BrandWeek_Guerrilla

t
he most heralded guerrilla marketing campaign of the year did not
come courtesy of a Fortune 500 brand; or, any corporation at all. The
stunt heard round the world came from a graffiti artist/
prankster/provocateur who goes by the name of Banksy. Whether he’s
slipping a primitive-looking painting of a caveman pushing a supermarket shopping cart into the British Museum or a statue of a
Guantanamo torturee into Disneyland to commemorate the fifth anniversary of
Sept. 11, Banksy’s medium always carries a message.
But this September, Banksy outdid himself. In the ultimate statement against
dubious celebrity, the anonymous artist invaded 48 record shops across the U.K. and
secretly replaced 500 copies of Paris Hilton’s debut CD with remixes that mashed
up the heiress’ airheaded utterances with Gnarls Barkley beats. Artwork of Hilton
sporting a dog’s head was paired with sneering text such as “Every CD you buy puts
me even further out of your league” in the CD booklet, joining swapped-out song
titles such as “Why Am I Famous?” Naturally, the prank was captured on film and
posted on the Internet as if to suggest, “Now kids, do try this at home!”
This was a year in which two very different “celebrities”—Al Gore and Sacha
Baron Cohen—used their clout to get the word out. The man who “used to be the
next president of the U.S.” parlayed political talk show appearances into promotional pitches for An Inconvenient Truth, and cameod on everything from Saturday
Night Live to the MTV VMAs to further his climate-crisis message. British comedian Baron Cohen channeled his boorish Borat persona all the way from your laptop
to the White House (and got front-page press on an apparently slow news day).
2006 also goes down as the year just plain folks marketed themselves and,
sometimes, brands that were just plain lucky. Fully democratized by the advent of
affordable digital recording/editing tools and, finally, a site that people actually
bookmarked for watching such entertainments, brand messages—whether real,
enhanced or parodied—served as unwitting contestants on a virtual Gong Show.
Anyone who typed “Apply directly to the forehead!” into a YouTube search field
was certainly “engaged” by Head On; anyone who took the time to create a parody of the schlocky 15-second TV ad for the mystery glue-stick/snake oil contraption freely drank the consumer cult Kool-Aid. Likewise, Mentos did nothing to
inspire the much-forwarded Web clip of “scientists” creating a symphony of cascading fountains by combining The Freshmaker with Diet Coke, but it ran with the
publicity. Meanwhile, Coke’s controlling reaction to the unauthorized usage doused
its own fortuitous buzz. In fact, the brands that got the biggest boos did so by pretending to be “real” consumers. (Yeah, we’re talking about you, walmartingacrossamerica.com and, again, Coke, for your pseudo Zero blog!)
“[2006] was interesting for guerrilla because it was the year that really big players got involved—Anheuser-Busch, Procter & Gamble,” said Lucian James, who
helped pick our 2006 notables. “It was the year Burger King masks got up to erotic things, and Mentos came roaring back. You didn't exist if you weren't on YouTube.”
P.S. We risked sacrilege by actually naming Banksy as a Brandweek Guerrilla
Marketer of the Year, so we figured we’d honor him in a way he’d appreciate: By
aping his provocative, urban art style in our design template. If you like it, pass it on!
—Becky Ebenkamp
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
19
s?
Us,expecrttly
.
Not exisatrio of
We asked th
to weigh in.
creative vets
Guerrilla Marketers of the Year
ADVISORY BOARD
DREW NEISSER
Like the handsaw in the Renegade
logo, Neisser has a distinctive knack
for cutting through the baloney that
pervades the marketing industry.
After 15 years at big agencies such
as JWT and Chiat/Day, Drew founded Renegade in New York, with
funding from Dentsu. A decade later, Renegade ranks among the top
100 interactive and promotion
agencies, and was recently identified as one of six “idea factories” by
Mediapost.com. Neisser has launched MarketingForGood.net, a blog
that calls attention to marketing that, in his humble opinion, makes life
just a little bit better. His favorite show is My Name is Earl. (It’s a karma
thing . . . ). Reach him at: [email protected].
Previous job that prepared me best for a career in guerrilla marketing:
I volunteered for “chicken duty” on kibbutz Ein Hahoresh, which entailed
corralling resistant cluckers and ever so gingerly placing them in crates.
The air was foul and our boots sunk deep into the guano. (Reward? A
fresh chicken dinner.) In comparison, corralling testy street teams on the
LUCIAN JAMES
Lucian James is the president of
Agenda Inc. (www.agendainc.com),
a strategic research and consulting
agency based in San Francisco and
Paris. Agenda specializes in alternative solutions for luxury and lifestyle
brands. Clients have included
General Motors, Lexus, Louis Vuitton
Moët Hennessy, MTV and Sony. Find
him at [email protected].
Previous job that prepared me best
SAM EWEN
Sam Ewen is CEO/founder of
Interference, a New York marketing
agency known for guerrilla marketing
and pulling off high-concept street
stunts. If a band of gladiators recently handed you a map flagging sites
where DVDs of HBO’s Rome: The
Complete First Season were sold,
then you’ve experienced Ewen’s
expertise. Interference also worked
with Frog Design to execute GE’s
award-winning “Picture a Healthy
World” event in Times Square. Contact: [email protected].
Previous job that prepared me best for a career in guerrilla marketing:
Working in the music industry on the production and marketing side.
It was where I learned how buzz happens and how word-of-mouth
20
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
sometimes stinky streets of Manhattan is a walk in the park. (Reward?
Chicken dinners in the oh-so-chic Meatpacking District.)
My dream client: John Waters, the infamous director of Pink Flamingos
and Hairspray. A fan of ‘50s stunt/shock/cult director William Castle,
Waters introduced “Smell-o-rama” with his movie Polyester. During critical scenes, the audience was told to scratch a matching number on their
cards to smell the roses (or a fart, smelly socks, etc.). Renegade could
be the first to bring Smell-o-rama to the Web or come up with some
other positively delicious guerrilla campaign for Waters’ next movie.
Favorite guerrilla marketing program of the year: I’m a huge fan of
the “Don’t Belittle Powerball” campaign in Minnesota. It was a wonderfully simple idea executed in a surprising and engaging manner.
Best outdoor-ad graffiti or defacement I’ve seen: I’m a big fan of
Chick-fil-A’s “Eat Mor Chikin” outdoor campaign, but I laughed pretty
hard when I saw a graffiti'd version that read “Eat Mor Tofu!” Surely,
this is what cows would really moo, were they given the choice.
Ever been arrested for a marketing stunt? No, but during our “Time
Me Up, Time Me Down” S&M-themed press party for G-Shock watches, one of our performers kept tearing off her bra much to the glee of
the crowd and the chagrin of our team. Keeping abreast of the situation, we convinced her to don a pasty to keep the party going and the
police at bay. We put the shock in G-shock that night, and gained more
“exposure” than we could have imagined.
for a career in guerrilla marketing: Producing a two-hour daily live TV
show in London.
