Cool Marketing Thoughts

From the looks of the licence plate, this is a Belgian campaign, but I haven’t heard from it (yet). It’s definitely not the first time a tow truck is used to grab the attention of the city traffic. We’ve seen it before in the guerrilla for the Gröna Lund amusement park near Stockholm, the so-called Bumper Car Guerrilla. One of the flaws of human nature is the fact that we are attracted to danger and disaster. If something happened on the freeway, everybody drives slower to see the remains of the accident. The disaster tourist in each of us makes us look back and wonder. It’s probably that glimp of Thanatos every one of us is carrying. It’s also why a tow truck with a mashed car, or crashed cars in general always attract our attention. The licence plate reads FAN 001, which kinda tells you already that it’s a marketing stunt, in case you were still wondering.

Remotely related is this campaign for Monster Jam, where a squashed car has been put in a random parking lot somewhere. Definitely worth a closer look for the passers-by. You can almost smell the gasoline.

Any pointers to the credits for both campaigns are welcome.

In order to launch the TV series Prison Break on the Portuguese FOX Channel, Torke Stunt launched a multi-phased advertising campaign Lisbon. Besides the press kit where a book containing a hidden spoon and a prison blueprint was sent to the press relating -to a prison escapade-, there were also a few street campaigns. In the outdoor campaign with prisoners, a team of 7 people (5 prisoners and 2 policemen) walked throughout the city of Lisbon distributing flyers containing info about the series. Next to that, several stoppers were placed indoors, such as TV CABO shops and in urban furniture. Then there were posters on ’stregical’ locations in various city areas. Personally, I think it’s a good campaign, especially the press kit is really creative. Two things I would’ve done: put the spoon in a cake and have the flyers distributed at train stations etc with the prisoners locked up in a cage (so they’d distribute from within the cell/cage to passers-by).

Brand/product advertised: FOX Channel
Advert title: Prison Break
Agency name: Torke Stunt
Creative Director: André Rabanea
Art director: João Pereira
Copywriter: Gustavo Blanco

Thanks, Hugo

As an extension to the campaign I blogged about last week, LG&F created an outdoor event. Kids were sent out in the streets with notes they could pin on the backs of grown-ups in order to fool them. At school we used to do this with ‘kick me’ but that wouldn’t really have suited for this campaign, so instead the message on the notes were in the sense of “I’m a weirdo” and “Copy me” (aka Monkey me). People that had been fooled could read a message on the backside that contained information about the campaign.

Copy of the message:

“You’ve just been fooled by a Belgian child. Give children from the south also a chance to be a child. Start your own plan with Plan Belgium and become a Plan Parent. Surf to www.iederzijnplan.be”

The url translates as “Everyone his own plan”.

Site urls: Dutch version | French version

Concept (copy+ad): Johan Roelandt, Koen Van Deun (LG&F)
Creative Director: Paul Wauters (LG&F + Snow)
Strategy: Luc Libens (LG&F)
Account Manager: Elke Noels (LG&F)
Graphic Design: Lisa Allegretta (LG&F)
Webdesign: Elke Helbig (Snow)
Internet Producer: Carl De Mey (Snow)
Internet Strategie: Jonathan Detavernier (Snow)
Internet Development: MTFR
Animation & Dev Banner Campain: Bob Goor (Buroproper), Valentijn Steenhoudt (Snow)

To communicate the fact that the Gröna Lund amusement park near Stockholm city was opened for a sneak preview the weekend before the actual opening, bumper cars were placed in the city center of Stockholm, with a sticker on the back that carried the message. Some cars were placed so it looked like they crashed into something, others had skid marks behind them so it seemed they had to brake all of the sudden or slipped and one bumper car was being towed around by a tow truck (so it looked like it was parked in the wrong spot and got towed away). The copy on the stickers read: “Now test driving the amusement park. Sneak preview this weekend.” – A very cool idea, a beauty of an eye-catcher. Not new, but one to remember.

Agency åkestam.holst
Via Adverbox

I’m pretty happy to see a constructive guerrilla like this one. Accessorize Switserland, part of the Monsoon Accessorize group, ordered it at Saatchi & Saatchi Simko. The agency went around in the city and replaced existing chains in the streets with enlarged replicas of those that can be found in the stores. Pretty refreshing idea and a very nice surprize for passers-by. These little things brighten up the cityscape in an instant.

Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Simko
Via: Adverblog

Take a look at this piece of work for Umbro, done by Teresa Lozano and Amaia Arbizu from the Miami Ad School. It’s a bit of a brain-breaker, but I think most people will get it if they pass by at the location. Umbro is mostly known for its football-related products and seeing the gap where a heavy metal ball used to be anchored to the ground with a sticker placed in front of it will make it kind of obvious what happened there. This is the sort of outdoor action I can really dig. I wonder what they have done with the large ball though, and how they managed to get it out of the row (with permission, that is). Perhaps it’s just very well photoshopped to create the illusion?

Credits:
Miami Ad School
Teresa Lozano & Amaia Arbizu