Kraft Foods goes for the laughs in a new webisode campaign for its Tassimo hot beverage system that debuted last month.
The “Who Hired Bob?” campaign was developed with Tassimo’s agency Ogilvy and follows the misadventures of an office worker who does very little actual work. The Tassimo product is incorporated into each episode.
The webisodes are being promoted across Google’s AdSense network and uploaded to about 40 video-sharing Web sites.
Kraft felt Tassimo was a great fit for webisodes since it has both an online and retail presence. In the past, Tassimo relied on more “traditional marketing vehicles” such as print, radio advertising and the Internet, including the Web site www.tassimodirect.com, said Geoff Herzog, brand manager for Tassimo.
More recently, however, the decision was made to focus “on being more targeted and engaging in how we talk to potential buyers,” Herzog said.
The entertainment value of the Webisodes is key to what makes them different from other direct marketing offers, said Joseph Frydl, director at Ogilvy Branded Content & Entertainment Group. By using original entertainment content in a direct marketing setting, brands targeting well-educated, higher income consumers can gain permission to market to them while enhancing the brand’s image, he said.
Using entertainment to engage with consumers “is important in terms of building equity for a brand over the long term and, ultimately, that has an effect on purchasing,” he concluded.
