Drew Neisser, President & CEO, Renegade Marketing Group

Panasonic's Oxyride Extreme Power battery is positioned as the next generation in technology designed for the digital era. So it made perfect sense to target the college crowd. These kids consume batteries like beer at frat parties...great segment to tap into. But how the *!@? do you get college kids to care about a commodity product like batteries? That was the challenge facing Panasonic and their agency Renegade Marketing.

In doing their homework, Renegade Marketing learned that this audience is multi-tasking, blogging, planning fun stuff and even putting a few hours into the books. They love irrevent humor. But they are skeptics from the word go. They have more energy than most batteries. That was the hook...Panasonic wanted to convey that Oxyride was even more energetic than college students.

Renegade Marketing needed a killer idea that would connect with the target audience when they were involved with their passions e.g., music, games, online. And they wanted a campaign that had legs. And they knew it had to include that irrevent humor.

Ta da! The Oxymites...edgy, animated characters each with their own back-story meant to personify the buyers. Bully, Fighter, Helper, Hyper and all the rest of the Oxymites are designed with an "x/o" that relates back to the packaging.

Drew Nelson believes that effective campaigns have layers, especially for big brands, one layer is rarely enough. The Inner layer put the product in the hands of the consumer on college campuses and at concerts.

Students had an opportunity to interact with the Oxymites. How about a game where you bang on a drum until the Oxyride's head explodes? The target loved it. (Remember .. irrevent humor.) Winners were given t-shirts, wrist bands and more. Panasonic's prize was the kids thought t-shirts were cool and wore them creating more word of mouth buzz.

Jason Mraz was brought in as a sponsor. Panasonic won again when Jason used Oxyride batteries in all the mics at his performances and boasted that they were double the life of other batteries.

The "inner layer" touched 50,000 kids. Did they talk about the batteries? Drew is realistic. Batteries no. Oxymites? Jason? Yup! "The brand that understood them and was attempting to live their life style."

Second layer took the brand online into places where college students hang out like MySpace, and Yahoo. A community was built where kids could engage with each other and of course an Oxymite website that included download IM skins, games and even information about batteries.

Results
-10 million IMS
-Half million visitors to oxyride.me.com

The right blogs to advertise on couldn't be found; instead 9 blogs were asked to blog They were given plasma tvs and some other spiff. They had complete freedom..no editing from Panasonic. The first post was about a blogger's experience in lesbian bar. As Drew puts it, "Panasonic didn't blink."

TV was used with spots only on late, late night: 1a-4a. This gave Renegade Marketing an opportunity to create "un PC" spots staring the Oxymites. The production elements were cool...done in same black and white style as the characters with splashes of color.

The campaign was picked up by the NY Times along with other traditional media.

Take Aways
-Focus
-Engage offline
-Engage online
-Layer

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