Situation

Logitech pioneered cordless interface devices, and our product support program successfully built a significant role for cordlessness among technology and lifestyle writers and product reviewers. Then our client asked us to create a program that would go beyond product support to drive cordlessness at the Logitech brand initiative level. We began by leading a client brainstorm of the marketing team. Soon, what had started as a creative promotional approach became the launch of a new market opportunity.

Objectives

• Increase visibility and demand for cordless interface devices
  
• Build Logitech brand as cordless leader
  
• Provide platform for integrated marketing program
  

Special Connections

• We identified the "home office" as an emerging market for cordlessness to reduce clutter and accommodate a broad variety of workspace situations.
  
• We elevated the importance of cordlessness by creating not just a product placement but also a complete "home office makeover" based on flexibility and cordless freedom.
  
• We quantified the "need" for media through national research showing that more than 80% of the population now has a home office. Nearly all would like to improve its efficiency and more than half found cords and clutter to be a major problem.
  
• We enlisted home office expert Terri Lonier to complement our desktop makeover expertise with her knowledge of a complete office environment.
  
• We ran a "Home Office Makeover" contest off the Logitech website, drawing thousands of entrants through publicity and online PR and advertising.
  
• We chose three winners who received complete makeovers, giving us dramatic visuals of "before and after cordlessness" for print and television.
  
• We carved up pre- and post- event details for maximum mileage in giving timed exclusives, sidebar features, etc. to a broad range of top media.

Results

• A full page in Newsweek described the makeover and showed pictures of the cordless desktop, with captions citing Logitech products.
  
• Several hundred stories ran on the contest, and on cordlessness in general, many driven by an AP wire story. Other coverage included the Gannett newspapers, The Christian Science Monitor, Fortune, The New York Times and the relevant trade media.
  
• The makeover positioned us with media as an ongoing resource for home office and cordless device stories.
  
• Our contest required that entrants participate in publicity, which gave us a large pool of users for media references.
  
• The makeover provided the content for a new "consumer expertise" section of the Logitech website.