Saugrippe.com::: Campaign against swine influenza.

Agency: barfuss.creative.group


A stunt campaign against swine influenca. With this promotion they pull attention to contagiosity at Oktoberfest. 

Head & Shoulders “THE COOL ZONE” Brand activation, Jeddah

• Brand: Head & Shoulders
• Brand Owner: P&G.
• Category: Health and Beauty.
• (BTL ) strategy, event planning & fulfillment:Brand Commandos.
• Region: KSA, Jeddah.
• Date: 12.8.2009.
• Objective: P&G aim was to build strong brand awareness and encourage consumer trial initiatives.
• Solution: Brand Commandos helped P&G distribute sample kits and establish a strong presence among Jeddah community.
• Results: 4000 sample distribution.

Guerilla Event Marketing—A Mob in a Flash

The choreographed dance, not surprisingly, was captured on film. Spontaneous shimmying spurred on by commuting ennui? Not quite. The event was a brand-orchestrated flash mob, a gathering (usually precipitated by an elaborate set of e-mail instructions) of large numbers of people in a public place, where some preplanned event takes place to entertain, amuse or generate buzz and publicity for a well-known brand (in this case, T-Mobile). The mobile-phone company pulled off a similar Trafalgar Square sing-along three months later, attracting nearly 14,000 people. T-Mobile isn’t the only company to employ viral marketing using a colossal street cast and the Internet to build brand awareness. One hundred leotard-clad young women danced in Piccadilly Circus to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” for Trident Unwrapped. And sunglass giant Ray-Ban staged its own guerrilla-marketing ploy in Manhattan, with “street teams” (decked out in Ray-Ban shades, naturally) standing and gazing skyward at a huge Ray-Ban building wrap. Some companies have even merged their performing plebes with some high-profile talent. SKY HDTV commissioned supermodel Gisele Bündchen to flip through the TV channels in an airport lounge while more than 1,000 cast members “brought the TV to life.” And a clothing store on California’s Sunset Boulevard was suddenly overrun by hundreds of dancers wearing gold parachute pants and cutting a rug to “You Can’t Touch This” (an A&E mobile-marketing ploy to attract attention to its Hammertime documentary about rapper MC Hammer). This viral marketing is a form of guerrilla advertising that not only directly touches its participants and the spectators who witness the event live, but also the viewership that subsequently gets a chance to view the event via e-mail, text messaging, podcasts, blogs, forums, social networking sites and other Internet resources. You know the drill: Your brother sends you a link to some YouTube video or Facebook group, and voilà—instant brand awareness that spreads like a California wildfire. There are even websites dedicated to helping brands track how well their viral campaigns are doing. Visible Measures, for instance, offers a Viral Reach Database that collects data from more than 150 video-sharing destinations. It then generates stats on not only how many people have seen a video campaign (and how many times), but also on how they’ve interacted with it via comments, ratings and their own video responses. Married to the Mob The flash mob is said to have originated in 2003 with Bill Wasik, a senior editor at Harper’s Magazine. For his first successful flash-mob attempt, Wasik blasted out a detailed instructional e-mail to a bunch of people. More than 100 willing participants then converged on the rug department at the flagship Macy’s store in Manhattan, where they gathered around a carpet and informed the salespeople that they all lived together in a warehouse and needed to search for a “love rug” as a group. Just as weird as their arrival was their sudden departure—after a burst of synchronized clapping, all the participants ran out of the building. “I really just did them as a sort of social experiment,” says Wasik, whose book And Then There’s This: How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture debuted in June. “I wanted to see what would happen—how far would the e-mail spread? How many people would come? I had seen e-mails and webpages go viral, and I was really interested to see if I could make something like that happen myself.” The fact that companies have tapped into flash-mob types of viral marketing to promote their brands doesn’t surprise Wasik. “It’s an image that captures what people find so exciting about the current information age: a group of strangers using technology to come together instantaneously,” he says. “It makes technology seem like the cure for loneliness and alienation. Of course, the irony is that sometimes our technology has the opposite effect: It lets us connect with more people, but at the expense of the depth of connection.” Charlie Todd, founder of Improv Everywhere (a comedic performance-art group that proudly states on its site that it “causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places”) and author of the recently penned Causing a Scene: Extraordinary Pranks in Ordinary Places with Improv Everywhere, isn’t surprised that some companies are using the flash-mob technique to promote their brands (Improv Everywhere itself doesn’t stage events that advertise specific brands). “Anything that’s popular will eventually be co-opted by the advertising world,” Todd explains. “It’s usually just a matter of time. Brands see people getting excited about something, and their first thought is always, ‘How can we use this [phenomenon] to get people excited for our brand?’”
	What Works, What Doesn’t For such a public-event-driven campaign to work, you need to keep the element of surprise without alienating your audience—or your participants. “I think a mistake many brands make is not being transparent,” Todd says. “No one wants to show up to a flash-mob-type of event only to find out later on they were used as pawns in a marketing campaign. If you’re making a commercial for the Web, don’t kid yourself or anyone else involved that it’s anything else.” Wasik agrees. “I suspect that flash-mob marketing will be more effective for [companies like] T-Mobile as an image in advertisements (where it gives that sense of instant togetherness) than it is as an actual viral campaign (i.e., creating mobs that try to market to participants),” he says. “People don’t want to feel like they’re shills in a corporate campaign, and once they realize that’s what you’re asking them to be, they won’t show up.” Brands also have to weigh the risks in attracting participating players. “You look stupid if no one shows up,” Wasik explains. “But if you try to solve the problem by sweetening the deal somehow (book some attraction like a celebrity or band, for example, or give something free away), then you risk having people show up and cause problems. There have been almost no cases of ‘real’ flash mobs leading to violence or arrests, in part because the absurdity of the idea filters out the kinds of people who would start trouble.” The psychology behind why flash mobs and viral campaigns work speaks to an individual’s inherent need to create—and connect. “I think people are excited about creating their own entertainment,” Todd says. And participating in an Improv Everywhere type of mission is an active form of entertainment: “You’re creating something with a group, rather than passively watching a movie, TV show, or sporting event,” Todd adds. Wasik warns that brands can’t rely solely on these manufactured free-for-alls and their viral nature. “It speaks to our great dream about the Internet, and about technology in general—that it will cure our alienation and allow us to feel connected,” he says. “And sometimes it does. But other times it makes us just feel distracted and stretched thin—keeping up with 400 Facebook friends but never really feeling connected to them.” In the end, even campaigns that thrive in the age of computers need to still rely on good old-fashioned human relationships. “It’s a matter of really thinking through what makes people press that ‘forward’ button,” Wasik says. “Jonah Peretti, a really smart thinker on viral phenomena who I profile in my book, says that things that go viral have a ‘social hook’—they speak to the specific relationships that we have with people in our lives. If you have friends you talk to about politics, you’ll send them viral media about politics; if you talk to them about dating, you’ll send them viral media about dating. We use these Internet memes as extensions of our conversations.”
	Jennifer Gidman lives and works in New York.

