No, silly, not warfare: marketing and PR campaigns!
Amy Mae-Elliot of Mashable.com recently compiled 10 street and guerrilla marketing campaigns that earned the most visible success.
Here are three of the campaigns and my perspective on their victories over the public.
No. 2: Nike — Time it correctly
The shoe company attached decoy sneakers to randomly parked, booted and ticketed vehicles, to get across its message to choose driving over running every chance you get.
More importantly, it was also “International Car Free Day,” which added purpose to the campaign. The more you can connect what your campaign seeks to implement to a greater national occurrence, the better.
You’ll show your company is media literate and in the loop, and your efforts aren’t empty, flimsy publicity stunts. You also imply that there’s an effort to instigate change through company vehicles (no pun intended).
No. 3: Ikea — Tug of war: push too hard, and they’ll pull back.
Ikea drew from its warehouses by placing home accessories and furniture settings across random New York locations. It handed the products to consumers on a silver platter through its “Everyday Fabulous” campaign.
Ikea’s efforts were successful because it found a clever way to directly interject its product into an active city, causing enough of a stir without creating too much of a disturbance. The tactics of these campaigns must conveniently complement the consumer’s routine, not provide an observation that interferes with their daily lives.
Guerrilla marketing is innately aggressive, but your targeted images, props and tactics should be so clearly focused that it’s unnecessary to vehemently push your company’s message. Your campaign flies solo and does it for you with ease.
No. 8: UNICEF — Don’t let the message get lost in translation
UNICEF insisted that you could stretch your dollar in its Dirty Water campaign.
To encourage one-dollar donations, the organization created vending machines stocked with authentic, infected drinking water from underprivileged countries. It bottled the diseased water, which is the primary hydration for many children, and offered it to middle-class society to stress how unfortunate the conditions of global sanitization are and how easy it is to actually make a difference.
UNICEF succeeded most honorably in never underscoring or upstaging its key message. The whole point of marketing campaigns is to use that well-earned attention to communicate a substantial idea.
If it wasn’t for on-site UNICEF representatives explaining the rationale, passersby would have chalked up the campaign as a confusing, senseless stunt that was regrettably misdirected.
Because if you get all that attention but no real understanding, what do you have? Nothing.
