Visine vs. Dust Storms

Sometimes the weather provides an unlikely opportunity for great guerrilla advertising. Last week, the city of Sydney experienced one of the worst dust storms ever recorded. After the dust settled, clever advertisers ran through the city stenciling the Visine logo onto every dust-covered surface they could find with harmless saline solution. Just as the sprayed solution moistened the dust and left behind a logo, these ads suggest, Visine refreshes and moistens dry eyes.

This campaign has much less physical staying power than blanketing the city with promotional posters or stickers, but I'm sure it will last a lot longer in people's memories. After all, how often does the weather play right into the hands of an advertising campaign? Imagine what a vacuum cleaner company could have done with all that dust...

Pizza Countdown

[via Ads of the World]

Recently at Pizza Hut locations in the Philippines, delivery bikes have been outfitted with eye-catching countdown clocks, emphasizing the chain's commitment to customer service while drawing attention to their eco-friendly delivery methods. The fact that the bikes and pizza containers are bright red certainly doesn't hurt, either!

Domino's Pizza used to have the promotional slogan "30 Minutes or Less or Your Pizza Is Free"--I wonder how long that would have lasted if they had been accountable to clocks on their vehicles...

Laundry Softener Smells Like Flowers

This wildly successful guerrilla ad for Lenor laundry softeners in Romania replaced the flower pots at florist stands along Bucharest's most traveled street with Lenor bottles, letting consumers know that the softener smells as pretty as the flowers. Unlike a lot of guerrilla promotions, this wasn't confrontational at all, and actually brightened up a lot of people's days, according to a survey taken soon after the promotion was unveiled. Too often, I think, guerrilla marketing is used negatively--Lenor's example reminds us that this kind of promotion doesn't have to shock to be effective. What are some other methods of "positive interference" that make up a successful guerrilla promotion?

Imagine how different the reaction would have been if they had just left a giant pile of dirty clothes in the middle of the street--I for one would have run in the other direction!

[via I Believe in Advertising]

Guerrilla Big Spills Promo

It's hard to get people to pay attention to any kind of advertising in cities like New York and Los Angeles, where so much is going on that pedestrians are hard-wired to tune out 99% of all distractions. These guerrilla advertisements for Bounty paper towels, however, were too big to be ignored! The massive spilled coffee cup and the massive melted popsicle forced city-dwellers to think about the massive messes only a paper towel like Bounty could clean up.



[via ibelieveinadvertising]