Amid the high profile posturing by a seemingly endless brigade of brands eager to associate themselves with the Cathay Pacific Credit Suisse Hong Kong Sevens, the agencies behind the brands have been quietly devising game plans to kick the competition into touch.
With countless global visitors descending on the city, the three-day event has become a two-week obsession, inadvertently creating a prime target for marketers looking to capitalise on the sporting euphoria. Last December, the Cathay Pacific marketing team charged McCann Erickson with hitting the punters squarely between the eyes via a one-off blast. The brief was simple. It had to be high on energy. And in a blind-side play, both the client and the agency invited Media behind the scenes of it's 'Got rugby on your mind?' campaign, to cover the process from the opening whistle to full-time.
The good idea "This is one time in a year when we can loosen the tie and have a bit of fun," says Vince Viola, McCann's senior VP, Asia-Pacific, and managing director, McCann Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific Central Team. Inspired by the insight that Hong Kong becomes 'obsessed' with rugby during the Sevens tournament, McCann Erickson's Cathay Pacific creative team seized on the idea of using images of various athletes playing various sports, with one premise: the ball used was always a rugby ball, because they simply can't get rugby off their minds. But the idea needed more, according to McCann Erickson's Cathay Pacific Central Team ECD, Carol Lam. "We got a very clear message from the client that it had to work in-stadium, so we started with the stadium and worked backwards," notes Lam. Over a two-month period, the in-stadium spot evolved to an identical TVC, and then came the supporting collateral: print, outdoor, postcards and an online mini-site among others. In a quirky twist, the team also came up with the idea of dressing newspaper vendors and taxi-drivers in key, high-traffic areas of Hong Kong in the Cathay Pacific rugby jersey colours. The postcards created used lenticular design. One execution for example, shows an original perfume ad, but when the angle is altered it changes into an ad for the campaign.
"We wanted a wide activation in order to dramatise the obsession with rugby, creating as much buzz as possible within a short period of time," says Viola.
One that didn't fly After the agency was handed the brief late last year, the creative brains-trust got to work developing a few ideas for presentation. On presentation day, the team pitched its ideas to the Cathay Pacific marketing team, and after shortlisting two, 'Got rugby on your mind?' emerged as the clear winner. In fact, the final theme of the campaign grew from the initial idea of a rugby storm hitting Hong Kong. "We ended up with four or five ideas that we presented to Charlie and his team, and we ended up going with that one," says Viola. "But there's no such thing as a bad idea in brainstorming." So what didn't make it? One of the ideas presented to the client hinged on the notion that rugby was contagious. It was similar to the obsession motif in that it affects people across the city, but Cathay and McCann decided -- probably wisely -- that in an era of post-Sars recovery and regular predictions of an avian flu pandemic, it might have been tempting fate.
Music is the key While it was clear from the early stages that the number one priority was that the spot had to work in-stadium, equally as clear, was the music had to be not just good, but great. "The music is key," observes Cathay Pacific general manager, marketing, Charlie Stewart-Cox. "If the music is wrong, even with a fantastic idea, it might not, or will not work." Despite a number of suggestions on the soundtrack to form the base of the ad, the final track chosen was the up-tempo, modern-sounding 2005 hit single I like the way you move, by the UK band Bodyrockers. And irrespective of the other ideas, Viola says the music was chosen quite early in the process. It was during this stage that the synergies between the global 'Born to move' network and frequency branding campaign unveiled by Cathay Pacific last year and the Hong Kong Sevens work became apparent to both client and agency. "I liked the music selection, because it has a very strong beat, and in the Sevens in particular, we are seeing an increasing trend of using contemporary music," says Stewart-Cox. "We needed to play to that, and lyrically, the 'move' theme of the song fits very well with our global campaign."
Bringing it to life Local Hong Kong production house The Film Factory, with renowned director Louis Ng, was selected to bring the concept to life. According to Lam, the production house was chosen on the basis of two main qualities held by the director and his key staff. "The most important point is getting the concept across to the director, and making sure they love the idea," says Lam. "We wanted them to understand the idea and have the passion to make it come to life, and I always make sure I give them the freedom to do that." The two-day shoot stretched to almost five days, thanks to poor weather. The majority of the TVC was shot in Hong Kong, with only limited stock footage of different sports used, far less than originally planned for.
A global fit When the idea of shooting the creative concept for 'Got rugby on your mind?' was first floated, aligning the Sevens campaign with Cathay Pacific's global positioning was not an over-riding factor. "I wouldn't say that we needed to directly translate the branding requirements of that event to the company's overall communications," says Stewart-Cox. "But this rugby idea of 'move' does it, even though it's not absolutely central to a thematic campaign that Cathay Pacific might otherwise do." Launched in November last year, Cathay's 'Born to move' campaign sought to own the platform of 'moving' in both a physical and emotional sense, with a series of spots which showcased the brand personality, and its global network and frequency.
