Today, let us take you to Spain and teach you about the Spanish approach to PR.
But instead of going through Spain’s high authority publications or listing off our‘top 10 tips to pitch a story to a Spaniard’, we figured the best way to introduce you to the market is to look at a selection of successful campaigns.
Spain has a lot to offer in terms of culture, food, politics, and sports. PR agencies can take their pick and get creative to target the country’s best features and most talked about topics.
Imagine you’ve just left your little apartment in the centre of Barcelona. You stop for a coffee at a hole-in-the-wall café. You pick up the morning paper…
Keep calm and siesta
Because the Iberic Peninsula can be very hot at times, employees (especially in the south of Spain) have long breaks in the afternoon.
Workers start a bit earlier and finish later than we do in the UK, so employees can make the most of the cooler times of day. (This is also something to keep in mind when reaching out to journalists and clients based in Spain).
To help make these napping experiences the best they could be, Siesta & Go launched their nappong solution in Madrid two months ago. It couldn’t be easier to nap: people can just book a room and relax, with access to the Internet, books, newspapers, phone chargers, and basically anything you could need to get all the siesta benefits.
It’s interesting to see that this campaign gained coverage both nationally and internationally, from publications including El Pais, ABC, El Economista, Cosmopolitan, and Traveller Condenast.
When food, tech, and banter come together
We must apologise – this is an old campaign (dated from 2008) but as it was very successful and very Spanish-culture-focussed, it would have been a shame not to talk about it.
Meet the iJam:
The Spanish creative agency Shackleton launched this campaign to promote themselves as a business, and the least we can say is that they made quite an impact.
Using a very typical Spanish product, jam (ham, in English), and converting it into a new high-tech gadget, iJam (very much surfing on the notoriety of the Apple products at the time), managed to get over 370,000 views on YouTube and 1,200,000 visits on the page they created for the campaign.
The video shows all the product’s features in depth, imitating Apple’s signature style.
Goooooooaaaal!
Football is a huge part of Spanish culture – as Spain is home to some of the best teams in the world.
Santander Bank capitalised on football conversations and created this video, highlighting the skills of freestyle footballers to convey one simple message: Santander makes banking so easy that it won’t interrupt your daily life.
We watch the amazing tricks of the freestylers before the video is replayed in slow motion to show us that, while we were absorbed by the performance, one individual had time to check the online banking app on his phone without disrupting the overall flow.
Fashion, cellulitis, and all
We already talked about the Spanish clothing brand Desigual here, but we just had to mention another of their campaigns.
The brand, now internationally recognized, stands out by making its garments unique. For example, because the textiles mostly consist of exclusive colourful patterns, no two items are identical. It is therefore quite fitting that the brand embraces uniqueness not only in their designs but also with the models they use.
As model Charli Howard says: ”Beauty doesn’t only come in size zero. Diversity is the key to changing that.”
Horns of contention
Brands should be careful when addressing a controversial topic as it can backfire very quickly, but in this case, doing so was a great success.
Earlier this year, FLAC, a French association against bullfighting, took it upon themselves to make a statement in a video which touched a nerve in Spain. When it comes to this tradition, Spaniards are divided: some want to keep it because it is part of the country’s culture and the others say it is nothing but a cruel heritage.
Bullfighting also takes place in France (though to a lesser extent) and despite this campaign being launched by a French agency, it struck a chord in Spain and got incredible coverage in the local newspapers, including elespanol.com, el Pais, EFE, Diario correo, and many more.
The video shows a corrida where the bull has been replaced by a velociraptor. It seems a bit odd until the screen displays one sentence at the end: “Does this practice seem of another era?”