My dream client: Andy Warhol.
Favorite guerrilla marketing program of the year: Banksy vs. Paris
Hilton.His ability to market himself, to re-market Hilton, to remain
anonymous yet get global media coverage, and to play with the urban
landscape has to be an inspiration for guerrilla marketers everywhere.
Marketing idea I wish I had thought of: Being Andy Warhol.
Best outdoor-ad graffiti or defacement I’ve seen: Whoever turned
the Coco Chanel Kate Moss ad into “Cocaine Mademoiselle” on the
bus stop near my gym in Paris.
Ever been arrested for a marketing stunt? Not been arrested. Not
given up trying.
and getting product in people’s hands can cause big change. How
else would gangsta rappers NWA have debuted in the top Billboard
slot with no radio play?
My dream client: The Clinton Foundation. Not only is Bill Clinton a
heck of a guy but, despite my being a marketer, I would like to do
some good in the world.
Favorite guerrilla marketing program of the year: A tie between
the emergence of Second Life as a marketing tool and the sale of a
little site called YouTube. The users themselves caused such huge
buzz on them as a product, you could not help but notice.
Marketing idea I wish I had thought of: Seeing as he just hit No. 1, Borat.
Best outdoor-ad graffiti or defacement I’ve seen: Banksy’s L.A. show,
hands down. He rules the street art scene in reference to guerrilla.
Ever been arrested for a marketing stunt? Luckily I have avoided arrest,
mainly by dropping fictitious names of police officers from other
precincts in town. The department of sanitation once tried to fine me
$225,000 for a sticker campaign; I had to send a team of 20 out overnight
to clean it up.
www.brandweek.com
Q&A with Al Gore
Oh, the Humanity!
Al ‘Guerrilla’ Gore’s
Warm Global Reception
BY JIM EDWARDS
A
lthough the 2000 presidential election was only six years ago,
it’s hard to remember just how rotten Al Gore’s image used
to be.
Some of it was his own fault, of course. He had a portentous style that
was so spectacularly unrelaxed (considering he’s spent his whole life in the
public eye) that Saturday Night Live summed up his entire persona and
political agenda with a one-word punchline: lockbox. To counter this
uptight image, he hired Naomi Wolf, a feminist liked by few beyond New
York’s Upper West Side, to advise him on shirt-and-tie combos during his
presidential run. He might as well have walked into press conferences with
a “kick me” sign on his back.
Although he had a real military record—Gore served in Vietnam—
somehow his faults were such that the commander-in-chief position went
to a guy who spent the war defending Texas from the Vietcong. In short,
Gore was the country’s biggest loser: the man who couldn’t win the election even though he got more votes than his opponent.
Today, things couldn’t be different. The newly loose, self-deprecating
Gore founded Current TV, the first channel that relies entirely on user-generated content. The network breaks even (unlike YouTube), he says, and
it doesn’t come freighted with copyright problems. Gore has founded a
money-management firm, Generation Investment Management, to offer
pension funds socially responsible investment options. And he has made
a movie that might—possibly—win an Oscar, An Inconvenient Truth. Think
about it: If he didn’t have the political baggage, Gore would be hailed as
one of the most interesting businessmen of our age.
Whether you agree with Gore’s philosophy is irrelevant. From a marketing point of view, Gore has achieved in six years what most CMOs
dream of achieving in a lifetime: He has turned around a tired old brand
that everyone thought was spent into something fresh, controversial,
lucrative and interesting. And he has done it—like all guerrilla marketers—
on a tiny marketing budget. Only $4.5 million has been spent on ads for
Truth; almost nothing has been spent by Current.
His offbeat promotional activity includes a self-mocking video clip on
YouTube with Bender, the alcoholic robot from Futurama. He is currently
training more than 1,000 volunteers to give versions of the slide show in
their own neighborhoods. Free movie tickets were offered to Christians
in an effort labeled “Inconvenient Christians” designed to influence the
evangelical community. And, of course, there’s
a MySpace page.
Gore’s transformation followed a classic
approach to brand renewal: Go back to your
core, rediscover the original meaning of your
brand and then re-present its essence in the
most modern media possible. Current and
Truth took something that seemed played out
(cable TV, a slide show) and reinvented it for
the post-cable, post-slide show age. Gore
returned to his longstanding interests in the
environment (President Bush used to call him
“Ozone Man”) and technology (he invented
the Internet, remember?) and, using the formula described above, turned them into several viable businesses.
Don’t buy it? Take this test: Is there anyone
Tell all: Truth’s poster.
in Hollywood who has successfully turned a
slide show into a hit movie? Is there anyone on Madison Avenue who has
offered a permanent, ongoing place for viewers to make their own TV ads?
(If you answered yes to both these questions, please drop us a line because
we’d like to write about them.)
Brandweek telephoned Gore at his Carthage, Tenn., office recently to talk about marketing, The Simpsons, running for president
and life as a (cartoon) severed head.
BW: Since the 2000 election your image—the Al Gore brand—has gone
through a significant transformation in the eyes of the public. How difficult was that period after 2000 when you had to figure out what you
were going to do with the rest of your life? Was the transformation deliberate or not?
AG: [Laughs] Well, first of all one is seen, as a national candidate, through
a different lens—a lens that invites much more skepticism, if not cynicism, which is not altogether inappropriate for a political candidate.
There was a change of lens through which I was seen. That’s one element. But secondly, there’s an old saying that, “What doesn’t kill you
makes you stronger.” I think maybe I’ve gotten a little stronger in the
last six years. It’s an unfortunate truth of the human condition that all
of us learn the most from the most painful experiences.
BW: You’ve given this slide show about the environment since 1989. You
decided to turn it into a movie called An Inconvenient Truth in early 2005
at the urging of Laurie David, Larry David’s wife. It’s not obvious that a
slide show would make a good movie. How did you make that decision?
AG: I was skeptical myself when Laurie and others first made the proposal. I’m very glad that I listened to them. I remember from my student
days watching Shakespeare’s plays on film in a series produced by someone who simply put up a movie camera and filmed a stage presentation.
It didn’t work at all. And I was laboring under the misimpression that the
inherent flaw in trying to transfer one medium into another would apply
to this project. What I didn’t understand was that movie-making techniques
have actually evolved since then [laughs].
The second aspect of it was, [director] Davis Guggenheim did not tell
me until we were well into the project that he had a strong desire to weave
into the linear narrative of the slide show a number of personal vignettes
based on elements of my life story. I would not have agreed to the project
at all if I’d known that at the outset, but by the
time he raised it he had already gained my confidence. And he explained that in a live presentation—even a slide show by me—there is automatically a kind of emotional connection between
the audience and the live person on stage. But
that doesn’t automatically happen on film.
them. You were very early
on that.
