Smirnoff – the Vodka producer – used steam jets and stencils to decorate a busy underpass in Leeds without prior permission form the Government. Stylish slogans and catchphrases were added to the underpass in attempt to promote Smirnoff Ice (alco-pop) to the young public.
However, the Government were soon on the case, branding Smirnoff’s guerrilla campaign as “vandalism” and have slapped a cleaning fine on the company which is expected to cost several thousand pounds.
Smirnoff apologised for their failure to ask for permission and have accepted to clean the underpass once their campaign has finished.
Our Assessment: It is always important to get prior permission from the Government if you are to perform such a task. However, Smirnoff have been lucky to negotiate leaving the “art work” until their campaign has finished accepting to pick up the cleaning bill at the end.
The success will depend on the sales it has made in relation to their cleaning bill. However, I’m sure that being in a busy underpass in a large city will certainly have tipped the balance in their favor.
October 2002: Acclaim Entertainment
Acclaim Entertainment – a computer game company – introduced a marketing scheme to promote the release of their latest motor car racing game: Burnout 2.
The game, released on 11th October 2002, was promoted with Acclaim vowing to pay for any speeding fines issued on that particular date. Unsurprisingly, the Department of Transport immediately hit back insisting that the promotion would only encourage unnecessary speeding and dangerous driving.
Acclaim said that they thought the idea was a good way to “ease the financial pain” for motorists who were fined.
Our Assessment: Although the scheme itself was not illegal, the proposal of paying for fines may encourage people to break the law. This raised much opposition from the Department of Transport and from many of the public: although some people actually favoured the scheme…boy racers?! However, the extent to which the scheme was covered in the media certainly marketed the game alone. Based on this media coverage, was the scheme a success? I think so!
September 2002: Midland Mainline
A guerrilla marketing scheme performed by Midland Mainline, has caused a potential upset amongst the public. An intended targeted mail shot saw thousands of people receiving a promotion who may well feel that they have caused an illegal driving offence on first viewing.
The mail was in the form of a parking offence ticket, inside a transparent polythene envelope, in its realistic orange colour with the bolded words ‘PARKING OFFENCE NOTICE’ written clearly on the front. Below these words is what appears to be a stamp branding the words ‘City of London’.
For those people that had visited London in their car recently would have immediately jumped to the conclusion that they have been fined for an illegal parking offence: the over-riding thought being that you parked within a restricted area on Midland Mainline premises. For those that had not visited London, they can only be too curious about what the details suggest on the inside. Either way, the mail shot has potential to cause an instant gut feeling from both sides.
On opening it is clear that the details on the inside, again written in realistic printed handwriting, are not yours (due to a fictitious scenario). Immediately, to all people, it may cause a reaction to believe that the ‘real’ offender’s details have been sent to the wrong address. To some people, the worrying thought is that the ‘real’ offender has registered the car to their address: therefore suggesting that the car (a BMW in this case) has been stolen or purchased illegally.
After a few minutes of worrying, it is now that the reader may start to read the rest of the information printed on the lower half of the ticket and on the reverse. This is where it becomes clear that the mail shot is not a parking offence notice. Yet again, the company information of Midland Mainline has been consistent it its presentation: looking just like how you would expect the finer details of a parking offence to appear.
Our Assessment: The lesson to be learnt from this is that successful guerrilla marketing should get the attention of the public in a way that they will be impressed by, enjoy, amused by…you get the picture. It should not be performed to an extent where it can cause upset or give people unnecessary pressure to get their attention. We hope that Midland Mainline will revise their tactics in future marketing schemes…for their sake and for ours.
August 2002: Vodafone
A good example of guerrilla marketing happened in August 2002 where the leading mobile phone company – Vodafone – endorsed two men to ‘streak’ at an International Rugby game with the corporate logo painted on their backs. As you can imagine, not only did the couple find themselves in big trouble, but Vodafone also landed themselves in the frame for legal action.
Our Assessment: Illegal stunts do work because they will (or more than often do) get the attention of the public through the media, but for a small business, it is fair to say this is not the most effective (and legal!) approach for marketing your business!
Over the course of the last decade, an array of viral marketing examples have come and gone with varying degrees of success.
Though the term “viral” infers that the campaign is organic and self-replicating, marketers and big-name brands have begun to attempt manufacturing viral content in the hopes of increasing their brand awareness or product sales. Some feel that viral content cannot be manufactured and is only the product of organic and unpredictable forces, while a growing number of others feel that they can predict what people will be interested in, how they will share that content, and ultimately what will become viral. Though the debate rages on, the fact remains that viral marketing has evolved over the course of the last decade from a rather obscure Internet phenomenon to a massive, multi-million dollar marketing tool employed by agencies and brands the world over. With that said, let’s explore some of the better examples of viral marketing in the last decade.
Though I know that we are looking at a decade of viral marketing, a look back at the history of online marketing efforts must include Hotmail. In 1996, Hotmail was a particulary unique email service in that it was free, could be accessed anywhere, and would allow the user to have multiple accounts. One of the interesting things Hotmail did was it would attach the message “Get your free email at Hotmail” at the bottom of every email sent by a Hotmail user. Once the receiving user clicked on the word “Hotmail” they were taken to Hotmail’s homepage where the free email service was further explained. The plan, original at the time, worked. By 1998, Hotmail had accumulated 12 million subscribers. Hotmail eventually sold to Microsoft for a cool $400 million. Not bad!
The Blair Witch Project was released on July 14, 1999. The film cost a about $350,000 to produce and went on to gross nearly $250 million worldwide, giving it the highest profit-to-cost ratio of any film in history. The incredible success of the film could be attributed to its unique website that effectively blurred the lines between fact and fiction. The website, that still exists today, spoke convincingly of the mythology behind the Blair Witch, contained a realistic photo of the three filmmakers/stars with a caption that the photo was taken “less than a week before their disappearance,” along with a sideshow of other rather generic, yet real photos that made many believe that this site was actually authentic. The gimmick worked!
This was one of a series of ads by John West Salmon that appeared on the Internet in late 2000. Since their groundbreaking debut, the “Bear Fight” videos have gone on to attract an astonishing 300 million Internet views according to the BBC, and it is not difficult to see why. It’s hand-held, low budget, realistic feel would become synonymous with the term “viral” for years to come.
2001
BMW
BMW launched a series of eight high-cost, high-production short films released on BMW’s website. The films were produced and directed by such acclaimed filmmakers as David Fincher and Guy Richie and starred actors such as Don Cheadle, Clive Owen, and even Madonna. Within the first four months of release, the films attracted over 11 million views and sent BMW sells up 12% in 2001 alone. The success of the BMW series has prompted many other car manufacturers such as Nissan to adopt a similar internet-based strategy.
It is not difficult to see how this glossy ad by risque lingerie brand Agent Provocateur became an Internet sensation. At the height of her global career comeback, Australian pop star Kylie Minogue left little to the imagination in this salacious, yet effective promotional stunt.
XBox’s shocking and provocative 2002 ad raised eyebrows across Europe when it appeared on the web. The ad has been described as “graphic,” “disturbing,” and even “morbid” by some; “interesting” and “innovative” by others. Whatever the proper description, Microsoft continues to generate buzz around the world for this pithy ad.
2002 FIFA World Cup
During the 2002 World Cup, a doctored photo appeared on the cover of the British newspaper “The Mirror.” The photo depicted members of the Argentinian defense with women’s handbags in front of a goal. The photo instantly made the rounds on the Internet, ultimately becoming one of the most shared photos of all time. Though the stunt was not a direct marketing ploy of the FIFA World Cup establishment, the shared photo helped to further heighten the already global prestige of the event.
