Anyone who’s ever been to a festival—of music, film, hot air ballooning, outdoor sports gear, creativity, you name it—is familiar with the maladies that come with festival attendance. Jetlag. Uncomfortable accommodation. Headaches from having just a little too much fun. Inadvertent exposure to the sun. Sore feet. In the grand scheme of things, these are small problems to have. But they’re problems nonetheless.
Klick Health’s clever campaign, Solve Better Problems with Klick, takes aim at those suffering from such maladies during the health and wellness track at this week’s Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. With unavoidable street teams—about 20 people in all—dressed in hard-to-miss white tee shirts and lugging colorful coolers, Klick has flooded the zone around the Palais des Festivals with solutions to 12 “Cannes Conditions” such as redeyeaarivalitosis, packedagendaparalysis, forgotmycordatthehotelitosis. (The solutions are obvious: cold brew coffee, rose ice pop, phone charger.)
The street teams hand out day-parted solutions to problems: cold brew in the morning, sun screen mid-morning, rosé at happy hour, moisturizer at dusk to preserve the tan festival-goers no doubt picked up while dining alfresco.
“The street teams are specifically focused on brand awareness for recruiting,” said Peter Flaschner, managing director, Klick Health. “This is a very exciting time for Klick. We just hired Rich Levy as our chief creative officer, and we’ll be doing some significant recruiting in the upper echelons of creative in the weeks and months ahead, and the intent with this program is to create positive brand awareness so that if we approach someone, they’ll say ‘Oh yeah, I remember you guys from Cannes. That was a good idea.’”
Also a good idea: the mobility the teams afford. Rather than relying on people to find Klick at a pavilion a kilometer away from the Palais, the street teams can go with the flow and go where people are gathering. “The crowd moves here,” said Flaschner. “This way we can be in lots of different places. It gives us a more dynamic opportunity for exposure.”
Part of the digital component of the program is the call to action found at cannes.klick.com. People can select an item like rosé pops and have them delivered to a meet-up point under a giant Klick banner near Palais 2, the site of the health track. The bespoke service has gone well, but the real fun comes with the freebie handout, doled out just when people need them most.
“These are small problems, but if you’re dealing with small things, you’re distracted from the big things,” said Flaschner. “We want to make sure people understand we help solve the big problems as well as the small ones.”
So has the program worked? “I can tell you that if we gauge success by local enthusiasm, in terms of impact around here, it’s really successful,” said Flaschner. “When we hand things out we say, ‘This is from your friends at Klick.’ I heard someone say, ‘Friends at Klick are good friends to have.’ So, yeah. That worked.”
