Canon brings search to its ads

“We wanted a way of making a 30-second commercial into something longer, more memorable and more product- and brand-focused,” says Vincent Cheung, Director, CII marketing division for Canon Hong Kong.

The $10m campaign for its high-definition digital camcorder took in TV, print and billboards.At the end of each ad Canon ran the Yahoo! logo in English and Chinese with a phrase entered in the search bar.

For each advertising push, Cheung says they bought three to five search words, including Cannon, as research showed approximately 20% of people misspelled the company name.

“A TV ad is a one-way transmission from the advertiser to the audience, so it is very difficult for us to measure how well viewers know the product or the message.With search, if you are interested you will take action. It’s a good measurement tool,” says Cheung, who says the highest single-day click-through rate was close to 60%.

Chong Kin, creative director for Leo Burnett, the agency that worked on the campaign, says the decision to include a search bar in an ad campaign was a reflection of the fact that simply listing a company’s web address (as Canon had on all advertising for the past six years) was an insufficient way to draw interest.