The results are in for the first ever YouTube Works in Greece and Cyprus. This year, although completely virtual, was still emotional and authentic.
“2020 has been a very special year and we were skeptical if it was the right time to launch the competition,” says Yorgos Monokandylos, head of branding and creative agencies at Google. “Despite that — or precisely because of that — we wanted to celebrate and appreciate all the brilliant ideas behind the most effective and innovative YouTube campaigns in 2019 and 2020.”
With the help of ten marketing experts, we identified the best Greek campaigns out there.
GRAND PRIX
LACTA with Ogilvy and Carat
In 2019, Greek society was at a crossroads that created social tensions, like the movement for equality. Lacta decided to take a brave step forward defending the right to love and embracing all "flavours" with its campaign “Act of Love” — the first of its kind with real diverse couples photographed with their favourite Lacta flavour talking about what makes their love unique. The judges picked Act for Love as the very first Grand Prix winner of the YouTube Works awards in Greece.
Best Creative Work & Best use of YouTube
IKEA with Ogilvy
IKEA, market leader in Home & Furniture in Greece, used a relatively new YouTube format aimed at increasing e-commerce sales to lower funnel audiences who are one step away from the buying decision in their purchasing journey. They launched the “White Screen'' — a campaign aimed to attract users’ attention from the very first second by using a video (without imagery) that only focused on audio. With this innovative approach, the campaign managed to achieve a very strong impact both on brand KPIs and sales. The campaign was awarded both Best Creative Work & Best use of YouTube for performance marketing.
Best long-term use of YouTube
Best YouTube integration
COSMOTE with Ogilvy and Mindshare
For the past six consecutive years, COSMOTE has been involved in the Panhellenic Educational Robotics Competition. Despite previous efforts, the competition did not have the volume they’d hoped for due to the misconception that Robotics is not suitable for girls. COSMOTE wanted to introduce young people, especially girls, to educational robotics and tell them that technology is for everyone. Through the success of the Robogirl campaign COSMOTE was able to increase in overall participation in the competition by 63% and increase in the number of girls participating by 91%. Then the brand decided to continue investing in this initiative, launching "The Real Robokids" — a feature-length documentary that was the most successful of any Greek documentary on YouTube, achieving over 2M views. The campaign was first place on YouTube Ads Leaderboard for branded videos in Greece having achieved the highest viewership, view time and engagement for all of 2019. And COSMOTE’s YouTube channel saw a 77% increase in subscriptions, making it the fastest growing channel in Greece with the most interactions.
Best Audience Insights
ACTION AID with McCann
During the holidays people tend to help others in need. But the recent crisis in Greece combined with high levels of unemployment have had people thinking twice about how to spend their money. Action Aid needed a campaign with a limited budget in the midst of competitive Christmas advertising clutter. The idea behind “All the Gifts” campaign was to speak directly to people’s hearts — emphasizing that a human life costs less than a Christmas toy. With only one campaign, the consumer was targeted in real time while shopping. Combining the right messages and the right targeting, the campaign managed to make the most of its limited budget, increasing website visits by 116% and reducing bounce rate by 45.2%.
Best Media Strategy
IKEA with Ogilvy
Over the last couple of years in Greece, the home improvement market has become very competitive. So IKEA set out to create a campaign to rekindle their customers’ relationship with the brand. Within “Love Story” campaign, a story of two stray dogs evolved into a family house made of IKEA furniture and values. The role of YouTube with all its ad-formats was crucial in the full funnel of the campaign. The campaign achieved over 6M views that generated an increase of 15% in ad recall on YouTube and 67% lift in organic search, which translated into a YOY increase in IKEA eshop sales by 22%.
Best Breakthrough Advertiser
NAK SHOES with Relevance Digital Agency
Until recently, NAK's communication approach had focused mainly on mainstream ads and product placements or presentations on TV shows. However, due to the stagnation of men's shoes sales, the need arose to create an out-of-the-box promotional campaign that would make the male audience, mainly youngsters, aware of the NAK men's collection and increase sales. YouTube was chosen as main channel for the “#truestory” campaign as it provides the highest reach for a young male audience. The content was built on the humor of the 2 well-known content creators. With YouTube’s audiences tool, the campaign managed to increase clicks and website traffic from video viewers and achieved 115% and 75% increase in online and offline sales of men's shoes in one quarter.
