Landlord Who?
Landlord Lou is real - and so is his mustache. A former co-worker of mine had Lou as his landlord while living in Halifax. The LandlordLou.ca campaign (which is almost a year old now) is, in my opinion, some of the best copy writing aimed at my demographic to come out of Canada. The original three videos (one, two, three) are absolutely hilarious.
Since those videos were released they’ve removed those videos and replaced them with new videos which aren’t as good. I had to hunt the original three down on YouTube from some random person’s uploads. The new videos are still funny but they aren’t as effective or clever as the originals.
They’ve started going for quirky dialogue that becomes more about character humour then about actually getting across the client (Killam Properties) message. Another sore spot has been the missed opportunity for distributing the campaign.
The web site allows you to join a facebook “group”, which is actually a “page” and add Lou as a friend. There is no ability to embed the videos in a blog or one click way to share them via Facebook, del.icio.us, etc. Stuff that’s considered the bare minimum of a digital campaign. And it shows. Four of the five videos on YouTube have under 1,000 views each.
If I hadn’t of been working for a web site that Colour paid to advertise this site on, I never would have heard of it. None of my apartment dwelling friends have heard of it.
For me this is an example of a fantastic idea, exceptional copy writing and fairly good production without much support. Here’s hoping they smarten up and realize the true potential of this campaign before it’s first birthday.
Client: Killam Properties
Agency: Colour
