Challenge: Within an environment of somewhat varied brand perceptions across the culturally-diverse European market, Timberland wanted to determine which of two distinct brand campaigns most effectively communicated the brand’s core values and connected to the target audience in the European market. One campaign was developed for Europe and the other was a global campaign developed primarily for North America.

Objective: Assess the impact and communications effectiveness of both campaigns across four geographically-dispersed markets in Europe.

Solution: In-depth, one-on-one interviews were conducted with in-country, bilingual moderators among Timberland’s core target audience as well as key prospects/competitive buyers. Simultaneous translation was utilized to clearly convey each participant’s attitudes to the client. Verbal debriefs with the moderators were also conducted upon completion of the fieldwork in each market to understand the important cultural nuances within the varied European target.

Result: The final decision was not an easy one, as both campaigns had certain communication strengths. Plan-it took into account each campaign’s individual strengths but also evaluated which campaign best leveraged the brand’s potential for growth over time and best connected to key audiences on a deeper, more emotional level. Plan-it’s final recommendation, including some campaign fine tuning, was followed by Timberland and the new campaign was launched in Europe and in the U.S., where Plan-it had conducted a similar evaluation.  The campaign was extremely successful. In U.S. markets, follow-up tracking showed significant improvement in top-of-mind awareness and consideration of the brand.