Kraft
In an effort to build up their online presence, Kraft launched a branded microsite called “Cheesy Movies.” The site, which corresponded with Kraft’s much larger back-to-school promotions, allowed participants to create an account and develop their own animated movies up to 25 seconds long. The short films featured an array of different props and characters for participants to work with and manipulate. The microsite was a hit with both kids and parents. Thousands of movies were created with each participant spending on average between 30 minutes and an hour on the site.
Swedish furniture magnate Ikea released this surprisingly scandalous ad to the Internet with the intent of promoting their new line of storage products. Marketers wanted to make sure that customers didn’t leave, ahem, personal items lying around the house, lest it fall into the wrong hands. Better “tidy up.”
2003
Trojan Condoms
Trojan Condoms launched a website called Trojan Games in 2003 which followed a series of Olympic-styles events based on sexual performance. The various Trojan Games videos have been viewed over 300 million times and have helped to, ahem, “stimulate” public discussion about the brand.
The Subservient Chicken for Burger King was introduced in 2004. The branded micro site consisted of an interactive web cam that filmed a person dressed in a chicken costume who would perform certain acts the user typed into the site. Users flocked to the site in droves, accumulating more than 15 million visits in the first 5 days. Today, the site has attracted over 450 million hits; however, that does not mean that it has been a success. The provocative, yet creepy site is amusing and a great way to waste time, but does it really make Burger King’s soggy fries taste any better? Does it make the fast food chain hip and edgy, or shady and desperate? I think a little of both.
The Australian beer company, Carlton Draught, wanted to produce an ad that would grab the attention of the world. The result: “The Big Ad.” The ad went viral, forcing the beer company to scale back its broadcast television ambitions due to risk of over-exposure. Within 24 hours of its release, the ad attracted more than 162,000 views, and after two weeks it had garnered over one million views.
The Berlitz Language School hoped to raise its company profile by releasing a series of humorous yet simple ads to the Internet. Their efforts generated an international windfall of attention that has helped to place the often-controversial school as a leading second-language learning institution.
Smirnoff wanted to play off of its preppy reputation to promote the launch of Raw Tea, a new line of alcoholic malt beverages. To do this, they released a music video called “Tea Partay” to the product’s microsite. The video eventually made it over to YouTube where it has attracted nearly 5 million views. The popularity of the video inspired the marketers at Smirnoff to expand Raw Tea’s website to include follow-up videos and online contests in order to make the site more interactive.
Nike has become a master of viral marketing over the years, but this 2006 ad staring Brazilian soccer superstar Ronaldinho has emerged as one of the greatest viral ads of all time. The “is it real, or is it doctored” quality of the ad caused many viewers to send the clip to friends to get a second opinion on whether the feat was real or computer generated. As of today, the amateur-looking clip has generated more than 30 million views on YouTube and positioned itself as one of the most successful and acclaimed viral ads of all time.
This ad by Dove entitled “Evolution” was one of the first of a series of self-esteem related ads released to the Internet. The short 75-second clip generated more than 44,000 views within its first day of release, more than 1,700,000 views with the first month, and more than 12,000,000 views within the first year. The ad is especially noted for the amount of discussion it generated on such broadcast television shows as “The View,” “Good Morning America,” and “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” It has been estimated that the clip has generated more than $150 million worth of “free advertising” due to its mainstream exposure. It is emotional, clean, beautiful, and considered by many to be a classic.
Ecko clothing brand released this video in support of the company’s “Still Free” campaign. Again, the success of this video was in large part due to the “did they or didn’t they” debate the clip generated. The “under-cover” ad made even the United States Air Force publicly question whether or not the group who shot the clip did, in fact, breach security at Andrews AFB and spray graffiti along the left wing engine of Air Force One. Though the stunt turned out to be a hoax, the “did they or didn’t they” debates swirling around the incident transformed the “Still Free” slogan from a mere tag line into a national news headline.
Philips pushed the envelop of decency with their Shave Everywhere site that promoted Bodygroom, a new product by Philips. The site and its accompanying video ad made light of a very, shall we say, uncomfortable topic for men to discuss. The campaign generated millions of views and visits to the Shave Everywhere site and has given the electronics company an unexpectedly “edgy” persona. The “Tell a Friend” feature on the bottom right hand corner of the site was particularly useful in helping the campaign make the Internet rounds.
Pure talent. That is literally all it took to make GuitarMasterPro.net, a somewhat obscure online guitar lesson service, become an international sensation. In 2006, the company released this poorly produced, seemingly uncreative video of one its students playing an electric guitar version of “Pachelbel’s Canon.” The talent of the 21-year-old prompted an international video sharing bonanza that has resulted in more than 60 million views on YouTube; hence, becoming one of the site’s most-viewed submissions. The young guitarist said simply in his description box on YouTube, “I learned to play guitar with GuitarMasterPro.net.” Now that’s proof!
The ad features scantily-clad women, automobile racing, shaky camera work, and a touch of intrigue. Though the ad is obviously contrived and not particularly interesting or shocking (and waaayyyy too long), it still manages to make a tax company seem mildly interesting to some – a feat unto itself. The spot has gained nation-wide attention, nearly 200,000 views on YouTube, and been featured on ESPN, CNN Headline News, NBC’s Today, SportsIllustrated.com, and Sportingnews.com.
The title alone screams viral. The b-movie concept attracted instant attention throughout the web once the general plot of the film was made public. The title and eventual trailer inspired countless mock-trailers, spin-off websites, and YouTube-broadcast parodies. Everyone talked about Snakes on a Plane, but then no one went to see it. The much-hyped film was a box office dud. The lesson here – even if a great viral campaign takes off, the product being sold must also be interesting. Maybe Burger King should take note!
Utah-based company, Blendtec, began distributing a series of infomercials under the title “Will it Blend?”. In the brief segments, the company’s co-founder, Tom Dickson, blends an assortment of items including golf balls, marbles, and cell phones to demonstrate the strength and durability of his blenders. The “cheesy” infomercials became an instant sensation garnering more then 100 million online views between the Blendtec website and YouTube. Since the launch of these videos, Blendtec has seen an “exponential increase in sales” including a five fold increase in online revenue.
Jack Links Beef Jerky struck online gold with the release of a series of YouTube videos entitled “Messin’ with Sasquatch.” The clips follow the exploits of people traveling through the woods who eventually run across the mysterious Sasquatch and proceed to “mess” with him. The videos were a viral sensation on YouTube that led many potential customers to the company’s equally entertaining website. The site contains a link that allows the user to “explore the Sasquatch’s world” as well as an extraordinarily elaborate microsite, livingsasquatch.com, that allows the user to create their own digital Sasquatch film.
To promote their concept album “Year Zero,” US rock group Nine Inch Nails released a rather mysterious t-shirt with the phrase “I am trying to believe.” The phrase was a registered URL that connected to other websites that described a dystopian world based in the year 0000. These sites ultimately led users to an original alternate reality game (ARG) chronicling the year 2022, when America was “reborn” and year O occurs. The game consisted of a series of websites, phone numbers, emails, videos, MP3s, murals, and other media that expanded upon the storyline woven through the album. The album went on to sell nearly 200,000 copies within the first week, peaking at #2 on the Billboard charts.
In early 2007, Quiksilver released a video to the Internet that featured a group of kids in a non-specified European location throwing dynamite into a river and then surfing the manufactured wave. Though the ad turned out to be a fake, the realism and “explosive” nature of the stunt caused more than 10 million viewers globally to flock to the 80-second video clip within the first month of its release. What is most interesting about this viral stunt is that the logo and company name both appear at the end of the ad. It is clear that this is an ad of some sort, is connected to Quiksilver, and is probably a fake. However, the clip still generated a ton of buzz among the very skeptical YouTube generation.