AG: Current began with a
high concept six years ago.
My partner Joel Hyatt and I
believe very strongly in the
need to democratize the television medium. In my opinBW: One of your assistants corrected me
ion, the way in which we
organize society in every age
because I called your slide show a PowerPoint
of history, the way we allocate
presentation.
wealth and power, has always
AG: It’s Keynote, Keynote! Is PowerPoint the
been shaped profoundly by
Microsoft version of Keynote? As a member
the dominant medium of
of Apple’s board of directors I do believe it’s
communication. In the Middle
superior to PowerPoint.
The Point? Engaging Americans to learn about the climate crisis. Ages feudalism rested on an
information monopoly, the
BW: How have you promoted the movie?
monastic scriptorium. If you wantAG: Lots of personal appearances, sometimes surprise appearances.
ed to be a writer you had to be
A lot of interviews in small publications and Web publications and
a monk. [Gore gives a brief hisappearances in venues that one doesn’t normally think of. Backpacktory of the development of
er magazine would be one example.
media, touching on the Gutenberg press, the Enlightenment,
BW: Brandweek, I’m guessing, is another.
the birth of the U.S. and the
AG: Well, this is all part of the plan, actually. I went to my friend Matt
invention of TV.] Structurally, telGroening and David X. Cohen [the creators of The Simpsons and Futuevision is a throwback to the
rama, who also employ one of Gore’s daughters as a writer] and I asked
monastic scriptorium in the sense
them if they would help me with some guerrilla marketing.
that it is one-way and individuals
could no longer join the converBW: Did you use that phrase at the time or just for me, now?
sation. But in recent years . . . digAG: I’m using it for you. But the concept is one that I have used. The
ital video tools and laptop-editconcept is very much on point. You saw the little viral cartoon that
ing systems have made it more
they made [promoting the movie]? There’s a cartoon of Bender the
feasible for individuals to join a
alcoholic robot and me. It went all over the Web.
television conversation.
BW: You know the Kennedy family. Do they watch The Simpsons and,
BW: What is the ad sales picture
if so, what do they think of the mayor of Springfield who is obviousat Current?
ly a Kennedy figure?
AG: Oh it’s fantastic. We have a
AG: I do know the Kennedy family, I don’t know if they watch. I’m assumlot of mainstream founding
ing they do because everyone does, but I have no idea what they think
of the mayor of Springfield. Is he a Kennedy figure?
advertisers, Procter & Gamble,
L’Oréal, Sony, Toyota, Pepsi—it’s a long list. They have all just re-upped
for the second year, and with seven-digit contracts. We have also innoBW: Oh yeah, definitely. He’s supposed to be JFK, isn’t he?
vated viewer-created advertising.
AG: I don’t know.
“TV is a
throwback,
it is one-way.
Digital video
and editing
systems
make it
easier for
individuals
to join the
conversation.”
BW [affects Boston accent]: “Peo-paal of Springfie-aald!”
AG: [Laughs.] I’m loathe to admit that had not occurred to me. I myself
have appeared in Futurama, in a couple of cameo performances. My
best-known role is as a disembodied head, a role I am actually reprising—seriously—for the Futurama movie coming out.
BW: What were your revenues in the first year?
AG: We don’t make those public. We have had an extremely successful launch year and we were essentially breaking even in our very
first year, which is unheard of for a new TV network. . . . We will soon
be in several other countries as well.
BW: What did you think of Al Gore’s Penguin Army, a satirical Web
video that appeared on YouTube in an apparent attempt to dissuade
people from seeing An Inconvenient Truth?
AG: [Laughs.] It was odd, wasn’t it?
BW: Will you announce that you’re running for president in 2008 in
Brandweek?
AG: I actually think that Brandweek is probably the ideal venue for the
announcement.
BW: I was confused as to what it was supposed to achieve. I think it
would have worked better had it actually been funny.
AG: Yeah, that would have helped. You know the agency that did it
[DCI Group of Washington] also represents ExxonMobil and the
Republican Party, and they were murky about how it came about, so
I have to assume that there is something we don’t know but is not
difficult to imagine. I just don’t think it was very well executed. Hannah Arendt’s phrase springs to mind, “the banality of evil.” [Laughs.]
BW: It’s got to be between us and the Washington Post, I’d think.
AG: I do not have any plans to run for president. I do not expect to run
for president. I am enjoying my work in the business world. I am absorbed
in this effort which is a kind of campaign to change people’s minds about
the climate crisis.
BW: Current TV will probably go down in history as the first national TV channel launched entirely with user-generated content.
Brandweek’s audience is obsessed with getting that to work for
www.brandweek.com
BW: Brandweek’s audience is mainly executives at Fortune 500 companies. Do you have anything else you want to let them know?
AG: I want the head of advertising for every one of your readers to know
that Current TV’s viewers are capable of making very compelling, fresh,
imaginative ads for their products and that the secret sauce we’ve developed at Current is unlike anything they will find elsewhere.
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
23
Brands, Fans Show a Lust for ‘Life’
Fox Him Very Much Like!
SECOND LIFE
BORAT
I
B
BY BECKY EBENKAMP
BY TODD WASSERMAN
f the real estate bubble has burst, someone forgot
to inform the 1 million-plus residents of Second Life.
Virtual “property” on the 3-D multiplayer Web site
(secondlife.com) is becoming more valuable to players of the alt-game, but even they don’t have a
monopoly. Marketers such as Starwood Hotels,
Reuters, Sony BMG, Nissan, American Apparel and
others have moved in and set up house. Second Life
owner Linden Labs, San Francisco, has about 94
square miles of virtual land to sell, and it’s being
bought up faster than you can say “Park Place.”
