In the face of growing cyberthreats to organizations worldwide, Dell Technologies sought an engaging, long-term, creative platform to communicate all aspects of their extensive data protection portfolio. Messaging needed to include today’s critical mandate for infrastructure modernization, the Dell philosophy and approach to data protection, their industry-leading expertise and thought leadership, how Dell’s existing products and services provide business value, new innovations as they launch, the extensive use cases, industry-specific value propositions, and Dell’s vision for the future of data protection in an ever-changing, challenging IT landscape. To encompass all of these key points, Dell sought a way to tell the “Dell data protection story” in a way the company had never told it before.
The campaign targeted existing and potential Dell customers around the globe with two clear goals: to raise awareness of Dell’s extensive, leading-edge data protection portfolio and to position Dell as the clear, superior choice for any modern organization. Externally, it focused on Information Technology leaders, such as Chief Technology Officers, CISOs, and CIOs, as well as hands-on professionals who are technical decision-makers, such as infrastructure architects, network engineers, database administrators, and IT directors. These are people who handle mission-critical data every day and must be concerned with data protection, storage, transfer, and access in their fight against cybercrime. Internally, the campaign reached Dell’s sales teams, field reps, and channel partners to raise awareness of portfolio capabilities and updates, as well as to boost revenue by facilitating customer conversations.
The campaign strategy was developed to address multiple challenges: reach a broad audience with several messages; conceive inventive creative that garnered attention while still adhering closely to Dell brand guidelines; and establish an executional framework solid enough to serve as a viable messaging platform, yet flexible enough to provide the creative freedom to maintain the audience’s interest over the long term. A limited budget coupled with the need to feature fresh collateral over the course of multiple quarters compelled the team to make production decisions with economies of scale front of mind.
As Dell rarely, if ever, had used animation in its marketing, the team decided to execute the campaign with animation for maximum stopping power. They then set about exploring possible animation styles, developing the characters, and fine-tuning the framework to support the many executions planned.
Enter Jake + Emmy, animated news anchors extraordinaire. A dynamic, evergreen campaign centers on these two characters – representing the “Modern” and “Proven” aspects of Dell’s portfolio – with an arresting news anchor format that allows maximum flexibility and the ability to refresh content in a natural way, as news updates happen frequently.
The campaign launched in February 2022 with three short-form videos featuring our characters covering various aspects of Dell data protection. These were posted on Dell’s website and social media, integrated into select Dell blog entries, and streamed on theCUBE’s broadcast channel. All executions pointed users to the data protection section of Dell’s main website.
After the videos gained traction, we created a digital e-guide executed as an interactive PDF that leveraged the familiar form of an on-screen streaming video guide interface to help users easily find the videos they were most interested in viewing. Jake + Emmy also have appeared in themed e-books, digital brochures, PowerPoint presentations, web and email banners, and webcast sponsorships. To date, the campaign has 15+ episodes covering all aspects of Dell data protection, the portfolio of products and services, and Dell’s distinct value propositions; videos have been shared globally and feature closed captioning in English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, and Korean.
Jake + Emmy have captured significant attention and results. Social posts that ran on LinkedIn and YouTube in 2023 as part of an ongoing Dell lead generation program outperformed standard Dell posts. Combined, our heroes’ posts garnered a 5.69% engagement rate, 4.61 organic impressions/views, and 1.08M paid views.
Our multi-format collateral and the success we’ve seen to date have helped establish and maintain Jake + Emmy as the faces of Dell data protection. Thanks to their popularity, Dell will continue to feature our fresh, animated news anchors as a compelling way to engage B2B audiences.