In contrast to my previous pick, the Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment was a viral sensation produced completely independent of either the Coke or Mentos brands. Though “the exploding Cokes” had already been an online phenomenon well before 2007, the release of the “Diet Coke and Mentos Experiment” helped to generate more than 10 million YouTube views and raise the profile of the experiment beyond just a passing fad and into the annals of Internet lore. Both Coke and Mentos gained a considerable amount of brand awareness from the clip that has emerged as one of the most iconic viral sensations of the past decade.
The “Whopper Freakout” ads again played off of the the typical YouTube memes of grainy video, amaturish feel, and hidden camera quality to illustrate how people would react if the Whopper, the signature offering at Burger King, was removed from the menu. The ads insist that the customers are “real” and the reactions are “authentic,” but they certainly appear to be VERY staged. The campaign would be more interesting if the reactions were convincing. Everything seems either under-cooked, over-cooked, or just plain forced. However, with a slow, but steady increase in sales following the campaign, who am I to judge?
One of the WWE’s biggest stars, Chris Jericho, left the WWE in 2005 in dramatic fashion. For two years, there was rabid speculation that he would return to the ring, but when and how? To tap into this chatter, the WWE began releasing a series of brief 15-second videos to the Internet containing cryptic binary code hinting at the wrestler’s return.The cryptic messages ignited the blogosphere as fans attempted to decode the videos. The hype led up to Jericho’s eventual return In November 2007, an event that generated huge ratings for the USA network as well as helping Jericho himself become a cross-over celebrity outside the ring.
Cadbury’s wildly popular “Gorilla” campaign is solid evidence that clever advertising can create short memories. At the start of 2007, Cadbury was in the midst of a PR nightmare after a major Salmonella outbreak that occured at one of Cadbury’s factories. Then, in 2007, Cadbury launched its “Gorilla” campaign to reignite interest in the company. The ad was a huge success on broadcast television and instantly made its way to the web. After its first week on Youtube, the clip received over 500,000 views. By the end of 2007, the clip had been viewed over 6 million times online. Approximately 70 Facebook groups have been created celebrating the campaign, as well as a host of parodies and spin-offs. Following the release of the campaign, YouGov reported that 20% more people looked favorably on the brand than before. The campaign’s viral presence helped to increase sales around the world from Britain, to South Africa, to Australia and New Zealand.
In a bid to boost sales of season tickets for the club’s soccer team, Sporting Portugal set up a microsite for customers interested in purchasing tickets. The site requested that the user enter his/her name and phone number. Once the user did this, the screen would change to a video of the soccer team and coach apparently in the midst of a pep talk. The coach would then stop, call the user who just entered his/her information, and then tell him/her that the team could not start the season until the user had purchased season tickets. Though I could not find any data on how ticket sales fared for the 2007 season, is was documented that the microsite recieved nearly 200,000 pageviews in less than 24 hours after launching. The ingenious concept further personalized a sport that is already a European obsession.
Ray-Ban created a viral stir with the release of a string of YouTube-bait videos in 2007. The videos (there have been 17 released since 2007) were released on their branded YouTube channel promoting their Never Hide campaign. The channel presently has over 3,100 subscribers and three of the videos have generated over 1 million views. The most popular Never Hide clip to date, “Guy Catches Glasses with Face,” has attracted over 4.3 million views and continues to grow in popularity. All of the clips capitalize on the WTF nature of many YouTube videos, while also playing on the “is that real or fake” meme that has become a viral staple. Since the debut of the online ads, sales of Ray-Ban Wayfarers (the style most represented in the ads) have skyrocketed. Sales in 2007 were up 231%, while 2008 sales were up 40%.
The Halo game series was one of the first products to incorporate alternate reality games (ARG) into the very core of its marketing efforts. An ARG is an interactive narrative that uses the real world as a platform to tell a story across mulitple forms of media. The game is fully controlled by the users. Halo 3’s ARG “Iris” attracted millions of users and helped the video game achieve the biggest entertainment debut in history – collecting more than $170 million in the first few days of release.
Barack Obama’s presidential win had about as much to do with social media and viral marketing skills as it did with his Harvard Law degree or stance on an array of political issues. Obama got the youth to vote, a task many thought impossible. He accomplished this by strategically tapping into nearly every major social media outlet. At the time of Obama’s inauguration in January 2009, the President had 13 million people on his email list, 3 million online donors, 5 million friends on more than 15 different social networking sits including 3 million friends on Facebook, 8.5 million monthly visitors to MyBarackObama.com, nearly 2,000 official YouTube videos (with more than 80 million views and 135,000 subscribers), and more than 3 million people signed up for his text messaging program. Now, that is how you win an election.
Office Max’s “Elf Yourself” campaign that launched in December 2007 was the fastest growing site of that month attracting more than 39 million unique visitors in the U.S. alone. That initial holiday campaign went on to attract a total of 100 million unique visitors worldwide. The typical user stayed on the site for approximately 7.5 minutes. The success of the 2007 campaign encouraged Office Max to roll out the dancing elves in 2008 where it was an even greater success. Does anyone know what Office Depot was doing the past two holiday seasons? I didn’t think so.
“Cloverfield,” before it was released in January 2008, was one of the most buzzed about films of 2007. In fact, the initial teaser trailer shown before the 2007 “Transformers” film did not even reveal the film’s title, but simply ended with a website (1-18-08.com), further encouraging the web-driven marketing of the film. MySpace pages were created for many of the movie’s fictional characters, as well as for the fictional companies mentioned in the film. This maze of viral bait helped the film achieve the biggest January opening in history. “Cloverfield,” which was produced for $25 million, went on to gross more than $170 million worldwide.
Keeping in the same vein as “Cloverfield,” “The Dark Knight” took a similar approach in it’s viral efforts. One of the first promotional stunts involved a fake website for Harvey Dent’s (one of the main characters in the film) fictional campaign for District Attorney. Posters stating, “I Believe in Harvey Dent” were shareable and able to be emailed to friends. Once the other person received the email, the poster would slowly change to reveal the image of The Joker. Once the image was revealed, The Joker’s face was quickly replaced by the text, “see you in December.” Other websites attached to the film allowed for users to vote for various public offices throughout Gotham. More viral elements included a website devoted to the fictional newspaper “The Gotham Times” (which led to numerous other website that revealed info about the film) and the launching of WhySoSerious.com which revealed more images of The Joker as well as the first teaser trailer. Such elements combined with the stellar reviews of the film and breathtaking performance of the late Heath Ledger helped the film to gross more than $1 billion dollars worldwide.
In order to promote “Guitar Hero World Tour,” the makers of the addictive game released this three-and-a-half minute clip to YouTube. The video generated considerable buzz on YouTube as it went on to rack up more than 2 million views. Even after it was revealed that this was a professionally made video, most viewers conceded that it was still a pretty cool stunt. Interestingly enough, this seemingly obscure video generated more YouTube views then the “professionally” produced Guitar Hero ad staring German supermodel Heidi Klum.
Honda produced the first ever live commerical on British television. The more than three-minute commercial showed 19 skydivers jumping out of two planes more than 14,000 feet above the ground. The skydivers linked up to spell H-O-N-D-A in the sky. The British ad was a traditional television ad in Europe, but became a YouTube hit in the United States, generating over 400,000 views. Though the effectiveness of this commercial has been debated, it must be noted that the Accord became the best selling vehicle in America in April 2009 for the first time in its history. Coincidence?
Transport for London launched its “Do the Test” campaign in 2008 to raise awareness among vehicle drivers of cyclists on the road. The governmental body was only targeting 150,000 people around the London area; however, their brilliant video attracted many more. After the first month of the campaign, the video garnered over 5.5 million views. It became the 4th most popular video in the world according to the Video Viral Chart, the second most blogged about video in the world for March 2008, and has generated more than 6.7 million views on YouTube alone. That’s a lot more than 150,000 people!
