The Tale of a Three-act Campaign

In 2017, I started my work at B's mart, a Thailand chain of convenience store. After a very peaceful first month, I soon met my biggest challenge as a Marketing executive yet.

B's mart had around 120 stores across the city.

I. The pledge

On a beautiful Monday, the entire marketing team was invited to a company meeting. Since our team had just formed like a month ago, this was our first big company meeting ever. I didn't know what to expected really.

The directive given was simple: "organize an annual B2B golf event", the twist this year is, the inclusion of something new. Charity is the too obvious choice and, to no one surprises, get chosen. After all, golf is for rich people and rich people like charity right? Simple task with a simple concept equals simple event. Boy I wish things were that simple.

The meeting was excruciatingly long and drawn out, just like every other business meeting ever.

The next day, I heard that B's mart wanted to be in a fair, like an actual weekend food and shopping fair. The leap of logic to jump from "I'm having this fully functional convenience stores equipped with all the food making machines, seats, wifi and air condition that I'm trying to get people to visit, but I feel like selling these products, that were given to me by other brands, on the street while having to pay rent for it as well is a better alternative" is still bizarre to me. But what do I know about business.

Typical B's mart fresh food products. All of which are made by a third party company.

So... An annual golf event, a charity and a fair weekend. People aren't wrong when they say organizations are very busy in the end of the year. Well, I can absolutely juggle all three, after all, that's how many things a juggler should juggle anyway... Nope.

It was the end of the year so guest what I forgot? If you said 'Christmas', the most popular non-official holiday in Vietnam where brands are obligated by law to do something for the consumers, you are correct. The boss wanted all 120+ stores to be decorated with Christmas magic, that somehow has to be better than all of the competitors. The deadline was like the cherry on top, 2 months to plan, design, and execute all of these separated tasks.

II. What if they aren't separated?

Yes the boss gave the team 4 tasks to do, but no he didn't say we have to do it separately. I came up with the idea: What if all 4 of these combined into 1 campaign. One single campaign that included golf, charity, weekend fair and Christmas decoration. One coherent story, with 3 parts, that was told through separated events that lead to the satisfying conclusion.

Part 1: The strong start

The golf event is the first one. In the golf event, we will demo a video about the poor students that needed the charity to continue their studying. A lot of big business guys gonna be there, guarantying a huge initial monetary support for the charity. Through the medias, we can use the images during the event, featuring many big and famous business people, to extend the campaign.

Part 2: The gathering

Followed that is the Christmas decoration, I didn't want some mindless, copy-pasted decoration. For me, just being pretty is easy, looking good is only half of the success. I wanted the customers to engaged in the story that is told through the stores' decoration. We drew out the stories on the POP signs and placed it across the stores. The story about Snowy, a snowman who would like to but couldn't help the children. He decided to open a store selling foods and get the money to help the children. Customers will get to see the beginning of the story at the door. Once they enter, customers will be guided by a snow footprint on the floor, leading them around the store following the story. The story ended in the cashier area where there is a call for action: Visit B's mart fair and together save the children.

All of the chaotic looking POP in the stores will be innovated into a coherent story,

Part 3: The epic conclusion

The fair is the final destination, where we will donate all of our profit towards the students in need.

The trilogy of story telling impressed my boss. She immediately made me the leader of this operation. It was later named: Companion with love.

My team unanimously and strongly believed in my idea.

My mentality has always been to innovate something ordinary. On hindsight my idea wasn't a phenomenon, never before seen game changer in the marketing industry, but it is definitely better than just 4 random forgettable small events. I couldn't change the nature of it, but it is at least elevated to what I think is its maximum potential.

III. It's show time

We had to start working immediately. I started by breaking down the tasks and divided it to the team, which comprised of 2 designers and 1 marketing executive. A lot of things need to be designed, included the POPs in the stores, everything included in the golf event (banner, 7 different gifts, invitations), all of the online posts and fair related materials... They are also in charged of printing and distribution to the stores. I gave out the direction, monitored, gave feed back and approved all of the designs.

The other executive's job is more focused on the golf event, finding a court, getting the contracts with the court and the catering done. She also contacted and worked with suppliers of the gifts. Because of my beautiful team, I was able to focus more on the things that I'm good at: planning the flow of the event, prepare the MC script, scout and hire a band, checking their playlist, prepare the script of the charity video that I was going to shoot and edit on my own, contacting the fair organizer...

Team work makes the dream work.

(This section is for the potential recruiter letting them know what I actually did. So if you find this section is boring and pointless, at least know that it isn't pointless for me) (sorry btw)

IV. The im-prestige

If you have read till this part you might be slightly wondering about the lack of images of the campaign. That's because I didn't get to run the campaign. We had many issues at the start, gigantic issues regarding the budget and time. We couldn't get the money for the press coverage and making a tear dropping video is also out of the question. All issues are resolvable but one, the mentality.

The team was divided. Our mentality wasn't on the same page, including the leaders. Changes and decisions were forced upon me, causing tremendous interruptions after interruptions on a rushed out project. As a leader of the project, I felt like it is just a title with all the responsibilities but no power. Even with my team support, it was too hard for me to complete anything without the higher up's support. I quit the job and subsequently the project. Might sound like an irresponsible call, but giving the situation, me leaving may actually reduce the internal conflicts, giving the project a better success chance.

The campaign still proceeded without me. The result, success or not, depends on the viewer, but undeniably failed in my book, for I had failed to lead it. The campaign wasn't a disaster, just lack some crucial planned details that would made it special and effective. Had I continue to lead, would it turn out better? I seriously doubt that. Looking back, the only scenario where the project would turned out like my expectation, involved a lot of unrealistic what ifs. Some think I expected too high in this context, and I also thought that myself. The company wasn't in the position to run this campaign the way it needed to be run. The misaligned idea of success between me and my manager was just too wildly different, even though she approved and gave me the go in the first place.

Despite the failure, I think under very achievable circumstances, the campaign could have been an absolutely beautiful piece of marketing art.

Quanny Nguyen

#marketingcampaign #bsmart #companionwithlove #myjob