Marketing a Masterpiece for Victorinox store

Whether you perceive national stereotypes as positive or negative, creative design agency Masterpiece was delighted to find that the Swiss stereotypes of organisation and punctuality came true for its work with the historic producer of Swiss Army knives, Victorinox, to create the launch campaign for its flagship European store in London’s New Bond Street.

“Victorinox was keen to work with us at all times to ensure that their brand guidelines were followed to the letter, and I considered it great that the client was so focused and keen to be closely involved in the work, which helped the process run smoothly,” Jim Gifford, creative director for Masterpiece, explains.

Like the Army knives it produces, Victorinox was looking for a creative agency that is multi-skilled and capable in many different situations. It needed to be able to handle a variety of projects for Victorinox’s cross-media launch campaign, from print design, flightchecking of files to ensure quality, and proofs to website adverts, digital animation and any other ad hoc work that may be required.

Adrienne Merrill, brand manager UK for Victorinox, says: “Having worked in brand development and brand guardianship, I already had a good knowledge of the work I would require from the creative services team we would choose.

“I was looking for a company that could simply do everything we needed, to go across formats, from magazines to posters and digital work. This was a wide campaign, covering many different media channels, as we were launching the brand as more than just a knife producer in the UK.”

After conducting some research into creative service companies, Merrill came across Masterpiece on the internet and arranged a meeting in June 2008. It liked what it heard, and Masterpiece was then chosen by Victorinox to manage its ad campaign.

This began with press advertisements being placed in men’s magazines such as GQ and Men’s Health. The media planning for the Victorinox UK campaign is decided between Merrill and the head office in Switzerland, but the actual brand guidelines and marketing artwork are created in Switzerland for use in the various regions.

So the first task for Masterpiece was to take the artwork supplied by Victorinox’s head office, and reformat it to meet the requirements of the various magazines where the adverts were appearing.

This requires more work than most realise, as Gifford explains: “The shots were very moody, and as per Victorinox’s brand guidelines, colour is very important. We have a great deal of experience with managing colour through our experience working with catalogue publishers, so with our retouchers we can make sure every image is printed as accurately as possible. The files are then flight checked and proofed and we are always confident that the proof we provide is how the image will be printed.”

Along with the press ads, Victorinox also required Masterpiece to produce the online adverts to accompany some of the magazine’s websites. This required a mix of static and animated banner and skyscraper adverts for Masterpiece to create.

For these adverts to be made, along with the campaign generally, several different software packages were required, from Adobe Photoshop for imagery, Adobe Illustrator for design, Flash for web work and Final Cut Pro for editing work.

Cinema 4D was another important package used throughout the campaign. As a 3D model generator, it allowed Victorinox to visualise just how its advertisements would appear in real life scenarios.

This was used by Masterpiece to showcase to Victorinox how its advertisements would look on the sides of buses and taxis. Creating the adverts for this required a lot of collaboration between the two companies, Merrill says. She explains: “Head office allowed us to take the artwork and use it to design the adverts for the buses and taxis ourselves, to then be sent back for approval.” Once approved, the adverts were silkscreen printed, Gifford adds.

According to Gifford, it was the 3D model of the taxi bearing the Victorinox advertising that whetted the company’s appetite for that kind of advertising. However, Masterpiece’s 3D modelling and animation really came into its own when designing how Victorinox’s domination of Bond Street tube station advertising would look.

Merrill explains: “We bought the Bond Street tube domination space, which required a huge amount of print and digital advertising. We have limited visuals, not hundreds to choose from, so where we placed them had to be precise. The use of 3D modelling really helped to visualise this.”

Masterpiece’s relationship with CBS Outdoor, the agency responsible for all Underground advertisements, came into play when planning the domination advertising, particularly with printed posters for the tube.

Gifford says: “It’s normally better to rely on CBS when creating these as they know the many rules and regulations relating to fire hazards for advertising on the Underground. These rules can create issues though, for instance when producing a backlit poster, a thin paper has to be used instead of photographic paper, which can make colours, such as black, look washed out when lit. So it’s a case of being aware of the production limitations.”

Masterpiece also liaised with CBS’ digital advertising arm, Live Action, for the creation of the digital advertising panels on the escalators at Bond Street tube station. This required animated advertisements from Victorinox, a new challenge for both the company, and Masterpiece.

“How do you explain what the digital advertising will look like to clients? How do you convey the message, how it will be displayed? The answer to us was 3D modelling; using 3D animation to create a film showing what the moving adverts on the digital escalator panels will look like,” Gifford explains.

“Creating the artwork for this required a huge amount of organisation, with many pictures and 3D models emailed back and forth between us and the client to show how it will play out. We worked out it took 14 different images to make the digital escalator campaign work, at a 10 second burst on a 90 second cycle,” he adds.

For Merrill, the use of 3D animation was key to understanding exactly how the digital advertising campaign would work. She says: “The 3D animation work was brilliant and required a lot of work outside of Masterpiece’s remit. We were able to send the 3D film clips around the world for sign off and approval, as it enabled everyone to easily visualise how the digital escalator campaign would look.”

The 3D imagery was also created by Masterpiece to showcase the journey through Bond Street tube station, so Victorinox along with Masterpiece could theme together the user experience, and what message the person sees at each stage of their journey through the tube.

Using the 3D models to communicate campaign ideas with Victorinox was a big help for Gifford, for he describes the biggest challenge of the cross-media campaign as ensuring that the client was informed at all times and always given opportunity to comment.

This helped the relationship between Masterpiece and Victorinox to grow, so that Masterpiece became the company’s ad hoc creative services team for any last minute advertising work. For Gifford, this was not daunting though, as he explains: “Everything, from photography to design, artworking, flightchecking, colour management and proofing is done in-house by us, so we are always in control of the process.”

This set up certainly worked well for Victorinox, as Merrill says she was able to deal with Masterpiece for anything to do with the creative side of the campaign, and as a result all deadlines were easily met. Gifford describes working on the Victorinox campaign as exciting, “because they took the best of all the services our company offers”. For Merrill it was also an enjoyable process, and she says she will definitely use Masterpiece in the future.

Victorinox’s flagship European store opened its doors in Bond Street on 6th November 2008, an operation that went as smoothly as that other famous Swiss export, clockwork. According to Merrill, the launch campaign was a success, without any mistakes or problems in any of the advertising channels, and feedback from head office has been positive. So with the help of Masterpiece, it seems the Swiss’ reputation for management and punctuality still seems alive and well.


Victorinox
Formed in 1884 in Ibach-Schwyz, Switzerland, Victorinox first supplied knives to the Swiss Army in 1891. A producer of pocket tools, household and army knives, by the turn of the last century, its range had expanded into watches and luggage, and by 2001 included its leisure and clothing line for North America. The opening of the flagship store in Bond Street, London in November 2008 will bring the Victorinox product lines of clothing and fragrance into the European marketplace.


• www.masterpiececreate.co.uk
• www.victorinox.ch