«Who is Victor Gord?»10 Kiev International Advertising Festival 2009

My name is Victor, I’m 15 and I want to make you better. After reading of the first sentence losers will close the page. They will die unlucky because they judge people by age. But I don’t need them. I need YOU – who get at the root, who is ready to become interested and go on reading, who is ready to perceive and to act.

I’m 15 and I can’t teach you how to fight. I’m 15 and I know how a weak one can beat a strong one. Human child is the weakest creature in the world. He doesn’t have teeth and claws as young wild animals do. He doesn’t have passport and money as adults do. But at the same time during two years I’ve achieved such things which most people will not achieve during their whole lives. I started to work at my improvement when I was 12 and during 3 years I created my business from nothing. ARE YOU INTERESTED HOW? I’ll tell you

Aims and tasks of campaign

• To attract TA attention, make noise

• To increase awareness of Berocca as of effective remedy for improving of mental performance.

• To spread rumor low budget and make people discuss the product with

• To increase selling

target audience/ timing • Men of 25-45 years old who live in Kiev and other cities with population over 1

million people.

• Campaign active phase: March 5, 2009 – May 5, 2009

What is Berocca?

Berocca is a multivitamin product which has been used to effectively fight stress, increase concentration of attention and make memory work better for already 40 years. It includes 8 vitamins of group B, vitamin C, calcium magnesium and zinc

What is Berocca?

www.berocca.com.ua

Berocca vitamin complex site includes 4 pages:

•Mess in thoughts? (homepage) •We’ve got a decision! (description of the remedy)•It is safe!•Were to buy?

Were to buy? page offers an opportunity to order Berocca by using links on Internet drugstores and also to find the nearest drugstore in the user’s city (search through the all cities were Berocca is available)

Idea An Internet virus was chosen to present PR campaign according to the primary peculiarities of the brand’s target audience. It’s hard to attract attention of successful men, who are between 25 and 45 years old, to a standard media campaign. That’s why we’ve created an image of Victor Gord who represents an ideal businessman. He’s an intellectual, an owner of successful company and has an annual income of $ 100 000. He’s married and has a kid.

What is the most interesting- he’s just 15. Two years of managing his business helped him gain unique experience. Now, he’s giving business training courses where he’s going to teach people who are two and three times older than him.

It’s his age in addition to his success and self-confidence that interested visitors to a great extend and caused numerous discussions starting from the first day of launching the campaign.

Stages of the campaign

It consists of two main stages:

To intrigue and deliberately cause numerous discussions about Victor Gord, his extraordinary views and achievements, also to sign up for training courses.

Partial revealing of an intrigue, signing an agreement to cooperate with Bayer Company which manufactures Berocca. Renewal of website’s brand and starting an open and extraordinary advertising of the product on gord.com.ua

First stage After the banner campaign has been launched, top bloggers instantly got the materials about Victor Gord, he is discussed in a dozen of chatrooms and forums. After the third day running of compaign, Gord’s website ‘’fell down’’ due to the server being overloaded. Gord has been attracting interest to himself for one month by publishing influential articles.

He’s telling about shocking correlation between the dynamics of prices of dollar in Ukraine and classic outline of investment bubble, about his dreams to cancel wages and introduce the commission -based work which depends on its effectiveness. The quintessence of the first stage is a number of video clips about Gord’s company, his management principles and methods.

When there is an intrigue Gord mentions Berocca only once telling about the healthy way of life that he’s leading. Many were absolutely sure that the project was created to promote training courses. Thanks to it we ensured a step-by-step penetration of ads and avoided a strong оттока (оттока чего?) when the connection with the product was about to appear. Many still believe that Gord is real.

After an ultimate word of mouse effect has been achieved, Gord announces that he’s going to sell ads and starts searching for the sponsor to his Blog.

After a week some of the advertising websites published press release concerning the beginning of cooperation between Victor Gord and international Bayer trust. Victor renews the website’s brand and takes up the promotion of Berocca.

True to his style, he is neglecting the traditional methods of advertising. Gord sets up a video chat with his secretary who tells about advantages of the product. He creates mantra-like ringtones, develops a new souvenir division where he sells Berocca bottles with his signature on it for $300, places banner to make a direct order possible and much more other interesting stuff …

Attention of thousands of people are now attracted to Berocca.. gord.com.ua becomes “a passage” to berocca.com.ua

The second stage

Results

• More then 111 000 users visited Victor Gord’s site for 2 month of campaign.

• More then 49 000 users view Gord’s videos.• More then 7 000 unique users contacted secretary via chat.• 637 unique users wanted to take part in Gord’s seminars.• More then 260 publications were placed in blogs and forums (one article

was published in Korrespondent magazine in May).• More then 1000 links from different sites.

• More then 12500 unique users visited Berocca site, among them:• 672 – came to Intenet drugstore pages• 1605 – came to the page with the list of drugstores in their city• 4,14 pages on berocca.com.ua were looked through during one visit

(excellent result taking into account that there are only 4 pages on the site) • Refusal index is only 12% (average good index is ~35%).Refusal index – is a quantity of users which looked through only 1 page.

•Victor Gord PR-campaign – is a viral project which format, coverage and results don’t have analogues in Ukraine

•Great amount of materials about the project placed in Internet is an obvious proof of high effectiveness of the communication idea. But even the greater result is that campaign managed to exceed the limits of Internet and attract attention of print media. In a week before voting one of the largest magazines in Ukraine (edition of 50000 copies) – Korrespondent – wrote about Victor Gord’s project.

•Victor Gord not only sold Berocca but motivated people to move forward, and it could be considered to be a social role of the campaign in a sense. Users themselves admitted that everyone need motivation and sometimes even a real “ass kick”

Why the campaign is worth to win

Thank you for attention!