Carbon Fighters

Carbon Fighters, a web-based environmental initiative to reduce workplace waste, summarizes its actions in a snappy little (non-embeddable) video, but these promotional stickers give some idea of what the campaign is all about. Featuring eye-catching graphics, these custom decals are available for self-designated "carbon fighters" to print out and place on personal computer monitors and other electronics--chiding others for paper- and power-wasting--or inside of elevators, admonishing lazy co-workers to use the stairs. Other stickers advise employees to use public transportation like trains and buses and cut down on courier services.

This guerrilla marketing promotion's stickers are truly works of art examined up close, but it's dubious how much attention bosses will pay them unless their offices are already on some sort of eco-friendly track. Fortunately, workplace sustainability is becoming trendier by the day, if recent "green" features in business magazines are to be believed.

If It Comes In a Bag...

Sometimes, all it takes to make a guerrilla marketing promotion out of an ordinary advertising space is a promotional plastic bag. In the case of this Australian ad for mystery novelist Patricia Cornwell's latest book, a super-sized "forensic evidence" custom bag attracted the attention of mall-walkers long immune to the pop-up advertising posters that speckle the aisles of shopping spaces worldwide.

The promotion is expertly aimed, too. A mystery or suspense fan is much more likely to approach a simulated forensics-evidence bag, recognizing its purpose, and thus read the copy on the ad, which in this case yields tantalizing plot details. The Scarpetta Factor doubtless made a fine showing in Sydney.

Shopping Cart Prison

Buyresponsibly.org seeks to raise awareness of the role of human trafficking in producing cheap consumer goods. Their recent television commercials and print ads have made use of the shopping-cart-as-cage motif, but in Switzerland, apparently, conventional promotional advertising was not enough--a guerrilla marketing promotion was called for.

The ad agency chose a popular shopping area and placed a giant overturned shopping cart in the middle of the sidewalk. To get the point across, they placed barefoot mannequins inside the shopping cart as if imprisoning them. A looming billboard nearby asked shoppers to consider "what's behind the goods we buy" with the address of the nonprofit organization's website. Curious pedestrians were drawn to the display and hopefully learned to question the ethics of nearby retail stores.

How much is that Eyeball in the Window?

Indonesian eye-drop manufacturers Insto were on the lookout for an innovative way of reaching bikers, who often end up with dust in their eyes due to dirty roads. They figured out a way to combine the cause of the eye-dust (other vehicles) with the solution (Insto eye-drops) by placing custom window decals in the backs of large automobiles. Custom decals showed a giant eye, obscured by road-mud until the car's windshield wiper (with a bottle of Insto cleverly placed at the base) cleared its vision. Bikers would hopefully reach the same conclusion about how to clear their own eyes after a long day on the road.

Insto's ad placement is certainly unique. Hopefully, cars and trucks on the road won't be distracted by the giant eyes driving all over the place--otherwise road dust will be the least of bikers' worries!

Gum Behaves Itself in Ireland

The city of Dublin launched the Gum Litter Task Force, an initiative to combat gum littering sponsored by members of the food industry, the Education and Environmental Departments, and local governments. The campaign to achieve "a long-term sustainable solution" to the problem of gum litter included both traditional ads and guerrilla marketing promotions like this one. Hundreds of shoes were "stuck" to the street, accompanied by custom decals of thought-bubbles reminding passersby that gum belongs in the trash.

Elsewhere in the campaign, students distributed promotional pens reminding shoppers to dispose of their gum properly, and posters on the street scolded pedestrians by threatening a €150 fine for noncompliance. Neither of these have the shoes' unique promotional advantage, though--children and posters are easy to ignore, while an army of random shoes provokes thought and discussion.

Little Changing Table of Horrors

Once again, guerrilla marketing takes promotions to the bathroom. This awareness campaign by Project Cuddle seeks to alert new mothers to the problem of baby abandonment by covering changing tables with large decals portraying alleys strewn with newspapers and dead rats.

While decals are more effective than ordinary posters next to the table, I can see a lot of mothers just scrubbing the table surface with hand sanitizer until it gleams (even though the display of filth is obviously fake) and changing their babies with no second thoughts. A video screen on loop would make more of an impression, but even that could backfire--the last thing public restrooms need is more screaming babies!

[via Ads of the World]

Is That a Landmine on Your Shoe, or Are You Just Happy to See Me?

Non-profit organization UNICEF reimagined the traditional idea of the customized sticker campaign as an opportunity for guerrilla promotion tactics. On the sticker's adhesive side, "camouflage" patterns made it indistinguishable from the surrounding floor. They were sprinkled randomly throughout an area with heavy pedestrian traffic and quickly became stuck to people's shoes. When people removed the stickers, the underside revealed a landmine graphic with a chilling message: in many countries, that landmine would have been real, and the person holding the sticker would now be dead or injured.

With this sobering realization of the dangers still faced by many civilians in third world countries, pedestrians flocked to the UNICEF booth, where they could learn more, donate to the charity's landmine education and eradication efforts, or volunteer their time.

The UNICEF ads demonstrate a major advantage of guerrilla marketing over more traditional methods--effective, provocative promotions can be done on a very tight budget. This type of promotion could easily be replicated at conferences and tradeshows to advertise other awareness causes or industries.

Promotional Swarm!

German publishing house Eichborn let their best promotional ideas fly at the Frankfurt Book Fair--literally! In one of the most unique promotions I've ever seen, a swarm of flies were outfitted with little red promotional banners attached by wax strings and set loose in the convention. Curious attendees naturally looked at the tags and were directed to Eichborn's booth. The publisher's logo, of course, is a fly.

Here's a case where bigger is definitely not better--a huge flag would have blended into the rest of the trade show promotions, but these tiny slips of paper got everyone's attention.

[via I Believe in Advertising]