Dentistry Guerrilla Promo

As I was out and about this morning, I ran into an interesting promotion. Standing out side the Bowling Green Subway Station, in Manhattan, The Exchange Dental Group was handing out these promotional toothbrushes.

Attracting new customers with promotional products is not a new idea, but you can see how effective they are when you start to track your return on investment. When you make an appointment with The Exchange Dental Group, you get a free consultation, exam, and x-rays for free. In turn, The Exchange Dental Group will have the opportunity to make you a regular paitient. This is an effective way to use promotional products to drive traffic to your business.

Olympics Promotions: Plant Promo

This is an interesting promotion for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. These pillars were covered in different flowers, and arranged to display the logo for the olympic games. Promotional plants are a great way to draw attention to your company logo and they look really nice.

Airline Promos

Expert markets see opportunities where others see problems. A quote from Mad Men (which we covered last month) sums this up well: "Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is OK. You are okay". In other words, one route to advertising success is to relieve, reassure, or excite the consumer.

Recently, the airline industry has been popular grounds for this type of marketing. Why? Its brimming with problems! The current media is utterly saturated with news detailing the woes of air travel, like long lines, sky high prices, cut routes, delays and cancellations. Consequently, some companies have wisely used these troubles to shape ad campaigns which tell the public (in the word's of Mad men), Air Travel is okay. You are okay!

Kraft provides a perfect example of this: In early spring, the brand teamed up with JetBlue to launch it's new reduced-fat cream cheese. In a truly unique, guerrilla style effort, Kraft brand reps dressed up as Angels on certain JetBlue flights and handed out "breakfast from heaven": free bagels with new reduced fat cream cheese to all the passengers aboard! They ended up giving away 500,000 breakfasts, and the campaign was documented across media outlets around the country. The question arises: Why did Kraft choose to launch the bagels in flights? There are unlimited other venues they could've chosen, like trains, sidewalks, parks, schools, etc. Well, for one, flights fit best with their "breakfast from heaven" idea. But beyond that, the breakfasts lightened up the experience of flying. For the passenger's aboard the plane as well as people who read about it, Kraft came off as a different, more fun food brand. ..They're the company that gives out free bagels to tired air travellers. Furthermore, their promotion of reduced fat cream cheese attacks another national problem: poor diets.

Jet Blue also doubtlessly benefited from Kraft's promotion, as it enhanced their image as a "fun" airline. Like Kraft, they utilize creative advertising to tackle the publics' exasperation with the airline industry. Their new "happy jetting" campaign does a great job differentiating them from competition. According to the ads, flying with Jet Blue isn't isn't like flying with all the other troubled, tedious, airlines...in fact, it isn't even flying, it's "jetting"! Television ads feature bouncy music and the CEO, while print ads have cheery slogans like "flying is for pigeons". The website claims "Jetting comes with a clicker" and "Jetting thinks you deserve a snack." You can even take a quiz to find out if you are a "jetter" or a "flyer".

Virgin America took a note from Jet Blue in 2008, with a campaign that positioned that as the cool and fashionable way to travel. The nationwide print advertisements featured hipster-looking models and copy like "arrive beautifully", "This is How to Fly", and "Talk behind people's backs". The Virgin America Vice President describes, "Time and again our guests say they are thrilled by the design of the aircraft...and the friendly and stylish service, so we wanted our experiential campaign that told that story with a wink and a smile....stylish, mood-lit planes."

These campaigns come hand in hand with controversy. If the companies can't back up their enthusiastic claims, they risk coming off as pretentious or worse,dishonest. Furthermore, some people think the ads are gimmicky or overzealous; this is an especially popular accusation in JetBlue's case. Regardless, the widely publicized campaigns underscore the point we're making here: popular advertising confronts popular problems!

WreckHouse International Jazz & Blues festival

To promote the WreckHouse International Jazz & Blues festival (formerly known as the St. John's Jazz Festival), wind-swept people were hung from poles in the area to visually connect people to the branding of the festival. The WreckHouse name was adopted after a place in Newfoundland, Canada known for its high winds and gusts. The metaphor is a humorous and clever one, definitely a great way to get people talking about and excited for the festival.

The creative use of promotional music items is by no means a new way to draw attention to a brand or event, but when used in the right way like this case, they can be extremely creative and effective.

The crux of guerrilla marketing is about reaching the target audience in a creative and atypical manner. In this respect, this WreckHouse campaign was successful.

World Wildlife Fund Guerilla Promo

This environmental campaign was a great one. Because of fishing nets and other human tamperings with their ecosystem, there are only 111 Maui's dolphins left. In the time leading up to a pivotal parliamentary vote on net fishing in New Zealand, WWF carefully placed life-sized cutouts of Maui's dolphins popped up on fences across the local area of Auckland. The visual connection is meant to show how cruel and damaging the fishing nets can be, as demonstrated by the fences utilized as backdrops.

The ingenuity and importance of this guerrilla marketing campaign landed it national TV and press coverage, including blogs. Although the vote has not yet happened, this effort by WWF was definitely a great way to bring attention to the cause--it certainly was a great way to inform the public of the gravity of the situation at hand. Promotional dolphin-shaped compressed t-shirts would have been a cool giveaway on behalf of this cause. A rally could have been held with everyone wearing the shirts in order to garner more press on the issue.

Via: AdsoftheWorld.