Despite being the world’s most ubiquitous pool cleaner, the Kreepy Krauly brand is under threat from competitors (Zodiac, Polaris, Premier, Intex) with larger market share and budgets.

However, opportunities still exist for Kreepy Krauly, locally, as South Africa is the sixth largest pool market in the world, comprising 800,000 private and 2,000 public pools.

We required a creative solve to:

- Remind South Africa that Kreepy Krauly is the original, best-quality pool cleaner

- Cut through the competitive clutter and own the pool-cleaning conversation, in order to enhance purchase consideration (and, ultimately drive sales) during the spring-summer transition.

Objectives

500,000 organic views / 5,000,000 reach with #MyKreepyTeacher

10 Tier 1 pieces of coverage

Achieve a direct impact on Kreepy Krauly sales

2020 was extra.

Covid-19-impacted job losses, brands were dragged, and people were subjected to cancel culture. The global sentiment was overwhelmingly negative.

That is, until Netflix dropped a documentary about a man from Cape Town befriending an Octopus.

While a global conversation was erupting about 'My Octopus Teacher' (subsequently a BAFTA and Oscars nominee), we took the opportunity to hijack the news, created our own version, and reminded people about the original, 'majestic creature of the deep'(end) ... Kreepy Krauly

Our film - My Kreepy Teacher - is a branded content spoof where we replaced an Octopus with the *Kreepy Krauly pool cleaner.

Cultural context

The piece really lands once you have seen My Octopus Teacher. For sake of brevity during the judging process, we would recommend watching the trailer of My Octopus Teacher, first, then judging our film / case study

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s0LTDhqe5A

*South African invention

Key insights:

Anecdotal evidence proves remarkable, branded content works to drive word of mouth spread of Kreepy Krauly, and potentially impact sales.

Video streaming content consumption is at an all time high, based on social media penetration, and the increase in streaming service engagement, during lockdown

Whatsapp provides an opportunity to leverage dark social in a way no brand in South Africa has ever leveraged it (11.5m represent our core audience: 9.6m 25-34 year olds, 1.88m 35-45 year olds)

Message formulation:

Kreepy Krauly is the original majestic creature of the deep(end)

Communication channels:

Social media: Whatsapp (primary), Twitter, Facebook, YouTube (secondary)

Traditional media: Print, online, broadcast

Execution

Shooting then seeding branded content via nano influencers

Within 96 hours we pitched the My Octopus Teacher YouTube trailer as a reference, two rounds of script reverts, whatsapp voicenotes, a production/distribution schedule, received the green light, shot, edited and distributed #MyKreepyTeacher.

From concept to viral in 96 hours

We seeded our content to nano influencers - @Derro_SA (667 retweets / 1,300 likes / 82,400 views) on Twitter, Alon Kowen (5,844 shares / 3,500 likes / 511,000 views) on Facebook - who posted the content, natively, to their respective social pages.

Traditional media relations ran in parallel with social content dissemination to ensure consistent campaign build. One-on-one media pitches - bespoke angles.

Proactively secured interviews and subsequent brand coverage in the most influential titles across the country including but not limited to: News24 / Netwerk24, Financial Mail, Huisgenoot, IOL, Sunday Times, 702, ENCA, East Coast, 947, Cape Talk, Jacaranda, Kaya FM, Reddit

Online Reputations Management tools

Reactively leveraged ORM, such as Social Bakers and our proprietary workflow software to analyse every like / retweet / comment and share on both influencer posts. We engaged every influential user who engaged with the campaign.

This campaign paired an instinctive, research-led idea with a brave client, unheard of turn-around times and an agency and production company unwilling to let a shoestring budget derail a concept that we truly believed (in our guts) would succeed at a mainstream level. We dominated the news cycle for an entire week with features on every key, media platform in both our market and key Kreepy Krauly international markets.

‘Everyone involved in this is quite deliciously mad. Brilliant’ - Bruce Whitfield

‘A man falls in love with a pool cleaning machine and it’s the best campaign you’ll see today’ - Merca 2.0 (Mexico)

‘Kreepy Krauly Cleans Up’ - Brendan Seery

‘When a Cape Town man makes friends with a Kreepy Krauly a beautiful parody unfolds’ - Channel24

Results

We have made more brands go viral globally, than any other agency in Africa, but we have never seen impact on this scale, in this period of time. The results speak for themselves:

From concept to viral in 96 hours

20% increase in sales YOY (objective exceeded) - client reports

Two billion people reached (objective exceeded)

5 million views; 30+ tier one pieces of media coverage (objective exceeded)

Arguably the most impactful PR campaign to originate from South Africa

Best performing campaign in Kreepy Krauly’s history

Accolades to date: Ad of the Week (Mexico), a Hero (702 Heroes and Zeroes), Orchid (Citizen Orchids and Onions), Featured on Ads of the World, Featured on 702’s ‘Going Viral’