FROM AN ADAPTION AGENCY TO A CREATIVE ONE

McCann Helsinki is still seen by some as an adaptation agency rather than a creative innovator. To change this false perception we needed creative, tongue-in-cheek and brow-raising actions that would generate marketing headlines and reach our potential customers.

CREATIVE APPROACH - 'Corporate giving with a twist.'

Christmas is the time of corporate giving. Instead of your usual engraved pens we chose to wrap our time and creativity in a hairy package and write ‘Lean Mean Slogan Machine’ on top; because our key selling point, creativity, really does not come through very well in gift-wines nor fancy pens.

The Lean Mean Slogan Machine promised your company a free tailor-made slogan in two hours. Three company creatives created over 600 slogans in just 6 days. Companies in need of a new slogan varied from small local businesses to global giants.

RESULTS - 'Headlines, invitations and 600+ new contacts'

The slogan requests started pouring in immediately from companies like Nike and Coca-Cola. Slogan Machine became Pick Of The Day in AdAge. It was also one of the TOP 3 shared campaigns there. ADWEEK wrote a full article about it, as did Markkinointi&Mainonta, the leading Finnish marketing publishing.

So McCann Helsinki’s tongue-in-cheek self-promotion made headlines in all the desired medias around the world. 700+ slogans are now delivered to companies; this means 700+ names in the agency's new-business contacts. As a result in Q1 McCann Helsinki doubled the amount of pitch invitations compared to Q1 2013.

Free slogan in two hours

By leaving your email address, company name and industry-branch on our campaign site, you received a new handmade slogan in just two hours. The three slogan elves got notified on the new requests in their e-mail and they could answer them around the clock from the office, home or on the road with a simple admin-tool. The Slogan Machine was promoted only on the website and Facebook pages of McCann Helsinki.

- 700+ slogans written; Nike, Coca-cola, Nokia etc.

- 1st time in history a Finnish agency's work featured in ADWEEK

- Pick of the day by AdAge also very rare among Finnish Agencies

- 2 national marketing awards won for agency so far with campaign

- Hundreds of social mentions; fans and businesses tweeting and posting their new slogans

- Definite change in perception of the agency has taken place after the campaign:

- Over 50% (Q1) more incoming international lead-agency pitch invitations compared to 2013 (Q1)

- 700+ new business contacts for the agency (30% of them considered relevant)