With the release of “Meet the Spartans,” 20th Century Fox developed a microsite that allowed users to enter their name and upload a photo of themselves. The user would then be directed to a clip of Carmen Electra in the midst of an intervew about “Meet the Spartans.” The actress reveals that she is dating someone then shows off an interestingly placed tattoo and a photo of the lucky guy. That boyfriend turns out to be the person who entered his name and uploaded a photograph. The site received a considerable amount of traffic and helped the film to open at #1 at the US box office.
“Guys backflip into jeans” generated a staggering 2.5 million views on YouTube in only one week. As of June 23, the brief ad has been viewed more than 14 million times across an array of video-sharing sites. Though the ad has received a large amount of exposure, it also looks suspiciously like the Ray-Ban ad mentioned earlier. The concept is recycled, to say the least, but has still managed to attract considerable attention.
Vodafone’s ad campaign featuring the Zoozoo creatures have become an international sensation. Developed in India, the playful commericals have made their way to the internet and become viral hits. The campaign, “Make the Most of Now,” has become truly global as a result. The videos have collected millions of online views worldwide and firmly positioned the Zoozoo creatures as loveable global icons.
The Lonely Island, a comedy trio starring Adam Samberg of Saturday Night Live fame, distributes all of its videos via YouTube. In December 2008, the group released “Jizz in my Pants.” It was an instant pop culture phenomenon accumulating over 52 million views on YouTube and helping the single sell over 76,000 downloads within its first two weeks of avaliability. The single was eventually released to such international markets as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the UK. In the US alone, the YouTube exposure helped the debut album sell more than 200,000 copies. Not bad for a little known comedy troupe.
The marketing surrounding “S. Darko,” the sequel to the cult classic “Donnie Darko,” consisted almost entirely of the gradual release of YouTube videos related to the plot of the sequel.The video efforts created only a minor stir on the web mostly because of how lazy it was. The “viral” campaign consisted of only 3 less-than-interesting videos.
The Australian Government promoted what they described simply as “the best job in the world” with a massively successful Internet campaign. The job is to be paid $100,000 for a 6-month contract to be caretaker of a series of islands in the Great Barrier Reef (off Australia’s coast). The point of this position is to have the person selected for the job broadcast weekly video blogs promoting the area. The promotion was a massive success. The Australian government broke the story via traditional media (Reuters) and then sustained the buzz over an array of online networks including YouTube, Ning, Twitter, and Facebook. The website for the contest received a million hits the day after its launch. Interestingly enough, the goal over the course of the year for the campaign was to receive just 400,000 hits. Furthermore, the campaign attracted over 34,000 applicants and generated over $70 million worth of global publicity. The promotion will continue throughout the year as the winner, UK citizen Ben Southall, will regularly post video blogs and promote the islands over an array of social networks.
Samsung’s clip of LED-illuminated sheep running around the Welsh countryside continues to generate interest throughout the Internet. The clip has attracted nearly 8.5 million views on YouTube and continues to be the topic of discussion on blogs across the web. The “is it real or not” quality proves once again to be YouTube gold.
The jury is still out on this one, but it deserves an honorable mention. In April of this year, Geico began a new Internet-based campaign to broaden their online presence. To do this, The Martin Agency plans to parody nine popular YouTube videos. The first of these involves the “Numa Numa” guy dancing to a remixed verson of “Somebody’s Watching Me.” The video has attracted nearly 2 million views on YouTube but has not been a runaway success. Only time will tell, but it appears as if Geico can do no wrong in the fickle world of online advertising.
So, what does this all mean?
Corporate America has adopted viral marketing tactics by the droves as a way to ignite and increase awareness of a product. Some companies have grown quite successful at producing content that goes viral, but they must be careful. Companies and agencies cannot flood the web with a string of would-be viral campaigns. They cannot overstay their welcome in a world constantly searching for that next “cool” thing. Viral content is interesting, provocative, limitless, original, and even groundbreaking. Companies and agencies must not presume that they can simply create this type of content, for they are not the final say in what becomes the next web sensation. You are.
Not every company has a multimillion dollar advertising budget to work with. And increasingly, even those that do are turning to more creative means of reaching their audiences. Many consumers have become averse to slick commercials and polished sales pitches over the years, causing savvy marketers to adapt with offbeat, attention-grabbing marketing campaigns. Following are 18 of the most memorable guerrilla marketing campaigns and what made them so effective.
Cingular’s “Dropped Calls” Guerilla Marketing Billboard
Few things irritate cell phone users as much as their calls being dropped mid-conversation. But rather than take to the airwaves, Cingular tackled the problem in true guerrilla spirit, and addressing this widely-felt problem in bold, dramatic, in-your-face billboard This ad, which portrayed a call being “dropped” onto the ground below, instantly arrested the attention of passers by and those far off who cannot help squinting to see what “that crazy looking billboard” was all about.
Folgers’ Steaming Coffee Cup Guerilla Marketing Example
Folgers took a page out of the guerrilla marketing playbook with this optical illusion of street art. Passersby on this city street see what appears to be a coffee mug embedded into the ground, emitting steam in your direction as you pass. Anyone who had decided to go without their morning brew will no doubt second guess themselves once they encounter this ad.
Oscar Meyer Wiener-Mobile Guerilla Marketing Example
Arguably the most famous in-your-face marketing campaign of all time is the Oscar Meyer wiener-mobile. Shaped as an enormous hot dog, the car makes its way across the nation, drawing attention from kids and adults alike as they watch the edible-looking vehicle lumber down the street. Entire songs have been written about the wiener-mobile, which has made appearances in TV shows and movies for decades since its launch.
Profit-making corporations are hardly the only ones utilizing guerrilla marketing strategies. France’sMédecins du Monde, for example, expressed its commitment to fighting homelessness by distributing hundreds of tents to Paris’ vagrants in a maneuver nicknamed “tent city.” The huge cluster of tents quickly commanded public attention, to which the French government responded by allocating $10 million for emergency housing in response to the demonstration.
Diesel’s Not a Dirty Word Guerilla Marketing
(Source)
Automaker Audi has had the daunting task of trying to sell diesel to the driving public as a viable and eco-friendly fuel, but on the strength of this ad, it has made quite a bit of headway. Operating under the tagline “Di*sel | It’s No Longer A Dirty Word”, Audi has aggressively marketed what is known as “clean diesel” to the marketplace according to GreenCarReports. Interestingly, the shift to clean diesel has also been sold as a means of achieving national energy independence – suggesting that Audi’s adoption of this tag line is not just a slick attempt to sell a car.
Some bright marketing manager at Nike knew that a huge soccer ball lodged into the side of a building would turn people’s heads. Perhaps designed to give the impression that soccer players would be infused with mind-blowing power if they used Nike balls, this is another prime example of creative marketing orchestrated in a way that appeals to the product’s very specific target audience, as well as everyone else.
Sometimes the best way to get people’s attention is to get right in their way. The marketing team at Red Bull kept this in mind when masterminding this “pit stop” in the middle of Time Square in New York City. While myriad other advertisers waged the war for consumer mind-share on billboards and street lamps, Red Bull’s pit stop arrested everyone’s attention who so much as walked by down the street. The promotion turned out to be a huge success for word-of-mouth longevity.
Superman Return’s Twisted Telephone Pole
Guerilla Marketing Example
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What better way to promote Superman Returns than by placing a twisted telephone pole in the middle of a busy city sidewalk? Even people with no interest in, or intention of seeing the movie, could not help but stop and inspect the pole. And, unlike commercials, it advertised the movie continuously at a fixed cost.
