Taking a byte out of boring IT advertising

The agency-client pair first cocked their collective nose at convention last year when they launched a print campaign titled 'Everyone knows about Bill, but have you ever heard about Phil?', 'Bill' being software mega-magnate Bill Gates and 'Phil' Phil Duff, Syspro's CEO.

The objective of this campaign was to raise Syspro's profile. Since its inception in 1978, it has delivered business solutions to some 6000 companies around the world through offices in South Africa, the US, Canada, Asia Pacific, Australia and the UK. However, brand awareness for the Syspro name remained decidedly low in South Africa.

According to FCB Activ creative director, Billy Antil, Duff responded enthusiastically to the creative team's desire to break the mould of IT advertising and use wit to attract the attention of its target market.

"Copywriter Wendy Ames and I regarded IT advertising as dull and boring," he said. "But when we met Phil we realised that it didn't need to be. The Bill-Phil thing just tickled our fancy and so we built a campaign of four ads around that. The style was chatty, it spoke to the market in plain English rather than techno-babble, and it set the tone for on-going communication with the target market.

"To maximise impact, the first executions were full pagers in the business and IT trade press. Once we'd attracted everyone's attention, we down scaled. It was a high-profile campaign and, partly because of it, Phil was nominated for IT Personality of the Year."

The brief for the current campaign was to introduce the market to Syspro 6, a fully integrated business software solution that provides complete control over the planning and management of all facets of business including accounting, manufacturing and distribution operations in a variety of industries.

Given the success of last year's ads, it was decided to retain the humorous approach. This time, Phil's very British demeanour fired different neurons in the creative team's brain and they immediately saw him as 'Steed' from The Avengers.

The resultant ads are copy heavy and tell wacky tales of espionage and kidnappings while still managing to convey the fact that Syspro adds considerable value to its customers' businesses.

There are three print ads in the series as well as two two-minute radio spots, which Classic FM accepted for flighting.