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Our client was a small and very new toy company called Goldie Marketing.

Wryst.It was their first attempt at selecting a product overseas and repackaging and marketing it in Australia. It was a major packaging investment and a major risk. Goldie Marketing had no budget for advertising so the whole launch depended on PR. All they could afford at the time was a basic new product PR placement campaign. However Goldie did have a great product with fun gimmicks on each watch that could be pitched individually and collectively and a budget for media give-aways, as required.

In the end we secured 7 national TV shows, 13 national magazine placements, 10 metropolitan newspaper placements for Wryst.It.

Launching a FMCG product for the food industry has only limited PR potential in the product placement sense. General Mills wanted to launch the Betty Crocker One-Step Pancake Mix nationally including regional areas and a sampling campaign. Being a winter launch and a product suited to winter consumption, dreamcoat developed a concept to link in with a charity to undertake a unique winter clothing exchange program, where Betty Crocker would give a packet of their pancake mix to donors of winter clothing.

dreamcoat negotiated with the Salvation Army (both the Southern and Eastern divisions) for a unified national campaign timed for the middle of winter involving their retail outlets. dreamcoat then recruited a suitable celebrity to front this campaign, one which would fit both the Betty Crocker and Salvation Army image. Actor, Penny Cook was selected and was utilized in TV interviews, media releases as well as a poster in the Salvation Army Store windows.

dreamcoat coordinated General Mills (Betty Crocker), the Salvation Army (Eastern and Southern divisions) to ensure all logistical needs were met and then went about the business of generating widespread media coverage.

The net result of this creative concept was to deliver media coverage as follows:

• 3 National Television Shows -
- Rove Live
- Sunrise &
- Good Morning Australia

• 13 Metropolitan Breakfast Radio Shows

• 3 Radio News Bulletins

• 16 Metropolitan Newspapers

• 44 Suburban & Regional Newspapers

Borders Books, a retainer client with dreamcoat over the past 3 years, faced an enormous amount of competition from other retailers for the launch of the sixth Harry Potter book. All the major department stores were discounting deeply, the other book store chains were not only discounting, but holding events and charity drives to lure media and customers.

A small budget was allocated to dreamcoat to create some form of stunt strategy to try to attract news media to cover Borders activity on the morning of the Harry Potter book launch rather than the activity of the many competing retail stores.

Our strategy was that live animals, such as snakes, owls and even rats were featured in the Harry Potter books and that they would make great visuals for newspaper and TV news, if they were at the launch.

The key reason that TODAY, SUNRISE and the majority of television news selected Borders to be their retailer of choice for their Harry Potter story was simply because we offered an unusual extra visual stunt element above what the other competing retail outlets were offering on the same day.

Guinness in Australia suffered from a major problem - the drink of choice on St. Patrick’s Day was green beer rather than Guinness. With a lead in time of just four months and a highly developed strategy,

dreamcoat ensured that Guinness owned the lead in to St. Patrick's Day 1998 and as a result owned the day through media saturation. Even TV newsreaders on St. Patrick’s Day 1998 were signing off with “and now it is time for me to enjoy a Guinness”.

In 1999 dreamcoat captured international coverage by building a four meter high can of Guinness as a Guinness World Record for the Biggest Can. Sales of Guinness on and off premise soared in 1998 and 1999 for the St. Patrick’s Day period.

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