As a brand, Victorinox prides itself on seeking well-thought out solutions to everyday challenges. We faced a challenge of our own: how to advertise something you are actually not allowed to advertise?

The Swiss Army Knife is our most iconic product, but it is classed as a weapon by Meta, meaning that paid advertising of our famous red knife is not permitted.

I created a briefing that summed up this challenge and submitted it to the Creative Impact competition, run jointly by Meta and Publicis Zürich. My brief was chosen as the winner and we received our own custom-made ad campaign, along with a paid ad spend sponsored by Meta.

The solution? A campaign whose success lies in its very simplicity. You don’t show the product. Just the benefit.

The resulting Brand Lift Study confirmed a whopping 11.3% increase in ad recall, as opposed to a retail benchmark of 5.6%. This means that not only did we find an elegant workaround for an ad restriction, but we also achieved double-digit ad recall without leading with the brand or the product.

The ads generated 7.16 million impressions as well as signficant buzz on LinkedIn and received ad press coverage.