Peter’s rule is if something’s collecting dust, just sell it. Sarah, Peter’s ex-wife, just sold his golf clubs online.
These fictional characters, along with fellow faux couple Amy and Matt, are at the core of a new campaign in Toronto and Halifax for MetroClassifieds.ca, the online home for daily news group Metro‘s buying and selling activities, and its in-paper counterpart.
“We wanted to get people used to using Metro as their source for classifieds, be it on our website or in-paper,” said Laila Hakim, art director for Metro English Canada. The campaign was created in-house by the creative services department under Hakim’s guidance.
The campaign is based on the stories of Sarah and Peter, who have split up, and Amy and Matt, a young couple just starting their lives together. Sarah and Peter are looking to get rid of things so they can downsize while love struck Amy and Matt are selling their individual possessions and buying new things as a couple.
The idea, said Hakim, stemmed from a Metro International initiative from a few years back in which Sarah and Peter dolls were given out to agencies in a B2B initiative about Metro‘s demographic. “I said, ‘Why don’t we use Sarah and Peter for this and make it a story?’”
When users go to MetroClassifieds.ca, they can read the ongoing stories of the two duos, which Hakim said will be updated internally. “With Sarah and Peter we’re playing on the upper end of our readership, which is in their 40s, and with Amy and Matt we’re playing on the young professionals, aged 22 and up, who are just finishing school, starting jobs and living together.”
The campaign kicked off with full-page ads that ran in Metro newspapers and Metro Play, the company’s free daily filled with games, from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11. The “Free Love” ads played on the Valentine’s Day theme. “People could send in little love notes, so it was like we were giving out ‘free love,'” said Hakim, since some readers’ notes were published at no charge.
In the print ads, Sarah pondered whether it was too soon to sell her wedding band. Readers were prompted to learn more about her story on the website. “It’s kind of soap opera-ish,” said Hakim. “You want to watch them to see what happens next. The idea is to give it some legs so that no matter where Amy and Matt or Sarah and Peter are in their lives together, they can always sell something or buy something at MetroClassifieds.ca.”
Ads for MetroClassifieds.ca are also running on the site itself as well as MetroNews.ca. In addition to the online and print ads, Metro put up outdoor signage for the campaign in Gateway Newstands around the Greater Toronto Area and in ferry terminal and on transit postings around Halifax.