Some big companies avoid guerrilla marketing campaigns, as what seemed like creative tactics in the planning stage, can sometimes be considered controversial when implemented. The “Vodafone streakers” offer a case-in-point: two guys who ran out onto the field during a New Zealand vs. Austria rugby game wearing nothing but the company logo painted across their bodies. The resulting public outrage was so fierce that Vodafone’s CEO had to issue a public apology and, and subsequently donated $30,000 to a local charity aimed at reducing sports injuries. Inappropriate, maybe. Effective, arguably.
Kia Spend Less Guerilla Marketing Example
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Some take to the airwaves, some take to the streets, and some take to the skies. Kia did the latter two in its nationwide campaign aimed at convincing consumers to “spend less” – on its brand of cars, of course. Accompanying the more flashy airplane-drawn ads were fliers stuck onto telephone poles with tear-away strips containing Kia offers and prices. While these “cheap” methods are typically used to promote apartments and tag sales, Kia reported a nice sales boost from its localized, targeted campaigns that accompanied the fancier plane-with-flags approach.
Reynolds Wrap Garage Door Guerilla Marketing Example
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Advertisers are known for making some pretty over-the-top claims about the products, but few pitches top the absurdity of using “heavy duty” Reynolds aluminum foil as a garage door. As the caption under the photograph states, the aluminum foil was installed in order to “demonstrate the product’s strength and toughness.” Cute advertising (and obviously effective since we’re still talking about it years later), though we question how long it would’ve withstood a serious attempt at breaking and entering.
It’s tough to walk through a larger city these days without seeing one of the now famous Axe “running” ads. Plastered around cities across America, the ad suggests how women will flock to Axe wearers, due to the product line’s chick-magnet scents. Judging by brand’s recent popularity, the ads appear effective.
MeowMix Mobile Guerilla Marketing
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Taking a page out of Oscar-Meyer playbook, cat food manufacturer Meow Mix developed the Meow Mix Mobile (pictured above), to cruise around spreading brand awareness on local streets and highways. As if that weren’t enough, Meow Mix also ran a reality TV show that put web-cams into a house full of cats so America could see what cats “really” do when people are not around.
Half.com, Oregon Guerilla Marketing Example
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Perhaps no advertiser on this list went at it as aggressively as Half.com, who actually persuaded (and paid) an entire city to adopt “Half.com” as its new name. The move was a runaway success for Halfway.com, which, as Entrepreneur.com notes, earned a $300 million buyout from eBay in 2000 just five months following IPO. “Half the town”, however, was disgruntled with the web retailer for allegedly breaking promises made at the outset of the bizarre naming deal.
One of the most recognizable of all campaigns is that of Goodyear. Seen on television, and throughout cities across America, the Goodyear blimp is a classic conversation starter, something that begs to be pointed out to anyone you happen to be walking, driving, biking, or talking with at the time it hovers overhead. The publicity generated for the tire company by this blimp over the years is incalculable and has inspired countless ripoffs ever since.
Despite its noble goal of erecting the world’s tallest (real) frozen treat, Snapple’s foray into guerrilla marketing did not end well. After being pulled into upright position by a crane, the 80 degree heat rapidly began to melt the gigantic dessert, sending a veritable flood of strawberry-kiwi-flavored liquid down onto the streets of Manhattan. Insert your “sticky situation” joke here.
Sony Playstation Graffiti Guerilla Marketing Campaign
In a truly brave move, Sony Corporation paid graffiti artists to adorn brick walls with Sony-themed images around New York City in attempt to drum buzz about the then-forthcoming PSP. While reaction to the street ads have been mixed, any company willing to knowingly break the law to advertise its product in such a creative manner (especially one as big as Sony) deserves mention in an article like ours.
Taco Liberty Bell Guerilla Marketing Campaign
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Rumor had it in the mid-90’s that Taco Bell had purchased the Liberty Bell and shamelessly re-named this important piece of American history as “The Taco Liberty Bell.” Hysteria was drummed up through ads like this (above), announcing the transaction in a convincing, matter-of-fact way. Some initially panicked, but in the end, everyone got that it was just a publicity stunt by the fast food chain – arguably a successful one.
Anando Milk, from India, wanted to increase milk consumption among children, so the McCann Erikson Agency came up with this amazingly creative ad placed on one of Mumbai’s buildings, where you can see a child strong enough –a benefit of the milk, of course– to move part of the building itself.
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This creative ad campaign for Powerhouse Gym, revolves a construction site giving it a sense of interaction with everyday elements to the public eye.
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This idea for Allstate auto insurance features an actual car teetering on the edge of the parking garage in Marina Towers, a famous landmark in the center of downtown Chicago.
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The Haitong Building –a well known Shanghai landmark– has a unique curved top, so this building ad, by Firstell Communications Agency, was placed on the opposite building, creating the ilussion that the powerful gust from a Midea electric fan has caused the wave design.
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“Wash me” says this clever ad for Alco’s cleaning products, created by Alma Agency in Chile.
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Nike’s “Run Through The Wall” ad spans two buildings: the first one’s got a cracked image of the building in the shape of the running man, while the second one has the actual runner with the Nike logo.
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A fascinating ad for LEGO, made by Ogilvy & Mather agency in Santiago, Chile.
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To demonstrate Pantene’s claim of “really strong hair”, three rapunzel-style stunts were staged in downtown Toronto for two days, where live male climbers went up over three different oversized ponytails.
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As wrapping the female students’ dormitory in the shape of a calendar and using Axe for a month throughout March, they aimed for the expression that a new female can be met on a daily basis, to promote the brand image and preference for Axe.
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Placed outside London’s Heathrow Terminal 1, the ad fits in with Vodafone’s strategy of “Make the most of now”.
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The use of stickers in advertising is not only an innovative way to attract attention, it is also an extremely cost-effective way to create a lasting impression. Many companies, whose only form of advertising is stickers, have seen an increase in business by as much as 550%. The great thing about these stickers is that they can be easily customized and this is probably one of the main reasons why they have become so popular. In this post, we’ve collected some of the most striking and creative examples of stickers in advertising. What do you think of these type of adverts? Please feel free to share other examples that you may know of in the comments’ section below.
Apple Store Window Guerrilla Marketing Example
The broken-glass sticker was placed on the window of an Apple Store to promote the iPod Hi-Fi.
Cillit BANG “Clean Coin” Guerrilla Marketing Example
The househould cleaning product Cillit BANG placed transparent stickers on 5 Cent coins they gave out as change to consumers, that were half way cleaned by Cillit BANG and half way dirty.
BARCORAIA: 3 MILLION DOLLAR CATCH MARKETING EXAMPLE
Creative advertising for the TV show Million Dollar Catch by placing stickers at either end of the lanes.
TV2 “Batman Stickers” Guerrilla Marketing Example
In honor of the launch of Batman Begins on TV2, stickers were placed on footpath lights, so that the bat signal was created when the lights were on.
Brastemp “Stainless” Guerrilla Marketing Example
Brastemp Stainless placed outlines of the shape of their products, on shopping center elevators.
Bubble Hair Salon and Spa Guerrilla Marketing Example
Bubble Hair Salon and Spa placed a temporary sticker on the road to recreate a comb-shaped zebra-crossing adjacent to the salon.
Road Safety Bus Advertisement Guerilla Marketing Example
This sticker was placed on the front of a bus to encourage pedestrians to look both ways before crossing!
Folgers coffee: Manhole Guerilla Marketing Example
Stickers with an aerial view of a coffee mug were placed on top of steaming manholes all over Manhattan. Small holes in the sticker allowed the steam to exit the drainage system.
Revista Demolicion Guerilla Marketing Example
Surfboard-shaped stickers were placed on moving walkways to promote extreme sport magazine Demolicion.
