“YPOMONI” (PATIENCE): A successful campaign during the 2020 lockdown

Greece went into lockdown for COVID-19 towards the end of March 2020. 

During those trying times, New York College needed a campaign to show its presence not only to its students, but to society as a whole. Panadvert was called upon to create a campaign that was not purely commercial, but also in tune with the circumstances of this difficult period.

During those challenging times, this call for creativity and expertise was more than welcome to us. The account managers, copywriters, designer, social media manager & performance advertiser comprising the team at Panadvert, got to work and produced the successful campaign “YPOMONI”.

We had to observe, listen closely, interpret and create. And we had to do it really, really fast.

The result of all that was this campaign: A fast reflex response within the context of “Real Time Marketing”.

Studying the behavior of users on social media, from the beginning of the pandemic and lockdown, and up to the day measures were relaxed in early May, we noticed three basic behaviors.

Phase one: Shock and fear. This period lasted about a week, while people were trying to understand what this threat was and the nature of the threat. With constant reports streaming in from Italy and countries with serious problems, the only news published on social media were related to Death and the Virus.

Phase two: Coping through humor. A typical feature of Greek culture in difficult times, as we have seen in the past with the old Greek cinema of the 50’s and 60’s, is that Greeks deal with a crisis through humor. Hence, social media started to flood with posts containing jokes and a tendency to mock the situation and the virus itself.

Phase three: Fatigue. This was the phase in mid-April, a combination of the disappointment that Easter could not be celebrated in the traditional way and the appearance of the first signs showing the extent and uncertainty of future economic outcomes. At the same time, being confined at home caused weariness and people began to look for ways to escape.

The Campaign is based on a single word – what society wants to hear and NYC, in a prevailing role, comes to communicate.

In one simple word…

PATIENCE! (Patience Greeks, Patience guys, etc.)

Indeed, because we are going through a period of suspicion and distrust, when a purely commercial message could be perceived as “tone-deaf”, our campaign needs not to be reminiscent of a commercial, but should have a message of social nature. As such, at Panadvert we deemed that it did not require further verbiage, thus making it easier to attract the eye as users in their homes consumed much more content by scrolling.

The promotion of the brand is implied, not prevalent. There are three messages, each with accompanying text.

PATIENCE
Stay healthy, emerge strong.

PATIENCE
Tomorrow needs us all. Tomorrow needs us to be strong.

PATIENCE
Because every sunset is followed by a sunrise.

Subconsciously, the recipient of the message will identify and relate favorably with the brand during this difficult period. The benefits of this association which will be felt in the mid-term, when this adventure ends.

The campaign had one more thing going in its favor: it was innovative, as only Amstel beer had managed at that time to communicate something similar.

The Campaign ran on Social Media from 09/04/2020 to 25/04/2020 with the following results

>10% of the Greek population

>4.500.000 impressions

~ 4% of the population who saw the ad actively remembers the Advertiser and the Advertising message

~4900 Post Likes

Six Panadvert staff members worked on the creation and execution of the campaign.naged at that time to communicate something similar.