Getting to grips with 7 Different Kinds of Smoke

When it comes to ad agencies, 'funky' and 'quirky' are overused as definers. All agencies epitomise creativity just because of the work they do. However, relative new kid 7 Different Kinds of Smoke, based in 'Jozi', somehow manages to stand out from the crowd.

Ryan van Jaarsveld, 7DKS Managing Partner

Ryan van Jaarsveld, Managing Partner and James Cloete, Creative Partner actually sat down for long enough to tell me more - and yes, as you'd expect, being called '7 Different Kinds of Smoke' does lead people to ask them if they sell cigarettes and hookahs all the time, which is why I thought it fitting to kick off with more information on the agency's name...

Where did the name '7 Different Kind of Smoke' come from?

Cloete: There are two stories behind the agency name. The first refers to the various types of mass media, each one representing the evolution of the one before, with mobile as the latest, seventh form. When the agency began, it specialised in mobile, so the agency was based on the 'seventh form of smoke and mirrors', you could say.

Van Jaarsveld: That's right. The new agency had a strong technological focus on mobile, coupled with creativity, to engage with our consumers through beautiful content. At the end of the movie You, Me and Du Pree, there's another reference to "seven kinds of smoke", see below...

What does your logo symbolise?

Cloete: At its most basic, it's a lozenge with the Roman numeral 'VII' inside...

Van Jaarsveld: More than that, you'll see a piece of one of the 'I's has broken away. This means we're not following the path of normal thinking, conditioned by traditional rules and ways. We sit slightly outside the madding crowd.

Tell us about one of the biggest campaigns, the Clover Little Big Cook Off.

Van Jaarsveld: Originally the Clover 'Way Better' Galaxy was a campaign Joe Public constructed. We weren't part of the initial galaxy construction but the client had spent a significant amount of money creating the characters and wanted to continue using the brand line. They ended up with a great TV ad of the calibre of the Coca-Cola Happiness Factory. It won lots of Loerie Awards, but they wanted to take the campaign into the real world and give it more legs. So a brief went out to a number of agencies to take the Clover Way Better campaign further, into the lives of consumers.

Clover's Little Big Cook Off presenters

We always tackle campaign ideas from the perspective of: 'how can this touch lots of consumers at the same time and be more engaging, as well as entertaining?' Often when I'm in a room of marketers talking about branded entertainment, I get asked whether it will work and my response is to ask whether they ever watch any TV ads... to which they reply no, that's when they step out of the room to make tea. On a side note, DStv ran a great campaign until 18 November, where you stood a chance of winning one of two trips to Mauritius by voting for your favourite Loerie-winning ad of the past 20 years. They did a good job of reviving the TV ad - not that it was dying, just making room for more entertaining stuff. So on the topic of how to engage the consumer in something that lasts more than three months, and to get the client more value from their spend, from a media and production perspective, we simply need to get into the hearts and minds of consumers on a regular basis.

A scene from Clover's Little Big Cook Off

Back to the Clover Little Big Cook Off, results were great - we achieved outstanding ROI in a clever way - leveraging the strength of Clover milk to bolster sales across all other product lines through an integrated promotional campaign based on a reality family cooking show featuring teams of adults and children pitted against each other to win a kitchen makeover, a family trip to Disney World and instant cash prizes.

Clover's Little Big Cook Off winners

Cloete: The answer's two-fold, really. It was about taking a look at the brief beforehand and making sure we came up with something that would result in longer lasting engagement, as well as getting more of Clover's products into consumer's shopping baskets, and the best way to do so was to create incentive. The simple intention was to create cross-sell: leveraging Clover's dominance of the milk category in South Africa to further strengthen their sales figures on other product lines. So, the skeleton of the campaign was that consumers would buy at least two Clover products and enter those barcodes for a chance to be on TV. This was the crux of the AFP, in bringing the Clover Brand World to life in the branded entertainment space, get consumers to engage with the brand, be famous, get your cooking famous and actually demonstrate the product in use.

Van Jaarsveld: At the end of the day it's all about the client's ROI.

Indeed it is. The next season of The Clover Little Big Cook Off will be broadcast on SABC3 from June 2015, and you can keep up to date with all the latest from the 7DKS press office.