Episode 161 - Yeti Map the Gaps Ad Reviewed by Mars, Reckitt and FrieslandCampino
For our last episode of 2023, we go into the wild.
In a world where Google Maps seems to have mapped out pretty much everywhere… are there still any gaps? Yes, says Yeti.
Their ad “Map the Gaps” chosen for us by Contagious aims to talk to the explorer in all of us, addressing the yearning to go off the beaten path. But does the idea live up to the creative execution? What’s the end goal of the ad and how is the brilliant product placement going to help the brand?
Our guests Natalie Ellse (EU Digital Media Manager - UK at Mars), Arijit Sengupta (Global Marketing Head at Reckitt), and Finn Campbell (eCommerce Manager at FrieslandCampina) discuss this ad’s creative effectiveness and debate whether an opportunity has been missed to elevate it further.
Episode 161 - Yeti Map the Gaps Ad Reviewed by Mars, Reckitt and FrieslandCampino
Transcript
This is automatically generated, so it’s not 100% accurate.
Tom Ollerton 0:00
Hello and welcome to the final episode of 2023 of Advertisers Watching Ads. This is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads.
My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, the Creative effectiveness adtech platform. And before we see this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Natalie Ellse 0:37
I'm Natalie. I'm the Digital Media Manager at Mars Pet Nutrition UK.
Arijit Sengupta 0:41
Hi, I'm Arijit Sengupta. I'm the Global Brand Head at Reckitt Benckiser.
Finn Campbell 0:46
Hi, I'm Finn Campbell. I'm the eCommerce Manager for the UK for FrieslandCampina.
Tom Ollerton 0:51
What a panel! What you guys don't know, probably isn't worth knowing, so let's see how that knowledge works on this week's ad.
So on a scale of one to five, how many points would you give this with your fingers? On three, one, two, three... A four, a three, and a three. Blimey. Okay, guys, I'm not sure I fully understand what's going on here. Who did their homework and who would like to explain what is going on in this execution?
Finn Campbell 1:47
What they're looking to do here is take you onto their site to help you find new places that you can explore that aren't naturally mapped. So the trails that you'd look up, naturally, when you go into apps like Komoot or Strava to go and find new places in the wild aren't always going to be mapped. They do not have those footpaths or anything else, and what they've done here is taking you in to a site where they've gone and found some leading people in the adventure world to give you new places to explore, to give you new heights, new trails, new parts of the world that haven't previously been mapped. Places that you can really be an adventurer and get to see a different side of the world that you wouldn't have before.
Arijit Sengupta 2:23
I love this campaign. You know, they have this whole idea of rugged products which are built for the wild. And this campaign is kind of working at a functional and emotive level, right? At a functional level it's saying that our products are so rugged, built for the wild that... let's take a superlative. We're going to go to a really wild place which isn't even on the map. And that's where we're going to take our product. At an emotive level... You know, this whole brand is about, you know, talking to the explorer in all of us, you know, who has that wanderlust to walk off the beaten path and go to the edge of the world. And that's what this campaign is speaking to.
Natalie Ellse 2:59
Yeah, for sure. I think initially I was questioning if they were bringing out their own app. Doing the research. I've understood that it's actually more integrated into Google Maps to literally go beyond the map. So once I understood that piece of the puzzle, it all kind of fell into place a little bit more. And actually, I then realized this is an incredible piece of branding and product placement. It's not very often you can get your products placed into Google Maps just by uploading the on-the-street view that currently exists. So I thought actually, taking a step back, it's an incredible piece of product placement where they gave everybody one of those cooler bags, you get really clear product view as well as an amazing trail. You get to experience either on the map itself or you can go and do the trail, which is really clever.
Arijit Sengupta 3:40
Would have been great to kind of open this up to everyone and like, for everyone to showcase that magical place which, you know, they have just discovered and then really create a lot of UGC, right? But right now, because they've kind of left it to these 15 ambassadors, you just have few trails which, which they're showcasing in this campaign right now.
Finn Campbell 4:00
Where's the user-generated content? Where's the ones that make people go, "Can you add your photos, like, to it?" Can you get people nearer to you that you then also meet up, and that's like a sense of adventure together. I feel like... It's, its the great sapling of it, but they had a chance to, sort of, grow into a bit of a tree and just haven't quite got them. Maybe that's the idea later on.
Arijit Sengupta 4:20
One of the nice thing about the campaign is instinctively you kind of feel that this has legs for a phase two and a phase three, right?
Natalie Ellse 4:27
There is a tiny piece on their website where they explain how you can add to the campaign, but it's so small it does feel like a little bit of a miss, particularly when it's a really engaging thing to do. If you are going to go and follow one of these trails, which is off the beaten track, which you might not have known about, to be able to share your experience, particularly as we go through different seasons, trees might lose the leaves, the paths might start to look a little bit different if there's snow and ice. It'd be good to almost have it for all weathers and all seasons, which is actually something that Google Maps doesn't do. It doesn't necessarily cater for as many changes as there are, and that's something that they could really fill the gap in even more on, particularly with these maps.
