Dive Brief:
- Review platform Trustpilot is out with its first consumer ad campaign, according to a press release shared with Marketing Dive. The campaign features drag performer Honey Davenport, best known for her appearances as a contestant on the VH1 TV reality competition series "RuPaul's Drag Race."
- The first creative to be released in the "Be Heard" campaign is a video ad, "Queens to Queen — Be Heard on Trustpilot.com." Digital ads are running in Chicago and Houston with out-of-home (OOH) ads in Chicago.
- Also included is a travel sweepstakes, "#Review Better Adventure," where five winners and five guests will be awarded a 13-day international trip. Social media and display ads will urge reviewers to share a recent experience on Trustpilot to enter and entrants can review up to 10 companies with which they’ve had a personal experience, negative or positive. The winners will be chosen randomly from the reviews.
Dive Insight:
Trustpilot's campaign leans into the divisiveness apparent right now in American culture with creative that juxtaposes images of two kinds of queens — a monarch and a drag performer — and shows how their desire to review the businesses they interact with unites them.
Online reviews can bring together consumers in their reactions to brands, and can create "meaningful change," said Zachary Pardes, the brand's director of North American advertising and communications, in a statement.
"In today's divisive and sometimes polarizing climate, Trustpilot has really become a place where consumers can unite," Pardes added.
Trustpilot boasts more than 70 million reviews of over 300,000 domains, with its reviews seen more than 2.5 billion times each month. The brand, which got its start in Europe, it is now making a bigger push into the U.S. market. This angle — that a brand can be a force for good in our polarized society — has been reflected recently in at least two other recent campaigns.
Mike’s Hard Lemonade, for instance, created a campaign that aimed to counter news fatigue with a "Brighter Times" push with a homepage takeover of the The Washington Post online, which blocked negative news for a day and directed readers to more positive stories. "Drink on the bright side," the brand said, which resulted in a 20-point bump in brand favorability, an 18-point lift in purchase consideration and a 95% increase in social media mentions.
In a similar vein, skin care brand Nivea launched an effort earlier this month to "Rethink Soft." The idea was to help recast the word "soft" from meaning "weak" to becoming more associated with "kindness," as a company survey showed 61% of respondents thought "we need more softness in the world today."
