The Brand

Hugo Fragrances – Procter & Gamble.

The Challenge

The fragrance market is driven by new product launches with the majority of sales at Christmas.

We needed to create a holistic marketing campaign which would allow Hugo Fragrances to maintain a year round dialogue with consumers, to create a unique point of difference for the brand and to drive incremental sales in the absence of new product initiatives.

The Strategy

We identified the urban music genre, an under exploited area within music, as a perfect fit with Hugo Fragrances’ edgy, irreverent and rebellious brand values and target audience, having the highest percentage of 12 – 29yr olds, an even gender split and 50% of mainstream radio air time.

We realised that key to establishing a credible and long-term property for Hugo was to secure the buy-in of the music industry and fans by genuinely giving something back to the urban community. We therefore avoided the quick-fix solution of sponsoring (i.e. temporarily badging) existing events or contracting brand ambassadors, and instead created a unique and ownable music property for Hugo Fragrances working hand in hand with the industry to establish a new platform for upcoming urban artists.

The Work

We created Hugo Urban Rules, a programme dedicated to educating, developing and showcasing new urban music talent.

At the core of the campaign was a series of nationwide auditions and masterclasses to find and train new urban music talent. The auditions were judged and the masterclasses were hosted by leading industry figures such as Mervyn Lyn (Head of Urban, RCA Sony BMG) and Steve Sutherland (MOBO Award winning DJ).

The most promising new artists then performed alongside established urban acts, such as Amy Winehouse, Jamelia, Joe, Sway and Nathan, at exclusive gigs which were open to the general public.

Awareness of the campaign was driven through a number of media partnerships and a nationwide PR campaign. The partnerships included year round advertising and editorial content within 3 urban music titles; on air promotions and masterclass programmes on Galaxy and Kiss FM; advertising and editorial coverage within Xtaster (the largest online urban community) and myspace, including viral seeding campaigns using their community members; and the creation of advertiser funded programming featuring Hugo Urban Rules which was broadcast across MTV Networks.

All media partnerships directed consumers to a dedicated Hugo Urban Rules website where consumers could register to apply for auditions and gig tickets, which in turn drove online sampling.

We also licensed an exclusive Hugo Urban Rules CD which included the audition winners’ and headline artists’ tracks and developed a bespoke MP3 player. Both items were available as gifts with purchases in-store to drive incremental sales.

The Results

Year 1:

• £1.5m+ PR coverage generated
• 15,000+ messages seeded as part of viral campaign
• 15,000+ people applied for auditions and gig tickets
• 120,000+ fragrance samples requested online
• Most successful in-store promotions to date driving incremental sales
• Year round presence across national radio, TV, print and online partners
• Generated huge respect for Hugo Urban Rules amongst music industry and fans
• Successfully established credible music property and a real point of difference for Hugo Fragrances
• Winner of P&G’s ‘Best Holistic Marketing Campaign’ award in 2007