territory.

Why do you think people connected to the “Share our Billboard” idea so much?
John: The whole idea of participation is make it easy and make it fun. So we did half the billboard for you, [and] we just give you a little piece that you can play with, upload a photo and anything you want to say, so it was pretty easy to do.
Diaz: It’s very atypical for a beer company to actually ask drinkers to help in creating the advertising for it, so that in itself is engaging. It was surprising in that no one was sure whether it was true or not, so once the word got around that it was actually for real and you can actually post it and submit it and it actually ran, it gained a lot of momentum.

For James Ready and Gain, you used UGC without losing control or the insight. Why do you think this strategy worked better than, say, just having consumers create ads?
John: Often we think everyone else out there is like ad people. We get into advertising because we love making ads, and we assume that everyone wants to make an ad, and I think that’s why James Ready and Gain work. We didn't ask them to make an ad, we just said, “tell us why you love it” and we turned it into an ad. So it’s an easy thing to do, and people are really passionate about the brand.
A lot of brands say “create an ad” and it requires a lot of work and you’re trying to think of what you’re going to do to promote that ad. [For James Ready] this was just, “use our billboard” space, so people used it to advertise their bands, propose marriage and just to say hi, so it wasn’t a big ask.

What was the most interesting billboard entry you saw?
Diaz: There were a lot of X-rated ones. One guy submitted to sell a couple of power generators for $45,000 each. That was the most interesting one.

If you could rent a billboard for your personal use, what would you put on it?
John: I think I’d want to promote a big party out in the woods.