Second Life, as the name states, has become an
alternate reality, and like The Matrix, the virtual world
calls into question the “real” life. Real people log on
Lots in store:: American Apparel is one of several retailers to open its (virtual) doors.
from their PCs at home (or, to the boss’ chagrin, at
work), and navigate this world as pixilated avatars. In
Creative people are always looking for new opporreal life, a user might be a 40-year-old accountant with
tunities to explore.”
thinning hair; in Second Life, he can fashion himself as a
Still, a reported $100 million will change hands
race car driver who resembles Ashton Kutcher.
on Second Life this year, and some 3,000 entrepreOnce there, users build things, make friends and do
neurs are said to be making $20K or more a year
business with “Linden dollars,” which are convertible to
on microtransactions inside (from clothes to behavreal currency. (Exchange rate: $271 Linden to $1 U.S.)
ioral scripts for your avatar). Some retailers hope to
Many buy real estate and marketers, always on the lookeventually link the transactions on Second Life with
out for a new medium to exploit, were quick to catch on.
real-world delivery (a virtual ticket purchase, for
Catherine Smith, dir-marketing for Linden, said there
example, could result in an actual booking).
are now about 40 brands in Second Life. None of them
What’s remarkable is that Linden never set out
buy ads or virtual billboards; instead, they set up shop.
to create all this branding potential. Launched in
IBM CEO Sal Palmisano is there and Duran Duran will
June 2003, Second Life extended the idea behind
arrive soon. American Apparel, meanwhile, opened an
the hugely successful videogame The Sims, by
in-Life store this summer. In October, General Motors
Electronic Arts. Sims players also have avatars and
bought a 96-acre plot in Second Life for $7,500, the
same price a user would pay. The company plans to call
can start businesses and even have an affair. But
the space Motorati Island and sell virtual versions of its
Second Life is no geek-boy world; its user split is
Pontiac Solstice GXP, host performances and run races.
50% men and 50% women.
But why the rush toward a community with an online
SL’s tipping point came shortly after
audience that, at any given time, averages between only
BusinessWeek put Second Life on its cover in April.
10,000 and 15,000 people, or about half the population
Since then, it’s become the MySpace of virtual livof Nutley, N.J.?
ing. A look at comments on blogs about the site
“Certainly, there’s a bit of a herd mentality,” said
indicates that residents have mixed feelings about
Marc Schiller, CEO of Electric Artists, the New York firm behind these messages and, in time, Linden’s lack of distinction between comStarwood’s virtual outpost for new hotel brand Aloft. “Brands you track mercial and residential real estate could turn Second Life into a giant
as innovators are now moving forward and doing things in Second Life. mall. But at this moment, its virtual acres are the place to be.
There are
now about
40 brands
in Second
Life. None
of them buy
ads or virtual
billboards;
instead, they
set up shop.
efore Borat hit screens three weeks ago, just about everyone
(except, perhaps, the residents of Romanian town Glod) had heard
about it. Because one would have to be living in a village with no
electricity, cars or running water to avoid the blitz, which left no marketing stone unturned.
While bordering on “enough already!” territory, marketing for 20th
Century Fox’s semi-mock doc starring Sacha Baron Cohen as the “sexy
time”-loving, Jew-hating journalist from Kazakhstan who meets real
Americans on a cross-country road trip was smart, funny, viral and, for
the most part, cheap. As a result, Borat led the box office with $26 million on its opening weekend at a scant 850 screens and the buzz built
over week two, when it kept the top slot. Spurred by this film’s prolix subtitle, we respectfully submit below our own “Cultural Learnings of Kazakh
Reporter for Make Benefit Glorious Audience of Marketers.”
Be authentic (even if you’re fake): “The genius of Borat in general—and how it relates to the marketing—is that Sacha Baron Cohen gets
so immersed in his character, that at some point you forget that it is a
character,” speculated Sam Ewen, CEO of Interference and a member
of our advisory panel. “He embodies Borat to such a degree that you
actually feel sorry for him and his bumbling naiveté. The marketing was
all over the place [but] it stayed within the premise that he was actually
Borat at all times. Media organizations were willing to interview/engage
Baron Cohen in character and allow him to play the role without fail.
Whether he was getting into bed with Martha Stewart on Leno or guessing ‘Who’s The Jew?’ on Howard Stern, he got over on everyone, willingly. The more Borat stayed true to character—and the marketing initiative stemmed from there—the more resonance it had with consumers.”
Use the “Internets”: A month before the film’s Nov. 3 limited release,
Borat acquainted himself with the denizens of MySpace.com, which conveniently shares a parent with Fox: News Corp. E-mails and bulletins
spouting Boratspeak went out to these new friends right before opening
weekend and the character put teaser comments (“I would very much like
make romance inside you, but first I must know how much history of retardation is in your family?”) on their homepages to attract attention and pals.
Balkan boy:: Borat on MySpace and as patriot.
“So much real estate was devoted to him that
it almost got to the point of oversaturation,”
Ewen said. “Luckily, his targeted audience is
the MySpace audience, so it seemed to work.
Whether this would work for the Rodgers &
Hammerstein box set collection is a different story.”
Keep up on current events: Much of the initial “marketing” consisted of generating headlines with Borat’s White House trek to invite
“Premier George Walter Bush” to a screening, which was timed to coincide with an official visit by Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev.
When that story wasn’t leading the Drudge Report, it seemed like everyone (Kazakhs, gypsies) was doing his part by putting on a well-publicized
Borat protest. Even those who participated in the 2006 network TV
upfront know you can’t buy that type of publicity!
Project lawsuit costs into the marketing budget: South Carolina
fraternity boys, Glod residents, Web-lebrities—everyone wants a piece
of you when you’re a success. Sure, it might cost a little more to risk
offending someone. But these cases—whether real or dreamed up by
Fox and Baron Cohen—kept Borat in the headlines just as the movie was
set to expand to 2,500 theaters.
Follow up: Just like a well-mannered bride, Borat sent thank-you
notes to all his new friends after the film opened at No. 1: “I would like
thank you alls from bottom of my chram for make my moviefilm great
success and savings me from be execute,” read a MySpace message written in his own special style. “I would also like thank generous antiCommunist Fox Corporation for sharings profit of this movie. They have
already fully honoured the terms of our deal and supplied my
Government with the 25 iPods Nano. My nation has never known of such
riches. Once again thanks you! I like you!! I like sex!!”
Minnesota’s Big Hit
POWERBALL
BY MIKE BEIRNE
Red crush: Mega Powerballs make impressions.
E
Property value:: (l. to r.) Sony BMG’s Media Island, poolside at Starwood’s new Aloft hotel and one of the hotel’s swank interior spaces.
24
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
www.brandweek.com
veryone dreams of being independently wealthy, but why bother to get out of bed for less than $100 million? For some average Joes, the desire to retire turns into an action plan only when
the Powerball jackpot is bubbling over. The challenge for the Minnesota State Lottery? Encouraging gamers who only hand over their tens
and twenties when the payoff approaches nine digits to buy tickets at
other times—like, say, when the booty is in the “meager” low millions.
Colle + McVoy, Minneapolis, got would-be millionaires’ attention by embodying Powerball as an 8-foot meteor of mischief that
has dropped in at 70 locations so far. The agency crushed a Ford
LTD and a Chevy El Camino, then affixed a big red ball to the wreckage to make it appear the vehicles had been Powerball-pulverized.
Promoters then towed the cars to Twins and Vikings games, county fairs
and concerts, and also parked beside lottery-ticket retailers. For an
added dose of authenticity, the agency rigged a contraption to emit
smoke from the crater holes of the quashed autos.