TRANSFORMERS: LIVE.

TalkTalk | Put Pocketing

TalkTalk launches PutPocketing - the art of putting money INTO people's pockets without them realising, using real ex-pickpockets.
Happening now on London streets until the end of August 2009 - then to be rolled out across the UK. Designed to give Britons something back, no strings attached...

Salvation Army:::Cost Nothing Campaign

The world is changing in so many ways. The recent financial collapse has forced the consolidation of business in every segment of the market. This has led to far fewer businesses that are directly tied to local communities. It is also a tremendously difficult time for nonprofits to raise money. Just when communities need their services the most, many nonprofits have been forced to cut back because they face record budget shortfalls. Such was the case for The Salvation Army when they came to us for help.

Obviously they didn't have money for a big print or broadcast buy, so instead we turned to the community and harnessed the power of 50 local businesses. We wrote, painted, stamped and even burned our campaign messages onto everything from rocks, tarps and dirty car windshields to storefront windows, pizza boxes and coffee sleeves. We were everywhere. But this wasn't just powerful guerrilla marketing. The most important thing about this campaign was the community that came together to launch it.
Let's not forget that these are small businesses--very few with substantial marketing budgets--but they came together to create the first community campaign I've seen outside the realm of politics. And by harnessing the community's collective spirit the small became large. Huge actually.

I hope to see a lot more of this in the future. The good news is that, as long as the members of any community are willing to put aside their differences--which there will always be, and there were here--anyone can do this. And they can do it for the cause of their choice.

Credits:

Chief Creative Officer: Greg Smith

Senior Art Director/Multimedia: Patrick Sperry (TV)

Art Director: Chris Avantaggio (Guerrilla, TV, print, online)

Copywriter: Mike Irvine (Guerrilla, TV, print, online)

Associate Producer: Meghan Gildart (TV)

Director: Tim Johnston (TV)

Editor: Patrick Sperry (TV)

Music: Andrew Frederick, Cerf-Volantes (TV)

www.salvationarmydonate.org

Exercise bike escapes gym

Rexona Men Energizing

What is Parkour? In a nutshell, parkour is the art of movement in which one overcomes the obstacles in his/her surroundings in the most quick, efficient and flowing way. It encompasses running, jumping, vaulting and climbing to overcome those obstacles. Parkour can be performed without special equipment, in any environment, both natural and man-made. It requires one to develop and utilize strength, balance, agility and fluidity, and apply them with prudence, awareness, control, and cool-headedness.

