A Romanian chocolate brand, ROM Chocolate, launched a new campaign in September based around offering to sponsor some of the world’s major international cancelled events such as UEFA Euro 2020 and Wimbledon.
ROM Chocolate, an iconic local brand wrapped in the colours of the national flag which launched back in 1964, is a relatively small Romanian confectionary product and as such would never have the budget to sponsor big international sports events in usual times.
But, for the launch of ROM Buzz – a new sub-product (a chocolate wafer with rum filling) – the company’s marketers moved into unexplored territory in the form of a tongue-in-cheek campaign offering to sponsor cancelled events.
The initiative, developed in harness with MRM Romania, McCann and UM, plays on the idea that many international sports, cultural, music events cancelled due to COVID-19 for 2020 have seen budgets slashed because their big brand sponsors have pulled out.
But ROM claims to be a brand that ‘knows how to fight in hard times’ and is offering to come to their rescue.
The spoof campaign is fronted by a set of domestic television commercials and social spots.
Supporting the hero videos is a set of sports- and event-specific supporting social posts.
The creative, which aims to attract attention, buzz and media coverage, also seeks to drive partnership directors of the cancelled events to visit its bespoke website to explore the sponsorship packages ROM is offering.
“In a year that is marked by a health crisis, when brands give up on some of their plans, we decided to continue our plans of launching a new product, ROM Buzz, and using our marketing budget to help sweeten up some of the events that have been cancelled,” said Kandia Dulce Marketing Director Gabriela Munteanu. “We have chosen to be optimistic and turn this tough year into the best year for launching ROM Buzz”,
“In the context of today’s world, we believe our industry has the responsibility to help brands not only to act responsibly and make a difference, but also to entertain. We wanted to bring a bit of optimism in the world by proposing a lighter tone of voice in a campaign that tackles the new normal,” added Catalin Dobre, CCO McCann WG Romania & Regional CD McCann Central Eastern Europe.
“When you have such a ballsy brand personality in your hands as we do with Rom, you feel you have to do it justice every time- yes, also during a pandemic. Enter the Romanian challenger thing once more, with the brand now twisting the worldwide negative narrative to its favour and coming up with this deliciously stupid ambition. With that, I believe we made Rom use its tinier but quite efficient weapons to perfection”, stated MRM Romania ECD Ioana Zamfir.
The campaign was created for a Kandia Dulce marketing team which included Marketing Director Gabriela Munteanu, Chocolate Category Manager Elena Petrea, Junior Brand Manager Alexandra Şoagher and Group Brand Manager Alina Crangă by a team of agencies including creative shops MRM Romania and McCann Worldgroup Romania, media agency UM Romania and PR partner McCann PR.
The McCann/UM group included CCO McCann Worldgroup Europe Adrian Botan, CCO McCann Worldgroup Romania Catalin Dobre, Creative Director MRM Ioana Zamfir , Content Director MRM Ion Cojocaru, Creative Director McCann Worldgroup Romania Alexandru Vasile, Group Creative Director MRM Laura Belc, Group Creative Director MRM Adina Stanescu, Copywriter MRM Cosmin Voicu, Art Director MRM Laura Catea, Social Media Strategist MRM Codrin Badescu, Social Media Manager MRM Madalina Ciocan, Group Account Director MRM Andreea Sofrone, Junior Account Manager MRM Ana Smarandescu, Account Manager MRM Madalina Anghel, Media Planner UM Monica Nastase, Digital Media Planner UM Christian Ene, Influencers Manager UM Ramona Radu, PR Manager McCann Worldgroup Romania Carmen Bistrian, Corporate PR Executive Mccann Worldgroup Romania Corina Nica, Head Of AV McCann Tiberiu Munteanu, AV Producer McCann Alexandru Platon, plus Director Radu Munteanu with the production house MME.
Comment:
There will be a few rights owner sponsorship heads and property marketing directors who wish this spoof was genuine. After all, the sport and entertainment industry is going through extremely tough times.
ROM is not new to innovative, bold and left-field campaigns. For example, in recent years it swapped the Romanian flag on its packaging with the American one – leading to something of a national outrage and reigniting what it felt had been declining Romanian patriotism.
It also sought to change the image of Romanians on Google (from ‘stupid’ to ‘smart’), it used an ad campaign to try and help the world understand the difference between Bucharest and Budapest, while another previous campaign saw ROM launch the first AI ambassador in Romania.
ROM may not have the marketing budget of bigger international competitors, but this kind of marketing approach certainly helps its punch above its weight.
Links:
ROM
https://getsponsoredbyrom.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/romautentic
https://www.instagram.com/rom_autentic/
https://www.facebook.com/romautentic.ro
McCann Worldgroup Romania
UM Romania
https://www.umww.com/locations/bucharest/
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