Dermagraphic Tattoo Guerilla Marketing Example
Dermagraphic Tattoo’s placed stickers of tattoos in various bathroom and changing room mirrors so that people could line the tattoos up in the mirror to give the impression that they were actually on their skin, in order to promote their mission to “try before you buy a tattoo”. Below the tattoo was another sticker with the message.
Wilkinson Eggs Guerilla Marketing Example
Wilkinson Quattro Titanium placed transparent stickers of masculine faces on the eggs and put an advertising flyer with a promotion on the back in every box.
Elmex Lockers Guerilla Marketing Example
Elmex used two rows of lockers to create a mouth with teeth. Opening a locker gave the ilusion that there was a hole in one of them. To complete the experience, a product sample and additional information about the toothpaste and its benefits were waiting inside the locker. In one month 35.000-40.000 people were exposed to the message.
Folliderm Guerilla Marketing Example
Folliderm, a crand that prevents hair loss, used elevators in corporate offices and residential buildings to promote their company. A face of an man was stuck on the elevator door; such that his hair was stuck on one door and the rest of his face on the other. When the door opened, the hair pulled away. Another print was stuck in the inside of the elevator – where the man was shown bald. The line read: “Scared of losing your hair? Ask your doctor about Power 1+4″.
Gillette Guerilla Marketing Example
Outdoor ads in high-traffic Manhattan neighborhoods were tagged with bloody tissue stickers – making it appear that men in the ads had nicked themselves shaving.
Golden Holidays Guerilla Marketing Example
Stickers were placed onto the pull-down meal tray on-board selected Malaysia Airlines domestic flights making the captive audience “feel” their next holiday.
Greenpeace Guerilla Marketing Example
Floor Stickers that resembled puddles of water were placed on the streets of China to raise awareness of the huge problem of unsafe drinking water in China.
HomePlus Subway Guerilla Marketing Example
Stickers were applied to the subway station pillars in order to make them look like life-size HomePlus supermarket stands. The intended effect was to make the people entering the subway station feel like they were stepping into the HomePlus supermarket. No TV/Print ads were carried out for HomePlus. As a result of this unique outdoor campaign, the sales for the opening day exceeded the expected sales by 550%.
Restaurant-bar Le Cactus “Monday Hot Wings” Guerilla Marketing Example
Le Cactus restaurant-bar communicated the burning effect of spicy wings by putting stickers featuring the face of a men screaming on the rear window of taxis. The man’s tongue is superimposed on the central brake light, creating the effect of extreme heat.
Frontline Flea & Tick Spray “Crawling” Guerilla Marketing Example
Huge floor stickers placed in malls to promote their solution to pet flea problems.
Jobsintown.de Guerilla Marketing Example
Brilliant sticker advertising campaign that won prestigious awards and drew in a lot of website traffic.
Dressing for Pleasure Guerilla Marketing Example
The company, Dressing for Pleasure, a specialist in fetish wear put stickers of enticing rear ends on the bottoms of ketchup bottles. Thus inviting bar patrons to explore a completely different appetite while addressing their hunger.
Lay’s Installation Guerilla Marketing Example
People walking through Chicago’s Jackson Tunnel were greeted with an overhead installation of potatoes breaking through the ceiling tiles, along with a witty message: “Our potatoes are grown closer than you may think.”
Lifebroker Guerilla Marketing Example
To promote Lifebroker and the benefits of life insurance, McCann Melbourne put fallen safes in the middle of office foyers to get people to read the sticker above.
Meiji Guerilla Marketing Example
Meiji created life-sized stickers of a sumo wrestler, a rugby player, a judokan and a wrestler. These stickers were affixed on the revolving doors of buildings to interact with their consumers. Once they pushed against the door, it seemed like these sportsmen push back and don’t allow them to come in. But of course, the door opened in the usual way. The copy line says simply “Milk makes you stronger. Meiji.”
Pedigree Guerilla Marketing Example
Pedigree placed stickers in the shape of a dog barge in front of supermarkets and pet stores. These stickers were treated with essence of Pedigree dog food and therefore irresistible for every dog passing by. They ran towards the sticker and began to lick, sniff and wagged their tails, so their owners immediately knew what to buy.
Pert Plus Shampoo Guerilla Marketing Example
Pert Plus Shampoo placed transparent waterproof sticker in various public bathrooms, that simulated a hair reaching out from the drain struggling to avoid being flushed in by the water.
Pirates of the Caribbean Guerilla Marketing Example
Clever sand stickers were placed on diving boards of swimming pools to promote thePirates of the Caribbean movie.
All-China Women’s Federation “Door” Guerilla Marketing Example
This ambient poster appeared on swinging doors in offices and shopping malls to raise awareness of domestic violence in China.
Israel Cancer Association Guerilla Marketing Example
The Israel Cancer Association placed framed stickers around real stains on sidewalks near the beaches of Israel, to encourage people to get check-ups if they notice unusual spots/stains on their bodies.
Pro Skates Skateboard Shop Guerilla Marketing Example
Pro Skates Skateboard Shop stuck removable vinyl stickers onto crosswalk sign around high schools and skate parks to turn our fellow walking man into a skateboarding dude.
SOSrainforests.com Interactive Stickers Guerilla Marketing Example
Interactive stickers on light switches in enterprises, schools and offices helped save energy and decrease global heating effects.
Sushi Roll “Sushi Train” Guerilla Marketing Example
Stickers of sushi meals were bonded at the handrails of an escalator.
Tyskie Guerilla Marketing Example
Tyskie placed beer mug stickers behind doors of restaurants and shops as part of their advertising campaign.
Unicef Landmine Stickers Guerilla Marketing Example
Landmine-stickers with self-adhesive topsides were placed on the floor. They were invisible until they stuck to your feet. While removing them, people discovered the landmine-picture on the bottom side and were informed that in many other countries they would have been mutilated at this moment.
hlx.com “Instant Vacation Floor” Guerilla Marketing Example
hlx.com’s promotion was aimed at bargain hunters who pick their travel destinations rather spontaneously. While they were waiting for boarding, their floor stickers gave them an impression of what their next vacation could be like – at a very reasonable price.
TV3 “Wipe out dryer” Guerilla Marketing Example
To promote Wipeout (a TV show where people wipe out on obstacle courses to win money) stickers were placed inside laundromat dryers to give people something to look at while they waited for their washing to dry
Wodzielak Driving School Guerilla Marketing Example
Special stickers with comments about films were attached to DVD boxes. At the same time, the stickers communicated the benefits of taking a course in the advertised school.
Vodafone “Bus window sticker” Guerilla Marketing Example
Promoting internet on your mobile phone by showing all the benefits of moving image and entertainment in a window sticker.
Zoo Safari Guerilla Marketing Example
To communicate that Zoo Safari is not a common zoo, because the animals run free just like in a safari, Zoo Safari created electrostatic stickers containing animal picture that can be placed on the windshield of parked cars to make the visitor imagine what it would feel like to be so close to a wild animal.
As creative thinkers we have to think of new and exciting ways to grab people’s attention every day. Sometimes it is by going bigger. Perhaps it’s by coming up with a better social media marketing strategy.
In order to find some creative advertising inspiration, I decided to search the web for the best examples of guerrilla marketing I could find. Below you’ll find 122 examples of creative marketing campaigns.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, guerrilla marketing, you can find a detailed explanation on our ‘What is Guerrilla Marketing‘ page.
Here are some other great compilation articles we think you might enjoy!
Each year, America spends about $250 billion on marketing and advertising — more than the entire GDP of Thailand. Too bad most of that money is a complete waste. For an increasingly savvy, TiVo-equipped public, our brains seem to shut down whenever something registers as “advertising.” Which means all those marketing creatives at the big ad firms have had no choice but to, well, get more creative.
