To take a quick humor break from your busy day, just click on Web sites like newsoftheweird.com or Yahoo’s Oddly Enough news page. You’ll find stories like “Carjacker Leaves Colostomy Bag Behind,” and “Antiaircraft Missile Delivered To Convict In Prison.” Go ahead. Feel superior to those poor, deluded souls. After all, we’re professional marketers. We get out of the box, but we’re never out of our minds. Or are we? These 10 real-life marketing initiatives show that it’s all too easy to get carried away and mistake “bizarre” for “breakthrough.”
- The Night of the Living Designers
A well-known automobile suffers from a reputation as the little old ladies’ favorite. To reverse that perception, the company decides to feature a famous automobile designer in their ad campaign. So far, so good. But the designer featured died in 1969. Don’t they have any live designers in Detroit?
- Welcome to Where The Sun Don’t Shine
To build consumer awareness, a cancer prevention organization sponsors the national tour of a 40-foot long scale model of a large intestine, and invites kids to come crawl through it.
- The Ultimate One-On-One Marketing Initiative
Suffering from love at first sight with someone you’ve just seen in the elevator on your way to work? For an enormous fee, this company will carefully engineer real life coincidences that let you get to know that person. So now “relationship marketing” is a euphemism for “stalking.”
- Run It Up the Flagpole and See Who Sings
Marketing to their internal audiences, major corporations have commissioned composers to create “anthems” for their employees to sing. There is a precedent. Remember the seven dwarves singing “Hi, Ho, Hi, Ho, It’s Off To Work We Go?”
- Get The Best Price on A New You!
Online auctions let you bid for and buy anything. So why not a new face? This Internet auction service lets you invite plastic surgeons to compete on the lowest price for your facelift, or whatever.
- Customers, Customers Go Away
Figuring that any publicity is good publicity, a minor league baseball team aims to set a new sports record…for low attendance. They forbid fans to enter the ballpark to see a game.
- The Birth of a Brand
A software company offers a large cash prize to parents who give their newborn the same name as the hero in the company’s new video game.
- Safety Strikes Out
A restaurant chain ties in with the local major league baseball team, for a free comic book for kids. Good strategy…bad execution: The story features ballplayers as superheroes who battle a monster that lives in the ballpark’s fountain, with water and swimming pool safety tips for kids.
- Does This Violate Terms Of Parole?
Inspired by the success of Classmates.com, the online service that gets school friends together, a company launches a service that invites ex-cons to get in touch with their old cellmates.
- Con • fuse tr.v. Perplex, Disconcert
To encourage fitness among children, bureaucrats create a PSA that celebrates verbs such as run, sing, dance, jump and skate. But there is no clear statement about diet and exercise. The result: Millions of chubby children improve their grammar skills.
Unusual creative can be a risky balancing act. It’s worth the risk, but only if it leads to the reward: Marketing results. Strategy and tactics are not separate. They must work with each other, to make sense with the brand and more important, make sense to the customer.
Alan Maites is the president of Robinson Maites. He can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
1. Buick 2. Cancer Research Foundation of America 3. Coincidence Design 4. KPMG, Unisys, Hewlett-Packard and others 5. Medicineonline.com 6. Charleston, SC, River Dogs 7. Acclaim Entertainment’s Turok Game 8. IHOP restaurants and the AZ Diamondbacks 9. Convictsreunited.com 10. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services
