Company: MediaCom, New York, NY
Company Description: Part of the WPP Group, MediaCom is one of the largest media planning and buying agencies in the world. Billing nearly $25 billion USD a year globally, MediaCom boasts over 4,500 employees across 89 countries and in 111 offices. MediaCom provides clients with business-building media communications strategies for some of the world's biggest and best known global brand names.
Nomination Category: Marketing Campaign Categories - Industry
Nomination Sub Category: Marketing Campaign of the Year - Automotive & Transport Equipment

Nomination Title: Search Strikes Back

Tell the story of this nominated marketing campaign for the judges (up to 500 words). Describe the genesis, planning, execution, and results to date of your campaign. If applicable, remember to describe what's unique or innovative about your campaign:

In 2011, Volkswagen’s “Mini Vader” TV spot was the must-see commercial of the Super Bowl.

It was strong enough that we seeded it online way ahead of the Super Bowl. We drove momentum through mobile, search and social, and we captured the data that was vital for our targeted remarketing that turned the buzz into sales floor action. We turned the message from an adorable kid in a Darth Vader costume to real call-to-action messages.

However, Super Bowl winners rarely repeat. In 2012, we had to do it again – this time, with the majority of advertisers copying our strategy.

We developed an aggressive paid search campaign around VW’s Super Bowl spot to not only match our blockbuster results from 2011, but exceed them.

Our ultimate goal was to increase our reach and number of impressions from 2011, while decreasing the cost per clicks.

We started early, by lending search support around a teaser video. Rather than directing people to YouTube, all of our efforts drove directly to VW’s official website. We made sure the video was the centerpiece for not only the VW.com homepage, but also all of its digital and social assets.

Next, we continued to spread interest and increase traffic via major paid channels – including search, mobile, video, social and contextual. We added multiple keywords in Google and Bing for desktop and mobile efforts, along with long-tail competitive brand terms specific to the Super Bowl.

We bid and secured terms that ranged from “VW commercial” to “Super Bowl” to “Madonna.” We also worked with ad networks like Kontera, Vibrant and Infolinks to secure in-text terms like “Super Bowl,” “vehicle” and “new car” – effectively blocking our competition from these terms. Moreover, our rollover ads now integrated social capabilities, allowing consumers to share our video on Facebook or Twitter.

We aggressively conquested competitors’ search terms, but the real challenge came as we defended our own. Not only did other automobile brands bid on VW terms, but so did brands like Sketchers, Old Spice and Doritos. However, we were constantly monitoring and optimizing in real time, guaranteeing that VW stayed ahead of the curve before, during and after the Super Bowl.

On game day, we ramped up all our efforts. We knew that during the game, people were highly active on their phones and mobile devices, and we were one of the first advertisers to use voice search. We also knew many people were ordering food for the game, so we secured “pizza”-related terms, with VW sponsoring free Skype calls for consumers to pizzerias.

Our results speak for themselves:
Compared to our 2011 Super Bowl campaign, we delivered:

• 1,804% increase in impressions
• 67% increase in clicks
• 36% less average cost-per-click

Meanwhile, on game day versus pre-launch, our paid search efforts saw a 1,888% lift in clicks, while our YouTube campaign delivered a 528% lift in clicks and 1,303% lift in impressions.

Most importantly, VW saw its sales soar 42% year-over-year in February – the carmaker’s best February for sales since 1973.

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Provide a brief biography of the leader of the team that planned and executed this marketing campaign (up to 100 words):

Ryan Mocan is Senior Search Director at MediaCom. His job is to make sure that companies target the right audience to drive qualified traffic to their website as well as increasing their online ROI with SEM strategies including SEO, PPC, social media, local search optimization and web analytics. He has eight years of SEM/SEO experience and holds a double MBA in online marketing and management information systems.

His work has received numerous accolades, including being awarded an OMMA Award, an IAB MIXX Award, a Direct Marketing Association ECHO Award, and two American Business Awards.