The visual impact of the “Don’t belittle Powerball: It’s always big”
campaign also included print, TV, Internet and billboards.
Reactions, recorded from a secret camera, included drivers pulling
over for a closer look to passersby posing beside the big Powerballs
for a camera-phone photo op. At cash registers, record Powerball sales
delivered an unprecedented $106 million contribution to Minnesota’s
environment and natural resources, a beneficiary of state lottery sales.
“Guerrilla [marketing] helps us even the score,” said David
Keepper, group creative director of Colle + McVoy’s 15-member
Powerball team. “It’s idea-driven, so you don’t need to spend lots
of money.” To make an impact, of course.
Grate idea:: Vijay’s barbecue ad; city unknown.
Clean was ob
viously here.
Break on through:: Nike’s bash in Toronto.
a” in NYC.
Canon “camer
Aw, shoot:: A
Crossing guar
d:: Mr.
the cityscape, but makes use of purposeful objects that become marketing tools solely though the
application of some paint and imagination. “The idea transformed something familiar into something new,” said Scholz CEO Sebastian Turner of the Bennett hat campaign. “It made the product
the hero without polluting the neighborhood.”
In today’s marketplace, that’s not only a laudable goal, but also an imperative. “Outdoor environments are becoming saturated,” said Lucian James, founder of Agenda, San Francisco.
Marketers, he said, “need more creative ideas” to cut through the visual assault of billboards. It
helps that structural expropriation is usually cheap for the brand marketer; the vehicle for the message is already in place. As Brett Zaccardi, founder of Boston-based guerrilla marketing firm Street
Attack, put it: “Why invent something new when you’ve got something in your own backyard that
could serve a creative function?”
Like, for example, those ubiquitous steaming manhole covers you see on many city streets?
The German home-appliance maker Bosch covered one in Hamburg with the silvery footprint of
one of its irons, which looked frighteningly realistic with live steam shooting out of its vent holes.
Using New York’s steaming manhole covers, Saatchi accomplished the same feat with photoimprinted, vinyl cutouts of outsized coffee cups filled with an apparently sublimating Folger’s brew.
The gig was up when New Yorkers stole all the cups—but by then they’d landed on two major TV
networks and hundreds of blogs. In other words, said Saatchi copywriter Neil Levin, the client got
its money’s worth. “It’s not enough to just place something out there anymore,” Levin added. “You
have to engage people.”
Yes, guerrilla marketers, you do. And back in Collinsville, the 70-foot Brooks ketchup bottle—
which recently joined the National Register of Historic Places—is still doing just that.
.
mburg
ams Ha
te
s
n
o
sch’s ir
ere: Bo
Press h
ack in 1949, a visitor to Collinsville, Ill., couldn’t help but notice the looming, 100,000-gallon water tank that had just gone up near the center of town. It wasn’t just that the narrow,
tapering tank was massive—70 feet tall, standing atop 100-foot legs—it was its new paint
job. Seeing a unique marketing opportunity, the Brooks Catsup Co. (whose funds had built the
structure) had it painted red to look like a Green Giant-sized ketchup bottle. The behemoth even
featured an eight-foot cap at the top and a white label around its belly, announcing the brand’s
name for miles in all directions.
Fifty-seven years later, the concept the Brooks boys employed—expropriating existing structures within the urban landscape, then altering them to create a branding installation—is enjoying
a true renaissance.
In Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood, a deftly painted cylindrical traffic barrier becomes a
Canon digital camera with its telephoto “lens” extended. With the deft overlay of a printed sheet
of cellophane, a bus kiosk in Toronto takes on the illusion of a runner having just shattered his way
through (a feat enabled, one learns from an adjacent poster, by Nike sneakers).
In Berlin, the ad agency of Scholz & Friends noticed that the dollop-shaped tops of the city’s
historic sidewalk posting columns looked a lot like hats. For hat designer Fiona Bennett, the firm
girdled the columns with huge blow-ups of women’s faces, which in turn “wore” the iron millinery
above them. Meanwhile, pedestrians in Düsseldorf notice one painted stripe on a crosswalk was
bleach-white, in stark contrast to the dingier lines around it. Why might this be? One need only
notice Mr. Clean’s bald, grinning head imprinted on the clean stripe.
It’s all very clever, sure, but what makes these gestures effective is more nuanced. The appeal
of the adaptive use of urban structures is that the tactic doesn’t inject something superfluous into
B
Top this:: Fiona Bennett’s ‘hats’ in Berlin.
By Robert Klara
SETS &
THE CITY
Guerrilla Marketers
Java jolt:: New Yorkers smell the Folger’s.
Tank top:: Brooks’ guerrilla stunt, age 57.
CSI’s Fashion-Victim Show
Lights, Camera, Timmmmber!
EDOC
LAUNDRY
BRAWNY
BY CONSTATINE VON HOFFMAN
BY SANDRA O’LOUGHLIN
Life in the ‘Fast’ Lane
VOLKSWAGEN
BY STEVE MILLER
I am ‘Fast,’ I am strong:: VW’s vinyl fetish.
D
ie young and leave a beautiful corpse? Not encouraged. But Volkswagen’s
recent consumer-generated marketing effort did lure drivers to the edge. Live fast, it tempted.
Not, however, in the expeditious sense. The program took “fast,”
the adjective, and turned it into “Fast,” the embodiment behind the
newest GTI model. But what is a Fast? That was for the public to decide.
The initiative, created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Miami, began in
February when an e-mail blast directed 75,000 GTI enthusiasts and VW
owners to projectfast.com. At the site, visitors were asked to visualize their ideal Fast, then answer questions about its attributes—its size,
shape and color. The end result of this input was not a new GTI, but
the attitude behind one. Fast turned out to be a black vinyl doll wearing a sly, sinister smile. It would become both centerpiece of VW’s guerrilla marketing and its GTI advertising campaign: 11, 30-second spots
that broke during the Winter Olympic Games in Turin, Italy.
Like the perennial devil on one’s shoulder, the ad icon urged GTI
owners to blow off mundane responsibilities to take their ids for a walk
on the Fast side. In the Olympic Village at Turin, VW and Crispin
placed 50 Fast totems in lofty boutiques with plaques that read
“Inside most, but not all of us, there is a Fast. We believe it may
look something like this. Rub it for good luck.”
To generate buzz and a supply-and-demand-style feeding
frenzy, Fasts were distributed only to a chosen few. About
17,000 were produced as a standard feature for the GTI, which
came with a kit that included a Fast, a care/feeding manual and
four interchangeable tails. The chatter generated by the mysterious grinning figure spread everywhere. VW’s Fast icon garnered more than 65,000 MySpace friends, while bloggers used
it as an avatar. Bootleggers created Fast stickers, T-shirts and hood
graphics, and a few someday-regretful aficionados even got Fast tattoos. At the height of Fastmania, the cantaloupe-sized icons were going
for up to $1,000 on eBay. The effort helped VW sell 2,073 GTIs in March,
a jump of nearly 100% over the previous year.