Finn Campbell 5:03
The only thing for me is there's an element of slight irony and contradiction to it. We've mapped the gaps. They have said that it's not mappable. It's not there. No one's going to see it. But if they've only got ten, 15 of these and this is meant to be a genuinely massive campaign for them, if I'm turning up somewhere that I got told had zero people and wasn't mapped, and another 30 people who use Yeti and saw the ad turned up that weekend, I'd be going, "Well, this is a bit ironic, isn't it? I came to explore the unexplored with my new Yeti backpack. Maybe that's the phase two that we talk about, and it's that user-generated content to actually mean that it's just not 15 places and it then does become genuinely unknown.
Natalie Ellse 5:03
It's trying to find the balance between accessibility for all versus that 2%, which isn't accessible for a reason. And I feel like they're trying to maybe bridge the gap by going some of these places or beaches which you might not know if the beach, potentially, but it's potentially also not that unexplored, and I feel like there's something missing in that 2% of a one mile hike across a beach or across a landscape that isn't maybe necessarily the 2%, it's just that it's a beach and Google Maps haven't gotten down there yet.
Arijit Sengupta 6:08
The idea of, you know, boldly going where Google Maps hasn't gone before, I think is a nice, edgy idea. It's that execution where they could have just kind of taken it further and added this layer where they get their whole community together to kind of build towards like reaching your destination, right? And that's why I think this is the only place where this idea isn't, like, fully maximized.
Finn Campbell 6:31
If I didn't know what Yeti was, I would have been mildly confused what this was, actually. I thought this originally was just a normal backpack. They've created a message, but I'm not really sure how I was meant to engage with it properly. Am I meant to be exploring? Am I meant to be mapping the gap? Or am I meant to be following the mapped gap? And it's this... The messaging behind that... I got a bit confused at points and struggled to understand where the product kind of fit into that message they were saying.
Natalie Ellse 6:56
I really love the cinematography of the ad, I have to say. But I think with the product of the backpack and when they zoom out and you have all the multiple shots of the different ambassadors, I think that's really quite compelling and it's really interesting to look at. I think they might have missed a trick by using the same color backpack and I think had different ambassadors been given a different color product that might have then drawn our eyes slightly more to the product, specially as you zoom out and you see all the different ambassadors. And that could have been a really big trick to go, "Oh, actually there is a commonality here. And it's not just the parks. I wonder what that color is or what that type of backpack is." And they may have missed a slight trick on that, but I do like the kind of the style that they've currently got, and it does give a real global feel, especially when we're zooming out in that ad for the 360 and the different views there are but when you dig into it a little bit, it's not as global as you think it is. If you don't know Yeti, I think that could be a slight miss there somewhere.
Arijit Sengupta 7:43
I don't think this campaign is for people who've never heard of Yeti before, right? The fact that I had heard of Yeti before, I mean, this campaign made sense, but if I didn't know what that Yeti on that person's back was. You, you'd be like, you know, like scratching your head, right?
Finn Campbell 8:01
Exactly. And I'm just looking into the format of the ad, that's a YouTube Short. That's an ad format that's designed for social media and quick engagement and mass impressions, which therefore, if you're mass impressions, you're probably going to get quite a few people who doesn't understand it. And therefore, trying to actually put your brand forward to something new and bring people into it and drive that sort of understanding of what Yeti is. I, hardly been thinking it's a backpack, and that's why I was interested, but if it been a longer format ad or something which you can engage really directly with their consumer base, like a little bit of a longer one that goes, "Oh, this is our Christmas ad. We're that time of the year." It would have made more sense to me, something which they went and searched for it. But this sort of short one, generally drives to sort of a larger impression base, it means you need to rely on people understanding the brand if you're going to go for that level of it, in my view.
Natalie Ellse 8:47
I think they're really trying to pull together a community feel as well. This is quite a secretive, unexplored yet to be discovered kind of vibe. And you can almost be a part of that club by using Yeti and the products and the app that it provides to really, really build that feel with the ambassadors and their brand. So I think that's a really interesting element to the campaign as well as just exploring. It's kind of going beyond that, one step further.
Arijit Sengupta 9:09
That seems to be the target for this campaign. The objective really is to create saliency and buzz within people who, within their community, people who already know what Yeti is. It definitely doesn't seem to be a campaign to recruit new users who have no idea what the ad is about.
Tom Ollerton 9:29
Would you sign off this campaign thumbs up or down in its current form? One, two, three... Oh! Well done, Yeti! That is the result. Guys, thank you so much for your time. We'll see you all next year.
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