Some advertisers have relied on product placement (think James Bond stopping mid-gunfight for a refreshing sip of Heineken). Others have attempted to make their ads so entertaining thatPeople will watch them in spite of the sales pitch. And then there’s the more mischievous route — the grassroots, take-it-to-the-streets method — and that’s where guerrilla marketing comes in.
Dirt-cheap and chock full of trickery, guerrilla marketing is advertising with a wink. The successful campaigns usually corral attention through subversive means before revealing their true purpose, and they distinguish themselves by being so clever that even once the bait and switch is revealed, there’s no negative outcry.
In other words, even though consumers know they’ve been duped, the reaction amounts to nothing more than a bashful, “Oh Pepsi! We can’t stay mad at you!”
And it’s with that good-humored and awe-inspired mindset that we pay homage to the best “gotcha” moments in advertising.
1) The Blair Witch Project
Arguably the most important aspect of a successful guerrilla campaign is staying one step ahead of the public. As consumers become more attuned to ad agency efforts, marketers have to figure out how to attack the mob from unexpected angles. The brand standard for catching the public off guard? 1999’s The Blair Witch Project. With no stars, no script, and a budget of around $50,000, University of Central Florida Film School pals Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez successfully scrubbed out the line between reality and fiction.
To ease the suspension of disbelief and stir up some buzz, Sánchez created a Web site devoted to the Blair Witch — a fictitious, woods-based specter who’d been snapping up Maryland kids for the last century. Although the legend was created out of whole cloth, it was soon snapped up by gullible Interneters everywhere, and a first-ballot hall of fame urban legend was born. Pretty soon, thousands of people were terrified of the Blair Witch. Even when the actors who played the “film students” started showing up (alive) doing interviews about the movie, many across the country refused to believe the Blair Witch wasn’t real.The film’s tagline set the stage: “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found.” Audiences were expected to believe what they were watching — shaky, low-quality videotape of three runny-nosed kids weeping in the woods — was an edited-down version of real recovered footage. And while it was certainly an inventive way to challenge the boundaries of cinematic storytelling (not to mention justifying the low-budget look of the film), Blair Witch didn’t exactly seem poised to rival Titanic. That is, until an inventive guerrilla marketing scheme was devised.
From that point, the “I’ve got to see for myself” effect took over, and Blair Witch dominated at the box office. Considered the most effective horror hoax since Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds broadcast, the film grossed $250 million worldwide. Not a bad return for Artisan Entertainment, which paid only $1 million for the flick after its Sundance screening.
2) Médecins du Monde
Not all guerrilla campaigns are about the money. In fact, one of the cleverest and most altruistic grassroots marketing efforts was pulled off by a group called Médecins du Monde — an international humanitarian organization devoted to providing care for vulnerable populations around the world.
In late 2005, the French branch of the organization staged an extremely effective campaign to draw attention to the plight of the homeless in Paris. Christened the “tent city” initiative, the group distributed some 300 “two-second tents” to destitute Parisians sleeping outdoors. Equipped with the rapid-deploying tents (which didn’t require poles or pins), the homeless gathered in small groups of eight to 10 along the Quai d’Austerlitz and the Canal Saint-Martin. The prefab shelter, which bore the Médecins du Monde logo, drew immediate attention to the number of homeless people in the area and provoked such incredible public outrage that the city was forced to act. A rare off-season government session was convened, and officials admitted that Paris’ homeless shelters were vastly overcrowded. They immediately announced the allocation of nearly $10 million for emergency housing.
3) Half.com
The thing about Internet domain names is that they’re frequently difficult to remember. They have “krayzee” spellings, or “numb3rs” in them, or they’re only tangentially related to the products they offer. (What does “fogdog” have to do with sports equipment, anyway?) And in 1999, name recognition was one of the main problems facing half.com, an eBay-esque online marketplace that allows people to sell used items for fixed prices without the hassle of an auction. “There is such a dot-com clutter out there,” half.com CEO Joshua Kopelman said at the time. “We wanted to do something innovative to get some visibility in the crowd.”
That something turned out to be giving the 360-person town of Halfway, Oregon, $100,000 and a new computer lab to rename itself half.com for one year. When media outlets picked up the story, half.com (both town and Web site) got some much-needed publicity. Within weeks of its launch, the site was covered by the Today show, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. Time magazine even called the renaming arrangement “one of the greatest publicity coups in history.”
The man who literally put half.com on the map was the site’s then VP of marketing, Mark Hughes. Hughes, who is now proprietor of buzzmarketing.com, managed to generate so much publicity for half.com that only three weeks after the renaming was announced, eBay snapped it up for a cool $313 million. And while half.com is probably the most successful town/product renaming event in history, it’s not the only one. In 1950, Hot Springs, New Mexico, rechristened itself Truth or Consequences after a popular game show, and in 2005, Clark, Texas, decided to go by DISH, Texas, in exchange for a decade of free satellite TV.
4) Acclaim Entertainment
Nowhere are the semi-criminal aspects of guerrilla marketing more important than in pitching to videogamers. Regular folks might occasionally enjoy being duped by an unusually clever campaign, but gamers seem to suck down daring and deception like a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew. The more the stunts flaunt the law, the more the gaming demographic seems to like them.
The undisputed high-score holder in this renegade arena is Acclaim Entertainment, a plucky little company that began as a one-room outfit in Oyster Bay, New York, and bloomed into a multinational juggernaut. Eschewing artistry in favor of an “all publicity is good publicity” philosophy, Acclaim stirs up the stuffy types — and then laughs all the way to the bank. One of its bedrock tactics is to offer people money for performing some insane stunt on behalf of its upcoming game. Prior to the release of “Turok: Evolution,” for instance, the company offered £500 to the first five U.K. citizens who’d legally change their names to Turok. (Almost 3,000 people tried to claim the prize.) Later, promoting the release of “Shadow Man 2,” Acclaim announced it would pay the relatives of the recently deceased to place promotional ads on the headstones of their dearly departed. The company said the promotional fee might “particularly interest poorer families.”
The latter campaign was, of course, shouted down. But Acclaim blew it off and said the whole thing was a joke — right after its name had been conveniently plastered all over the headlines. In fact, many of the company’s schemes are designed to die on the vine that way. Acclaim actually counts on law enforcement and city officials to shut down their antics — preferably as publicly as possible. In 2002, the company announced its plans to promote “Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance” using something called “bloodvertising.” Touting it as the bloodiest game of all time, Acclaim said it was developing bus shelter ads that would seep a red, blood-like substance onto city sidewalks throughout the course of seven days. Officials thought that might not be in the best taste, so the campaign was aborted, as the world looked on. Also in 2002, Acclaim offered to pay all speeding tickets incurred in the U.K. on the day its racing game “Burnout 2” was released. Naturally, the bobbies balked, feeling that removing the consequences for speeding might encourage people to speed. Acclaim judiciously rescinded the offer, but, yet again, not before the name “Burnout 2” was burned into the public consciousness.
5) Vodafone
While some guerrilla campaigns border on art — baffling consumers with their cocky blend of ingenuity and imagination — others take a more boorish approach. During the 2002 Bledisloe Cup rugby match, for example, two young men suddenly burst onto the field at a crucial moment and ran across the pitch wearing nothing but the Vodafone logo painted on their backs.
Admittedly, streaking at a rugby match isn’t exactly uncommon, but sponsored streaking very much is. Adding to the drama? The fact that the match was held in Telstra Stadium — Telstra being Vodafone’s competitor.
In the end, one of the streakers was fined $3,500 (AUS), and a maelstrom of criticism was directed at Vodafone. However, millions of TV viewers witnessed the event live, and it was covered everywhere from CNN to the front page of the The Times in London. For a company seeking to sell itself as young and brash, such backlash was a ringing endorsement.
