Many great campaigns begin with a simple idea, or rather a question. In the case of insect killer Doom’s new campaign, the question is “What is the actual power of Doom?”
The answer, according to TBWA, makers of the new Doom outdoor campaign, has been brought to life in the form of a billboard made entirely of shoes. The idea is that people have different ways of killing bugs; some use rolled up newspaper, some scream and call their better halves and some use shoes!
Vincent Osmond, copywriter at TBWA, says the idea was to create something “big and outdoors”. Osmond says the biggest challenge they faced is that “all insect killers do the same thing” and thus may not have unique selling points. So, they sought to amplify the power of Doom by using the number of “shoe stomps” it would take to do the work of a can of Doom.
The result is that, the residents of Johannesburg will wake up to a giant Doom billboard fitted to Noswell House, Braamfontein just opposite the main entrance to Wits University at Jan Smuts Avenue. Listeners of 
as well as readers of Drum magazine can win daily and weekly cash prizes by correctly guessing how many shoes make up the billboard. There is also a competition running on the Doom website.
The billboard is literally made up of a few thousand shoes in the colours of a Doom can. The painstaking task of reproducing the can using shoes fell to Jade Manning, art director at TBWA. Manning has had to oversee the process of having the shoes dipped in the various colours of a Doom can and assembled to reproduce the iconic insect killer, which has been sold in South Africa for over 50 years.
The billboard is made up of 20 panels, measures 22m by 9m and uses a 24 colour palette to replicate the finer details of the can. Manning says his first challenge was finding a suitable location. The Braamfontein spot was chosen as much for its slow moving traffic as it was for its pedestrian traffic of Wits University students and the office workers who populate Braamfontein.
The next challenge was sourcing shoes, and the task fell to account director, Vanessa Maselwa who found a supplier that was willing to throw in all the surplus shoes they had: from the odd shoe to ones with factory defects and a few hundred good pairs. Although shoes are the central element of the campaign, the team also produced print versions of the Doom can, separately using fly swatters and rolled up magazines again asking how many of each it would take to replace a can of Doom.
The extension of the campaign is a drive to donate an equal number of school shoes, but not the spray painted ones, to specially identified and deserving underprivileged beneficiaries.
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