Universal McCann wins Q2 Yahoo! New Zealand’s Digital Strategy Award with Maybelline ‘Baby Lips’

Universal McCann has taken out the second quarter of the Yahoo! New Zealand Digital Strategy Award for its Maybelline Baby Lips campaign.

Maybelline partnered with U TV to implement a world-first strategy that combined live television and social networking. U TV hosts and guests engaged audiences with the product via a “Truth or Dare” game that invited viewers to share the best pouty lips photo on Facebook to be into win packs of Baby Lips.

The campaign further involved instant messenger with a fully branded Personal Expressions app that users could download to express themselves by decorating their Messenger wall with Baby Lips icons. They could then share the emoticons with their networks of friends which meant that the Baby Lips product was everywhere the girls went to socialise, get gossip and share.

Judges commended Universal McCann for their innovative, multi-channel digital campaign that succeeded in bringing the Maybelline brand to the forefront of the very cluttered and competitive Lip Balm category.

“The multi-dimensional digital campaign provided accurate insight into consumer behaviour,” says Q2 guest judge Justin Watson, (GM – Marketing Communications, Tourism New Zealand) “As a result, the audience did all the work by delivering the Baby Lips creative for Maybelline to the young female demographic.”

Over four weeks, the campaign drove 15,000 unique visitors through to the Maybelline website with over 14 million page impressions and saw 6,472 downloads on instant messenger. In addition there were a further 3,605 actions of engagement between friends within the app, along with hundreds of Facebook interactions.

“Maybelline BabyLips set out to achieve an ambitious market share in the first year of this new product launch,” says Helen Baxter, managing director of Mohawk Media. “It has already exceeded that target, the results are impressive.”

“Universal McCann implemented a communications strategy that mirrored the behaviour of the targeted young female audience,” says Laura Maxwell-Hansen, general manager of Yahoo! New Zealand. “By actively engaging in the social sharing of gossip and product recommendations via social media, Maybelline Baby Lips was able to own the digital space.  The campaign was embedded into the audience’s network, social conversations and behaviors.”  

Launched in April 2010, the awards focus on the key role media strategy plays in the success of digital campaigns.

All quarterly winners are eligible for the overall Yahoo! DSA annual prize of $10,000 of media on Yahoo! New Zealand plus free entry into the CAANZ Media Awards Best Use of Digital category in 2012

Entries for Quarter 3 campaigns are now open. More information on the awards here.