The Fast effort was but one blade in VW’s grassroots strategy.
Helga, the German-accented blonde from GTI’s “Unpimp” spots, made
personal appearances that provided some good YouTube moments.
For the relaunch of the Rabbit, a vehicle “born and bred for life on the
city streets,” CP+B created the Gypsy Cab Project, in which a young
Colorado filmmaker named “Steve” cruised the streets of Manhattan
last June to give free rides in a Rabbit and film the experience, which
was chronicled on www.gypsycabproject.com. To lure rubberneckers
at the L.A. Auto Show, two off-duty CHiP officers were hired to pull over
GTIs near the convention center for going too “fast.”
MARKETING
ed.
on’t get arrest
RULE ONE D
ething that
so
on doing m
ng
ni
an
pl
re
u’
If yo
ll building,
it—scaling a ta
requires a perm
ise such a fuss
re you don’t ra
say—make su
be you can
e law. OK, may
as to break th
cops come,
e
. But when th
bend it a little
want to
so
al
ay
say. You m
do what they
budget.
money to the
add some bail
C
Camping it up:: In Brawny Academy Webisodes, the lumberjack domesticizes men.
I
Cliff Lipson/CBS Broadcasting
lothing as clues to an online reality game? Elementary, my dear Wintour. That’s the concept
behind Edoc Laundry, which finds itself in
uncharted territory for an apparel brand: at the confluence of clothing and computers. This spring, the
Seattle-based company began shipping a collection of T-shirts, hats
TeeSI:: CBS crime scene investigators get a clue from Edoc’s threads.
and hoodies sporting graphics embedded with a hidden code—
“edoc” spelled backwards—that unlocks the content in Flash movies
Weisman on a separate interactive project. Edoc T-shirts were written
on a Web site, www.edoclaundry.com. Each movie, in turn, is a puz- into “Hung Out to Dry,” an episode that aired in October and chronizle piece that helps solve an online murder mystery about a band called cled the murder of two victims who were wearing shirts with hidden
Poor Richard.
messages about the killer. “They saw it as a great marriage between
Edoc Laundry is the brainchild of a trio of forward thinkers: Elan what they’re doing with CSI, where everyday they are trying to find clues
Lee, chief designer at 42 Entertainment, a producer of alternate-real- to solve a murder on a microscopic level,” said Shane. “This was just
ity games; Dawne Weisman, wife of Jordan Weisman, a 42 another vehicle for them to do that but through our T-shirts.”
Entertainment co-founder; and apparel veteran Shane Small. They hit
The result was what Small described as “an hour-long commeron the idea as a way to sell clothes with a “story” to tech-savvy twenty- cial for us,” complete with the company Web site and even the price
somethings who spend more time online downloading music and of the garments. It was so successful that Edoc’s Web site crashed
chatting than catching ad messages on TV.
after more than 8,000 viewers tried to log on simultaneously. “It gave
Ironically, the idea was unique enough to catch the attention of us exposure and educated the public about us,” Shane said. “It was
CSI:NY creator Anthony E. Zuiker, who had been working with Jordan a huge compliment and very surreal at the same time.”
5
RULES
OF GUERRILLA
t sounds more like an assignment for MacGyver than a marketer: Turn paper towels into compelling Internet content. Even worse, it smells like someone trying to graft
their product on to marketing’s flavor of the month—Webisodes.
Despite these potential drawbacks, Georgia-Pacific scored a hit with Brawny
Academy, via Fallon, Minneapolis, a series of videos chronicling a charm school for average American males (read: sloppy, domestically inept dudes) led by Mr. Brawny, the
brand’s icon, who is a suspiciously sensitive lumberjack given to saying things like, “My
mother always told me, true love means never having to sit on a cold-exposed toilet rim.”
C’mon—toilet humor? Well, there’s no arguing with the results. “To date, we’ve
had 370,000 visitors who were averaging more than 12 minutes at [www.brawnyacademy.com] each time they visited,” said Derek Schwendinger, GP’s associate brand
manager for towel strategy. Of course, eyeballs alone don’t equal success. As a result
of the campaign (which began this June and included print and broadcast elements),
sales were up 9%, intent to purchase increased 14% and there was a 40% increase in
the number of consumers who agreed with the statement “Brawny is a brand that supports women.” (Perhaps because it’s not afraid to tell the truth about men.)
Brawny was getting a surprising amount of mileage from a format that some no
doubt believed had been done to death. Webisodes first caught the marketing spotlight back in long-ago 2002, with Fallon’s own BMW series of short films, The Hire.
Brawny Academy wasn’t the biggest Webisode effort this year. In numbers, it was easily eclipsed by LonelyGirl15, the fake video diaries of a 16-year-old that had millions
flocking to YouTube despite the fact that she kept her clothes on, and the 10 Webonly featurettes of TV’s Battlestar Galactica, which were downloaded more than 4 million times. But those other shows were based around two staples of Internet content:
young female flesh and science fiction. Brawny Academy was a standout both for its
source (a CPG company!) and its topic.
In the Survivor-like show, eight hygienically and empathetically challenged guys
were motivated to fix their poor domestic habits. Divided into two teams, the men lived
in dream cabins tricked out with three B’s of male bonding: big-screen TVs, barbecue
and beer. In the woods, the Brawny Man led a series of competitions designed to teach
his charges how to warm the hearts of their mates (presumably, females forever picking up after them.) In one, the boys cleaned up after actual pigs that were allowed to
roam the cabin. In a Dr. Phil/Oprahesque episode, the guys shared confessions with a
therapist. At the end of the series, Web visitors voted for the Most Improved Man.
As TV ads, the Academy’s “men are slobs and women have to fix that” message
might have gotten lost amid all the sitcoms built on exactly the same premise, and it
never would have drawn an audience large enough to justify broadcast’s higher production and airtime costs. However, on the Web, success could be measured by reaching people in the hundreds of thousands.
“It’s a funny idea and clearly it was the right content for the right people,” said
Drew Neisser, president of Renegade Marketing in New York, who added that the site
could be improved by adding a “Web 2.0” way to connect with the brand or other
people. Schwendinger is aware that this element was missing from Brawny’s Web
work. “One of the biggest [things we learned] from this was the need to create a place
for dialogue with the consumer,” he said.
