
Agency	Smetana
Creative head	Andrey Buzina
Author of idea	Sveta Belousova
Product	New Year Tours provided by TravelMenu
Description	TravelMenu is a young travel start-up, The company was facing tight competition, and needed to raise awareness with a limited marketing budget The task was to attract attention of the audience to the system of internet travel booking provided by Travelmenu and to stimulate sales on the Russian Market We have analyzed the environment during the video launch period in December 2011, when dissatisfaction with the government and the rigged parliamentary elections reached their peak levels. Russians citizens, who used to be largely politically indifferent, joined popular street protest manifestations in large cities. President Medvedev, whose political authority and status has always been somewhat of a question mark, became even more of a joke in the eyes of the thinking Russian people. On the other hand, Russians traditionally devote the whole of December to New Year celebration preparation. Russian people associate New Year’s Eve with festivities full of Champagne, tangerines, Olivie salad and the most anticipated media event of the year – the President’s New Year address to the Nation. Therefore, we have produced a video with a fake President's New Year's speech where the President was demonstrated delivering his speech on a sunny beach in Hawaiian shorts. We have uploaded the video with the President into a specifically created YouTube channel KremlinVideo so that people could think that this was an official Kremlin video. During the first week, over 5 million people were watching and sharing the video, which made the case the most successful Russian commercial on YouTube in 2011 The total result was over 6 million views and a threefold growth in client’s sales The website traffic grew 5 times. The video received YouTube Awards and client received significant mass media exposure. Most importantly, reaction of the President was surprisingly positive. Moreover, we received a proposal to produce similar viral stories for Prime Minister Putin.
Team members	Ivan Egorov (director) Sveta Belousova (copywriter) Andrey Buzina (creative director) Olga Afonina (account manager) Ekaterina Startseva (project manager)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4iSZK9cGnA

← previous next →

← back to the category