6) Obey: Andre The Giant Has A Posse
Most marketing ploys are created to promote a product, but the global rash of stickers, posters, and stencils reading “Andre The Giant Has A Posse” exist only to urge people to question their surroundings. In essence, it’s an ad campaign against advertising.
As subversive as it is pervasive, what became known as the “Obey Giant” campaign began when Rhode Island School of Design art student Shepard Fairey made a bunch of stickers and started putting them up around Providence. Mimicking Soviet-style propaganda posters, the stickers featured the unlikely visage of late professional wrestler Andre “The Giant” Roussimoff accompanied by messages like “Obey” and “Andre the Giant Has A Posse.” The stickers’ message was unclear — yet clearly counterculture. It resonated with local skateboarders, rockers, and other underground types, and soon, many were asking to join in the fun. The stickers spread underground to New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, and within a few years, they were all over the world.
The Obey Giant campaign is the kind of thing that, once you see it for the first time, you start to see it everywhere. The stickers are hip and cryptic, and they capitalize on the fact that most people think it’s cool to be part of something not everyone understands. Beyond that, the campaign does have a high-minded mission — to create a kind of emptiness in the observer. The propaganda orders a person to do something (“obey”), but the viewer doesn’t know what to do or how to obey. Fairey hopes this confusion will make people question other directives they receive visually — namely, in ads.
These days, Fairey heads up a design and marketing company that reps youth-targeted brands, such as Pepsi and Universal Pictures. An anti-advertising ad campaign staged by a big-shot advertiser? It doesn’t get much more guerrilla than that.
What do the Blair Witch Project, Old Spice and Halfway, Oregon have in common? They’re home to some of the cleverest guerilla marketing campaigns ever known.
The term “guerilla marketing,” created by advertising executive Jay Conrad Levinson in 1984, describes the unusual and often cheeky tactics used in a down-low ad campaign. Although some guerilla marketing efforts fail spectacularly, when a campaign hits it big, the payoff is huge.
Check out these great guerilla marketing campaigns from the past and see how you can fit them into your advertising model.
Yes, Steven Has Our Attention Now
If you lived in New York City, Los Angeles or Chicago in 2006, then you probably know all about Steven, the dirty, immoral, two-timing, devious, poorly-endowed slimeball; and Emily, his (soon-to-be-ex) wife.
The billboard guerilla ad, which announced Emily’s seemingly personal discovery of Steven’s extramarital affair and first placed in Times Square, sent fingers flying all over the Internet. The secret? Steven and Emily were fictitious — the ads were actually placed by CourtTV, which was marketing the return of Parco P.I.
Old Spice
In a terrific example of using new media to promote an old brand, Old Spice got zesty with its 2010 guerilla marketing campaign. After all, men from all walks of life, from NC lawyers to TX construction workers, want to smell like a sexy guy with a great sense of humor! After nearly 200 online videos and tens of millions of YouTube views, Old Spice body wash sales more than doubled less than a month after the launch date.
The Blair Witch Project
Who better to implement a near-perfect guerilla marketing campaign than our friends from Hollywood, who know a thing or two about suspension of disbelief?
The Blair Witch campaign, which helped produce one of the most profitable movies of all time, began with the rumor that Maryland teens were disappearing as a result of the century-old Blair Witch. When the movie was released, everyone — and we mean everyone — was talking about it as one of the scariest films ever made.
Halfway to Fame
Want a new computer lab and a cool $110k? No problem: get in touch with the folks from Half.com and agree to take its name for a year. In 1999, Halfway, Oregon agreed to just such a proposal, and signs welcoming visitors to the small town announced Halfway as Half.com, “America’s First Dot-Com City”.
The Lowbrow Approach
No matter how sophisticated we think we are, there’s nothing like a good streaker to get our tongues wagging. That’s exactly what happened when Vodafone (not once, but twice) sent buck naked runners across well-attended sporting events with the Vodafone logo painted across their backs. Although the stunt didn’t earn much positive press at the time, we’re still talking about it 11 years later.
The point? For very little up-front money and a lot of daring and ingenuity, your guerilla marketing campaign can bring business in the door.
It’s a brand new year and we’re so excited to see what creative marketing campaigns come out this year. Last year we saw some really great campaigns come out that had us WOWed. This year, we put together a list of creative agencies that we plan on following based on their work the previous year. We selected these particular agencies because of some of the memorable campaigns and executions back in 2014. We’re very excited to see what they come up with this year! So without further adieu, the 5 top agencies to follow in 2015.
Most well known for their work with Volvo and the Epic Split with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Forsman & Bodenfors keep us very entertained. This Swedish agency has done some amazing work in the past with notable clients such as Volvo, Unicef and Malibu Rum.
This small Canadian production shop was put on the map with their WestJet Christmas Miracle campaign. It was a campaign that went instantly viral because it was just so darn amazing. The campaign warmed our hearts and made us believe that marketing can actually bring us joy!
Remember that one viral video that showed delivery companies mistakingly deliver large packages that said, “DHL is faster”? Well, that was done by Jung von Matt. Their DHL trojan mailing campaign was a huge success and they work with some very notable clients such as Mercedes-Benz, Nikon and Vodafone.
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How do you reach an audience that is not your usual target group, in a way that is also listening to their actual needs? Vodafone Romania has decided to approach the senior Romanian citizens in a very touching way!
It is estimated that there are over 4 million people over 75 that live alone in Romania, asking for a human connection, a way to somehow beat their lonely moments. Parents and grandparents tend to feel alone and that’s why Vodafone took on the challenge to use technology and mobile Internet in order to fight loneliness.
That’s how they decided to experiment with an unusual campaign named “Sunday Grannies”, featuring two widowed grannies that live together, wishing there were more people joining their home. Despite their loneliness, they are used in cooking for large tables and this inspired the concept of the campaign. Vodafone along with McCann Romania have decided to connect these two lonely grannies with students that miss home-cooked meals, in an attempt to keep everyone happy.
Hence, they showed them the basics of social networks, they created a Facebook Page for them and they updated it every Sunday with their meal of the week, inviting students that wanted to join them. Just like that, their page saw an impressive growth, reaching more than 430k likes, turning into the second largest campaign page in the country. The two lonely grannies suddenly got digitally savvy, finding a purpose in life, cooking and meeting new people. Suddenly the empty apartment turned into the hottest spot in the city, flooding with people every Sunday and gaining new likes every day through their Facebook page!
As if this wasn’t enough, “Sunday Grannies” became a documentary that played in television, they were asked for interviews, they hosted tables even to celebrities, they launched on all supermarkets their famous lemon pie, while they even started producing their own cooking show! Nobody could imagine that an experiment could turn so successful, with Vodafone and McCann taking it a step further through Facebook, by creating a special app that invites more grannies from all over the country to turn into Sunday hosts. This inspired so many others throughout the country, filling their homes again full of happy people, using their cooking skills for good!
According to Vodafone Romania, this smart campaign reached over 380 million media impressions, with a tripling social media adoption rate among seniors and an impressive growth of 78.8% on the purchase of 4G smartphones. What’s more, it even led to an increase of 20% in the creation of Facebook accounts by Romanians that are over 65, proving that technology may indeed connect people and bring them closer, even if they didn’t previously know each other.
Vodafone and McCann experimented with an inspiring initiative that was different from any other campaign, focusing on people, rather than the product, proving with its success that social good and smiles on people’s faces are the best ROI for a brand!
Over the course of the last decade, an array of viral marketing examples have come and gone with varying degrees of success.
2) Médecins du Monde
What do the Blair Witch Project, Old Spice and Halfway, Oregon have in common? They’re home to some of the cleverest guerilla marketing campaigns ever known.