Hmmm, a guy who needs to learn how to be a better listener? Sounds like he could
use some quality time alone with Mr. Brawny.
www.brandweek.com
RULE TWO If you’re going to interrupt
someone’s day, make it worth his or her
while. By their very nature, guerrilla
tactics are unusual, even disruptive. If
your activity makes you feel icky, bored
or even stupid, do consider whether
passersby will feel the same. A pissed-off
customer is worse than no customer.
RULE THREE
Don’t ask, te
ll later.
Sometimes it’
s not worth as
king the boss
permission to
do a guerrilla
program. He
or she may se
e the idea as
too risky. So
make the guts
y move on yo
ur own, especially if you ca
n do it on a sh
oestring. But
heed Rule No.
1, above, in ca
se your boss
likes how you
look in horizon
tal stripes.
t.
Be exuberan
ity.
RULE FOUR
e, well, creativ
lik
ity
tiv
ea
cr
t
ou
ss
Nothing says
r. To
ner hall monito
n
ru
Forget your in
to
e
Dar
e your head.
the rules insid
you don’t
if
y,
el
tiv
ra
gu
with scissors (fi
eird. Find
w
o
but not to
mind). Be silly,
and get a
n, light a fire
some inspiratio
ll your story.
big idea to te
RULE FIVE Challenge yourself.
Only you know your actual boundaries—
not your peers and not your competitors.
Excellence often means scaring yourself a
little. Reach beyond your comfort level. If
an idea’s making you sweat a little bit, it’s
probably a good one. And if you’re in over
your head, fake it—everyone else does.
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
29
Guerrilla Marketers of the Year
Kicking the Traditional Ad Habit
HONORABLE MENTIONS
ADIDAS
BY BECKY EBENKAMP
BY BARRY JANOFF
V
isitors who came to Germany this past summer to attend the
FIFA World Cup—plus a good number of the 1.5 billion who
watched the June 9-July 9 event on TV—were greeted with an
unusual site, courtesy of adidas: a 43,600-sq.-yd. World of Football
“stadium” in Berlin’s Platz der Republik.
A 1:3 ratio replica of the city’s Olympic Stadium, World of Football
took two months for the sports apparel and equipment company to build
and had a capacity of 10,000-plus. The stadium hosted such events as soccer games pitting all-time greats against average Joes, and exhibitions in
which people attempted to establish world records in various soccer skills.
In one section, consumers became part of adidas’ +10 global ad campaign, via 180 TBWA, Amsterdam, when they were filmed interacting
with such brand spokesmen as David Beckham and Zinédine Zidane.
But it wasn’t all about soccer: The venue hosted an Xbox competition and a concert headlined by the band Black Eyed Peas. Adidas, which
has been an official World Cup partner for 30 years, took over the region
in other ways, including a highway billboard of German goalkeeper Oliver
Kahn that stretched over the road to Munich International Airport.
In March, during what could be dubbed adidas’ “year of guerrilla
marketing,” the company relaunched adicolor, a collection originally
released in 1983 featuring white athletic shoes sold with quick-drying
colored pens to allow consumers to create their own designs. The 2006
adicolor White Series came with such accoutrements as magic markers and spray cans; a limited edition version was packaged in a wooden artist’s box with creative utensils. Adidas invited consumers to sub-
Gooooal!:: Adidas stretches its ad creative.
mit ideas for an adicolor design at www.adidas.com/adicolor. The winner was Ari Lankin, a New York-based artist; 25 pairs of his adicolor
sneakers were sold in October at the adidas Originals store in New York
for a cool $120 each—each pair, presumably, and not each shoe.
Adicolor support also included viral films shot by directors based on
their emotional and creative response to a pre-assigned color. The most
outrageous, “White Out,” via Tronic, New York, showed adult film actress
Jenna Jameson getting sweaty in a tight dress while playing a whack-amole game in which she slams away at characters that represent adicolor shoes. Jameson’s ad on YouTube generated about 200,000 hits. In
Europe, the company placed street-level billboards that showed only a
white adicolor shoe and the adidas logo. The blank space was meant to
encourage graffiti, and the Euro youth didn’t disappoint. Reps would
return to replace the white shoes, but left all the adjacent tags intact.
Early this summer, a study from Nielsen Ventures, New York, showed
that adidas received more exposure than any other brand during the
World Cup. In August, the brand got an unexpected boost when a recovering Fidel Castro was pictured in media worldwide wearing a red, white
and blue warmup suit with adidas logo.
Hopping Toward Higher Market Share
PANASONIC
BY KENNETH HEIN
N
eutering your pet
bunny is the
humane, socially
responsible thing to do. It
reduces the incidence of
Bunny bus:: Getting the word out in NYC.
cervical cancer in female
rabbits and mellows out the overly aggressive males. Hats off to Panasonic Battery Corp. for getting such an important message out there.
Funny thing is, actual pet-rabbit owners were not the campaign’s
only target.
“Neuter your bunny” was Panasonic’s hit back at a certain ubiquitous commercial rabbit (hint: it keeps going and going and going);
a sarcastic jab designed to nudge its own brand—America’s Oxyride
Extreme Power Battery—into the cultural spotlight. Because rabbits
are often given as pets during Easter (and, shortly afterwards, begin
to mature and cause problems), the Secaucus, N.J.-based company
picked June 14, 2006, as “Neuter Your Bunny Day.”
While the poke at Energizer was clear enough, Panasonic insisted its heart was in the right place, even if its tongue was in its cheek
just a little.
Rabbit owners in the New York metropolitan area could have
their bunnies fixed gratis at a local vet’s office, with Panasonic Oxyride
picking up the bill. Panasonic also presented $10,000 to the House
Rabbit Society, an international nonprofit animal rescue organization.
30
NOVEMBER 20, 2006
It also launched www.neuteryourbunny.com to provide information
about neutering. Animal-rights stalwart PETA even gave Panasonic
its corporate “Glitter box” award for good citizenship.
“Panasonic is pleased to help improve the lives of bunnies and
their owners through ‘Neuter your Bunny,’” said Brian Kimberlin,
Panasonic director of consumer marketing, in a statement. Kimberlin
also reminded the public: “When using Oxyride batteries in your digital camera, bunny owners can take twice as many pictures of their
pets than they could with the other brands.”
But the point is, of course, about bunnies—really.
So what if Panasonic’s Oxyride cells (designed especially for digital devices and the company’s first major battery innovation since
rolling out the alkaline back in 1965) was far less overt than most campaigns? Luring consumers to see through the primary message was
the strength of the whole idea (the competitor’s wind-up, drum-beating rabbit was, in fact, never mentioned by name.)
“We never made the link. The press did—and of course that didn’t bother us,” said Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing, New
York, which created the effort. “All we did was support a cause and
build a little awareness for the batteries.”