The word "Parkour" is a modification of the French phrase "parcours du combattant," roughly translated as "military obstacle course." At first glance parkour looks like an extreme sport, and it certainly has many of the same qualities of an extreme sport. However, it is considered by many practitioners (known as "traceurs") as more of an art and discipline. It has creative and aesthetic elements that allow for individual expression, and also promotes inner strength and personal growth.

It introduces us to complete freedom from restraining obstacles, and it is this freedom amidst the routine and regimentation of much of modern society that makes parkour very appealing. It is a method that's available to us at any time to deal with the obstructions facing us, both mental and physical. No obstacle, no barrier, no restraint can stop the traceur; they continue moving forward in spite of, and in harmony with these.

While parkour does allow for a great deal of originality, there is a certain methodology commonly used when practicing it. The traceur chooses his/her own path through the environment adapting to and using anything in this path to create unique and flowing movement. When many techniques or moves used to overcome obstacles are linked together in an efficient and continuous way, it is known as a "run." If you see someone that looks like they're running from the police, but there is no one in pursuit, it's probably parkour.

This idea of the chase captures the movement of parkour quite well. In fact, it is the form of movement that our ancient ancestors may have used to hunt for food, or escape from predators on the plains of Africa. There is certainly an instinctual quality to it. In adapting instantaneously to whatever comes forth without thinking about it, we naturally flow over and around all obstacles. In practicing parkour, we are reviving and honing that ancient instinct.

The attitude behind parkour also incorporates the mentality of a child at play. That boundless imagination and energy combined with a complete disregard for social precedents and expectations epitomizes the traceur. Others look at a rail or wall and see a restraint; we look at it and see a launch pad. And hey, let's not forget that we do this because it's fun! The world is our jungle gym, let's go play.

Web sitewww.rexonaenergy.cl

Flickr

Beamvertising Parkour Rexona from Lumina Motion on Vimeo.

The ultimate ad twins, both copy centers using twins!

A copy-centers actually using twins as a guerilla stunt and that was just to much twinnage to pass up

Left and top the UNI-Copycenter twins , top and bottom Staples twins.

=======

This ad was made in Denmark, back in 2001 and grabbed home awards-a-plenty, it started with wining a bronze at Danish award Guldkorn, then got shortlisted at London International and then nabbing a Gold in Montreux.

Credits!
ad agency: BBDO
Client: Jakob Lange - Vester Kopi

And the Look printing found in Lürzers Archive issue 3 in 2004.

New Media:::Movistar

Absolut lights out

Absolut adapts a global initiative with thoughtful segmentation, creating empowering experiences where people can see that making a difference doesn't have to be a chore."

Absolut Vodka wanted to do its bit to help combat global warming as part of its thought provoking “In an Absolut World” campaign. The brand created Absolut Global Cooling to encourage consumers to reduce the effects of global warming by offering simple steps they can implement in their daily lives. The marketing challenge was to engage US Hispanics of legal drinking age to be socially conscious and contribute to the Global Cooling initiative.

The US Hispanic neo-yuppie was identified as an important segment of highly educated affluent consumers aged 21-39. Absolut created bilingual communications including radio, bar/club activation, retailer point-of-sale and celebrity endorsement. Absolut teamed up with Reggaeton artists Angel & Khriz to drive the Global Cooling message in bars and clubs with “Absolut Lights Out” parties. People were encouraged to compete to produce energy through human-powered generators and bicycles. If enough energy was created, a six-foot pillar of Absolut bottles would be fully lit. Hand held devices also stored energy that was used for the anticipated Lights Out moment, which was announced by the DJ with a countdown. The lights in the club would then be turned off for one minute. Then Lunix balloons, generated by human energy would illuminate the whole venue.

There were more than 20 Lights Out Parties, which lead to an increase of on-premise sales of around 5% over the duration of the programme.

BRAND

Absolut

BRAND OWNER

Pernod Ricard

CATEGORY

Drinks (alcoholic)

REGION

USA

DATE

Aug 2008 - Sep 2008

OTHER AGENCIES

The Axis Agency

MEDIA CHANNEL

Rona:::Dripping genius

Never let a good opportunity pass you by...

Targeting peak hour traffic in the vicinity of the Jacques Cartier Bridge,Montreal, two cranes raised a billboard sized banner depicting paint tins collecting the colour drips underneath the Apple ad with the tagline ‘We collect leftover paint’.

This off-the-cuff stunt chimes perfectly with the brand's new "Doing it Right" initiative which spotlights RONA's sustainable development efforts, including the sale of eco-responsible products, its paint recycling initiatives and its new policies on pesticide sales and wood products procurement.