White Elephant Digital team received a GOLDEN Award in EMEA Saber Awards competition referred to as the PR Oscar. We are extremely proud about this honour as this was our first international competition. Moreover it proves that a small agency, with a small client can achieve great results. Nothing required, just a creative story!
Although, our main goal was to find a wife to Samu, the charming llama from Patca, it fills us with pride that both the PR and marketing sector has honoured our campaign with prestigious awards. In the integrated campaign category at the 2019 Prizma Awards we have received gold and special prize for “the best story”. At the MMSZ Marketing Diamond Awards we have won a diamond prize.
In addition to the Sándor Imre PR Award of the Hungarian PR Association, we have also received the grand prize, which has been awarded by the jury for the first time in five years. After that, the best followed: at this year’s Saber Awards, the campaign also brought a gold medal to the White Elephant Digital team. These recognitions have put our agency on the chart of the TOP10 PR agency.
In the past years, the Patca-based Katica Tanya has been in the news mainly due to developments in the property. These have been mostly covered as “dry statements”, therefore, the pursuit to introduce the place as a paradise for families, where kids and grown-ups can both have fun has failed. Our intentions were to showcase that Katica Tanya provides chance for recreation filled with excitement, and offers more than 100 attractions for families, while also creating connection between people, nature and animals. To achieve this, an authentic story was needed, which makes people want to visit, catches the attention of the press, and is also related to Katica Tanya.
January of the year 2019 was a meaningful month for us. That is when we got to know Samu, the llama of the Katica Tanya Amusement Centre. Samu had been living without a partner for a long time then, mainly because it is not easy to find a llama lady in Hungary. The brief, though, only implied by the client, was obvious for us: we need to find a partner for this llama. Our goals, defined by the communication strategy were to boost the number of visitors, promote the electric go-kart track, which had been a new attraction, and make Katica Tanya known nation-wide. The campaign has been developed focusing on these targets.
We timed the launch fashionably for Valentine’s Day. A profile was created for Samu, the charming llama from Patca, and uploaded to several online dating sites, with the message “Samu is looking for a wife”. In addition, we also communicated intensively on the Facebook and Instagram pages of Katica Tanya, given that the power of social media is the best solution nowadays to find the perfect match for a llama. The idea was spot on: visitors of the page started to flood us with comments and suggestions. But things really started to blow up afterwards: mainstream media including RTL Klub, the morning radio show at Rádió1 and HVG all covered the story, and tried to help Samu find a wife. Thanks to all the tips we had received, we managed to come across the perfect partner, Saci, the llama.
The press and visitors of Katica Tanya especially loved the llama wedding, taking place in early June. The registrar was actress Andi Balázs, who married the young couple in front of two witnesses and representatives of the press as wedding guests. Journalist of the tabloid Bors also gave the newlyweds a wedding present. News of the wedding has travelled the country: among many others, Index, Mokka and NLC have all covered the story.
Planning and executing this campaign has been an enjoyable and beautiful task. We loved every minute of those 6 months. In September, we enjoyed some well-earned leisure time at Katica Tanya among the Zselic hills, which was spent by observing the fruit of our labour, Samu, Saci and the little Zsófi with joy. As it later turned out, Saci had been pregnant when arriving at the farm. So, a month after the wedding the arrival of the llama foal, Zsófi was blowing up the press again.
All the above mentioned media coverage represented genuine business results, given that during the campaign the number of visitors at Katica Tanya has grown by 20%. The story was an essential part of the joint success of Katica Tanya and White Elephant. The credit for recognizing it has to go to the agency. The recipe for success was the quality of execution, the timing and the targeting. The combination of all these made it possible for the story to become viral, and achieve a 40% growth on the website. Of course, there is no story without paid adverts, nevertheless, a good story can indeed help reach the target group in a cost effective way, while being appealing and credible at the same time.
You can watch the short video of the campaign here.