Canon launched an innovative tablet campaign during the Christmas season that utilized research on the power of touch in advertising to enhance engagement and sales. By creating interactive ads featuring low-light imagery of urban deer, they achieved an average engagement rate of 67%, significantly exceeding industry benchmarks. The campaign successfully boosted Canon's Christmas sales, making it a standout performer in the competitive photography market.

1. Category – Tablet Campaign
Category – Tablet Campaign
TOUCH TO SEE

2. TOUCH TO SEE
Category – Tablet Campaign
How an insight into the power of a physical touch, delivered unprecedented levels of
engagement and vital Christmas sales for Canon.
AN ILLUMINATING CHALLENGE
In the photography market, it is difficult to cut-through the
competing messages around different camera
specifications. To combat this, Canon’s messaging has
evolved from spelling out the functional benefits of their
products to telling the stories that their cameras help
reveal.
In the run up to Christmas 2014, we were tasked with
creating a media idea which brought to life imagery which
would otherwise have remained hidden without Canon’s
low light camera technology.
That’s where a piece of proprietary PHD/newsworks
research came into its own.
A TOUCHING INSIGHT
It was our research into the power of touch in advertising that
gave us the answer. Conducted in collaboration with UCL and
Newsworks, the research found that the simple act of physically
touching an ad increased spontaneous brand awareness by an
average of 28%; “high quality” perceptions by +16% and
purchase intent by +25%.
We knew that if we could combine the power of touch with the
power of Canon’s low-light technology we could use tablets to
create a powerful cocktail of sensory effects at one of Canon’s
most important sales period of the year.
Canon identified a
housing estate in Essex
where urban deer
regularly appeared
during the night as a
perfect scenario to
demonstrate this.
However, most media
were struggling to do
the quality of Canon’s
low-light imagery
justice.

3. A REVEALING IDEA
Inspired by these results, we created a tablet-led media
approach that was able to drive both sales and
engagement through the power of touch.
We took the urban deer imagery and created an
interactive tablet campaign across the best performing
consumer magazines and national press tablet editions
including The Times, Wired, The Week and Metro.
Using functionality that had had never been used in the
category before, each ad opened with a grainy
background image and an instruction for the user to rub
the screen. By simply using their finger, each reader could
reveal the full, beautiful image of urban deer caught at
night. Once the majority of the ad had been revealed, a
selection of products ideal for low light then appeared
along with links to Canon’s website and social media to
find out more. (Examples are shown below)
RESULTS
“We challenged PHD to deliver a media solution that would give
Canon’s messaging mass scale whilst also delivering a high level of
engagement through our most important sales period. By incorporating
PHD’s research on the power of touch into our creative execution it has
given us a truly brilliant campaign, we were absolutely delighted with
the results!”
• n
average engagement rate of 67% - 33 TIMES higher than the
industry benchmarks for dynamic display on tablet
• This made Canon the most engaged with ad
throughout December
• The Canon Winter ad went on to become one of the Top 3
advertisers for Share Of Voice in pre-Xmas digital editions
• But most importantly, combining stunning imagery with the
power of touch contributed to Canon hitting their Christmas
sales targets, outselling all of their competitors at Christmas.
In a category dominated by sight, an insight based around the
power of touch had made it a picture perfect Christmas.
Nathalie Margerand-Ferre, CIG Campaign Professional,
Marketing Communications