Allegravita provides commericial and communications support to our clients by the design and implementation of public relations campaigns. Our campaigns commonly include proactive media articles, feature and column insertions, event design and implementation, market research, government relations, and other below the line activities. It is not often we get a chance to go through the line and deliver good old-fashioned advertising for our clients.

One of our favourite clients, the multinational architectural services firm Woods Bagot recently briefed us to create a press advertisement as a part of our ongoing China market awareness campaign for them. Our client doesn’t often use above the line techniques, but the special issue of Australia China Connections made sense — the January/February issue (with a special architectural and building services feature) would reach a key target market segment with comparatively little wastage.

After taking the communications and business objectives for the ongoing campaign into consideration, and thinking about the readership and competing advertising and editorial, we recommended an old-fashioned long copy ad (in an homage to the great, late David Ogilvy) in an attempt to break through the clutter of the typical advertising style in the publication, and to tell Woods Bagot’s authentically good and interesting story.

Woods Bagot long copy ad 2008

Our client is great: they had the bravery to approve an ad that was distinctly different from the typical advertising style in their sector. We’ll be doing some recall testing on the ad once the issue has been in circulation for a few weeks.