Children Under Plastic

A nonprofit organization in New Zealand found a clever way to turn innocent plastic wrap packaging into an effective guerrilla fundraising campaign. They printed up disturbing page-sized postcards of kids apparently suffocating under the plastic and slipped them inside with subscription magazines to raise awareness about the devastating effect of asthma on the country's children. Horrified readers, confronted with these images of suffering when they expected to see their favorite cover girls offering beauty tips, or the latest hot cars and trucks, were offered a number to call to automatically donate money.

This is a great promo--shock tactics are one of the most effective shortcuts to people's wallets.

And Speaking of Eggs...

A Macedonian campaign promoting testicular cancer awareness recently unleashed a bold guerrilla campaign in Skopje, placing hand-shaped flyers and stickers in unexpected places: on the seats at sports stadiums, dangling from barber-cloths at hair salons, affixed to mirrors in changing rooms and bathrooms, even sticking out of pool tables at appropriate below-the-belt levels. The flyers instructed the curious how to perform a self-examination procedure, while all the promotional items featured a prominent link to an awareness website.

Best of all, "eggs" is apparently Macedonian slang for testicles, so even the innocent, unassuming eggs in supermarkets received the guerrilla treatment! This promo was hard to miss and achieved desirable results, with related doctor's visits increasing 11%, according to post-promotional surveys.

Playstation Eggs

To advertise the launch of their new gaming console, the Playstation 3 Slim, Sony Computer Entertainment "laid eggs" all around the city of Dublin. Facebook users who deciphered the company's puzzle-like status updates could use those clues to locate the eggs, though they had to compete with curious pedestrians standing around outside stores and in parks ogling the monstrous promos. Anyone brave enough to actually crack open the mysterious eggs was rewarded with a shiny new Playstation 3 Slim inside.

As you can probably imagine, as soon as the crowds became aware of the eggs' contents, the entire city was out hunting for these trophies. Here's a video of one lucky girl with her new toy:

Wishful Thinking Cars

Volkswagen tapped into the minds of cars in a parking lot by dangling thought-bubbles above their heads--floating poster "accessories" featuring the company's new GTI model. The sad, inadequate-feeling models in the parking spaces all shared a dream of being like the VW. Who knew car psychology had such a lucrative market?

Some of the vehicles shown "thinking" in these ads include luxury cars like BMWs, which I can't see wanting to become VWs and relinquish their executive cachet...and imagine what an identity crisis a truck or bus would have upon pulling in to one of these parking spaces! Still, it's a cute promotion, and will probably send plenty of customers scurrying towards their local dealerships.

Bookmarks Against Suicide

The Samaritans, a nonprofit volunteer-based organization without the ad budget for billboards or citywide poster campaigns, went for stealth in Hong Kong. Thousands of bookmarks like these were "hidden" in unlikely places--convenience stores, libraries, supermarkets--where they could be discovered and taken home.

These bookmarks, with a suicide hotline number on the back and a photo of a despairing person on the front, were much more likely to reach the target audience than conventional media campaigns--severely depressed people would probably ignore glossy print ads in magazines, colorful stickers on storefront windows, and snappy television spots. By infiltrating basic daily routines with this clever guerrilla campaign, the Samaritans were able to communicate with an audience that conventional advertising might have had difficulty reaching. The ubiquity of these ads also raised awareness of the public health problems of depression and suicide.

Even with a bigger budget, I don't think these would work in a direct mail campaign. The guerrilla element is what gets people's attention more than the bookmark's design. How could this translate effectively into other media?

Tumor City

The New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation took its awareness campaign to the streets in classic guerrilla style, placing inflatable "tumors" of various shapes and sizes in the middle of pedestrian passageways to obstruct traffic. The message? "The longer you wait, the bigger the problem gets."

The tumor balloons were a bit graphic, sure, but a lot more memorable than possible alternatives--people could easily ignore a stopwatch or other timekeeping installation, for example, and two-dimensional poster campaigns lack the interactive element that makes this such a great promo. The campaign was timed to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and it did a spectacular job of demonstrating how breast cancer can disrupt lives--and how early detection of the disease early can save them.

These Windows Have Eyes

We've all heard the one about the walls having eyes. But the windows? This guerrilla campaign from Wiley X Eyewear printed a pair of sunglasses with the company's brand name on the panels of Venetian blinds. When unsuspecting individuals closed the blinds, they found themselves eye to eye with creepy disembodied sunglasses-faces, courtesy of Wiley X.

This campaign was targeted specifically at college students--I have to question the advertising wisdom of ambushing a bunch of hungover freshmen who just want the sun to go away so they can use the time to skip class in peace. It's a pretty cool idea, and one I haven't seen anywhere else, but I wouldn't want them in my house!

Baggage Claim on Vacation

Beau Rivage, a casino resort located near a major international airport in Biloxi, Mississippi, wanted to attract travelers and tourists who might not normally consider visiting the facility or have even heard of it. To capture the attention of arriving airline passengers, they covered the normally drab, depressingly utilitarian black rubber of the airport's baggage-claim conveyor belt with colorful decals depicting the clear blue waters of Beau Rivage's swimming pool, completing the image with swimmers enjoying the resort's tropical atmosphere. Arriving tourists, naturally stressed out by the air travel experience and in a hurry to reclaim their luggage, saw this image of relaxation as immensely desirable and were much more likely to consider paying the casino resort a visit.

Ice Sculptures Against Climate Change

The World Wildlife Federation, like a lot of environmentally conscious groups, does a lot of its advertising guerrilla-style. It's a lot harder to ignore a cluster of melting ice-people than it is to turn the page away from a photo in a magazine, after all. Here, in a highly-trafficked public square in Berlin, the WWF covered the steps of a major concert hall with 1000 of these ice-people in the middle of the day, allowing them to melt in full public view as a protest against arctic climate change.

I have to ask where they got all the water to make these things--letting them melt is at least as wasteful as buying bottled water instead of drinking from reusable bottles. While the visual effect is powerful, this doesn't seem like a very sustainable campaign for a supposedly eco-friendly group to be running.