That, it did. “More firms should be doing efforts like this,” said
Rob Enderle, technology marketing analyst and principal at the
Enderle Group, San Jose, Calif. “This is a good way to stand out,
especially when there’s a competitor that dominates the space.”
www.brandweek.com
The Best Unkept-Secret Award: Ford
Confession may be good for the soul, but few execs recommend it for the
bottom line. That’s what makes Ford’s Bold Moves campaign, via JWT,
Detroit and New York, live up to its name. Started last June, Bold Moves is
a Web-based effort built around a series of warts-and-all short films about
how the car company screwed up and how it’s trying to come back. The
films have some powerful mea culpas and a direct look at the plight of laidoff workers. In addition to all this, the site features a media feed devoted
exclusively to news about Ford—bad and good. Most impressive is the
forum for consumers to ask questions and post comments. “Land Rover and
Jaguar are has-beens, and continue to disappoint (especially Land Rover)
in the reliability market. Dump those turkey’s [sic] while you can!” wrote one.
Hard to imagine any other company doing this. Hard to imagine many other companies that need to, of course. A bold move indeed.
The Butter Buster Award: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!
In quite possibly the first soap opera involving animated fridge food, Unilever launched The Sprays of Her Life
(www.free-spraychel.com) in July 2005 as a comical
whodunit set inside an icebox. I Can’t Believe It’s Not
Butter! spokes-hunk Fabio voiced Cobbio, the lawyer
who fights to clear heroine Spraychel (ICBINB comes
in spray bottles), who is framed for murdering her rival,
“Buttricia” (the brand’s competition). Unilever supported the Webisodes
with work, via Byte Interactive, Norwalk, Conn., that included TV, print
and cast profiles on MySpace.com. “We increased our Web traffic by 20
times,” said Keith Bobler, director of brand marketing, who estimates the
serial had about 100 million viewers. And Spraychel? She was found
innocent by a jury of her “pears.”
The Nice Jugstaposition Award: Carlo Rossi
Known for its $10 gallon-jugs of wine and consumer sweet spot neatly
hemmed by the AARP age bracket, E&J Gallo Winery went back to
basics with Jug Simple, a grassroots program targeting the under-30
crowd. For the effort, designed by agency Cole & Weber, Seattle, artist
Jay Blazek was commissioned to create six pieces of mod, functional furniture out of empty vessels, including a Chardonnay chandelier, Burgundy
bookshelf and Paisano plasma TV stand. Heralded by wild postings, viral
stuff and local radio/mag ads, a Jug Simple tour dispatched the decor
to U.S. cities, making stops at record stores and other hipster hangouts.
Dog Sniff Dog Award: Motion Picture Assn. of America
On the K-9 Pirate Smackdown Tour, mutts weren’t searching for marijuana, but movies. The purpose of the stunt was to showcase the canine
team’s talents to customs officials, but its media-ready tone and visuals
ensured coverage on national entertainment shows, thus sending a message loud and clear to wannabe pirates: The MPAA’s bark is backed
by its bite. After stops in Washington and Los Angeles, special K-9
agents Lucky and Flo continued their world tour with visits to
Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and the U.K.
The Smells Like Stoner Spirit Award: Showtime
For its show Weeds, the premium cable channel placed scratch and sniff
“joints” in Rolling Stone. In a nice bit of unintentional synergy, the
California Milk Processors Board announced soon thereafter that it would
use a technology that “delivers a constant aroma experience” to pump
the smell of fresh-baked cookies into bus kiosks to enhance Goodby,
Silverstein & Partners’ “Got Milk?” ads.
The “But Wait, There’s More!” Award: Sci-Fi Channel
For Eureka, a show about a quirky town where the government stashes
inventors, Sci Fi came up with an inventive way to build buzz: In “Made
in Eureka“ ads, infomercial queen Pat Murphy Stark hyped “amazing
products!” in order to lure curious viewers to a Web site touting such gizmos as the Cryo Kennel (for quick-freezing pets for extended vacations)
along with Eureka’s tune-in info.
The Best George Jetson Impression Award: OK Go
When OK Go couldn’t get music label Capitol to promote its single with
a big-budget, MTVworthy video, the power pop quartet cleared out the
rec room and put on a show. The resulting lo-fi
video for “Here It Goes Again”—ingeniously
choreographed by the singer’s sister using a
“stage” of moving treadmill belts—was posted
to sites such as YouTube and MySpace, where
the public handled promotional duties from
there on. Millions of forwards and hits later, the
band was invited to star in a J.C. Penney commercial and to perform their
synchronized routine live at the MTV Video Music Awards.
The Most-Unlikely Couple Award: Marvel and Guiding Light
Marvel Comics teamed with CBS’ long-running soap Guiding Light
(Procter & Gamble Productions). Beginning Oct. 25, select Marvel titles
featured the New Avengers visiting the soap’s fictitious town of Springfield.
Then, on the Nov. 1 episode of GL, character Harley Davidson Cooper
gained superpowers after becoming the target of a teen Halloween prank.
The project arose when GL costumer Shawn Dudley designed the wedding dress for Marvel character Storm’s wedding to the Black Panther.
The Junque in the Trunk Award: Osiris Shoes
Your assignment, if you choose to accept it, teenage girl: Receive a vintage suitcase filled with new Osiris Girls products, a disposable camera
and a list of items needed to complete a photo scavenger hunt before sending the kit back to Osiris so your
shots can be posted at the project’s base,
www.myspace.com/osirisgirls. Two girls receive the
suitcase each month and, at the end of the year, the
one who took the most creative shots wins a trip to
either coast—thus fulfilling Osiris’ “Livin’ Coast to
Coast” tagline. American Rebel, Los Angeles, handles.
The Best-Hatched Plan Award: CBS
Companies have been advertising on pieces of produce since Chiquita
Banana was in middle school, so there wasn’t anything particularly original about CBS pasting fall-show promos on poultry ovum. Still, news of
the stunt caused such clucking that the resulting publicity created more
impressions than the actual eggs did.
The Most-Illuminated-Idea Award: GE
While it’s known primarily as a light-bulb company, GE had a bright idea
when it devised a program to raise awareness of its Healthcare unit. The
$14 billion division aims to flip the future by putting prevention and disease detection first. To share its message,
agency Frog Design asked people, “How do
you picture a healthy world?” and got them
to document small, everyday decisions that
affect health—taking the stairs over the elevator or a salad instead of fries—and submit
photos and stories to GE Healthcare’s Web
site. Using nine digital video billboards including the Reuters sign, New
York agency Interference staged a larger-than-life viewing of the images
in Times Square on World Health Day, April 7. Street teams handed out
health info and pedicabs brought people to a photo studio for their 15
minutes of fame, too. In total, 1,083 photos were taken at the event and
uploaded to the site, breaking all of Reuters’ records for a live broadcast.
—with Constantine von Hoffman and Sonia Reyes