The Quisenblog

If you are interested in exploring guerilla marketing (or, if you prefer, non-traditional marketing) because you’re committed to creating something outrageous, standing out from the crowd, hitting people with an unexpected message when their guards are down and perhaps inciting a viral campaign, then it might just be for you. If you’re interested in guerilla because you want to save money or don’t have the budget for a mass media campaign, prepare to be disappointed.

“Guerilla marketing” is often defined as hitting consumers (prospects) with marketing messages either in places they don’t expect them, or in ways they don’t expect. While guerilla campaigns are rarely scalable, they can break through the mind-numbing clutter we each have to deal with each day, and can help consumers think about you and your offerings in a new, fresh way.

That is, if you do it right. And let me just say it here: guerilla marketing is not a cheaper way to do marketing. While it is true you won’t have the media expenses of a more traditional mass media campaign, you will have a lot of expenses mass media campaigns don’t incur. A lot of what we in the business refer to as “man hours”–fabrication costs, research and preparation, event planning and hosting, content creation, fulfillment and follow-up. All things you don’t have to worry about in the “set-and-forget” world of paid media advertising.

So how do you know if the non-traditional approach you’re considering will be a hit or an exercise in futility? As it turns out, many of the most successful guerilla marketing efforts have a lot in common. More specifically, they’re able to unequivocally answer “yes” to each of these questions:

• Is it surprising/quirky/unexpected? Unlike with mass media marketing, where you can buy attention, with non-traditional marketing, you have to earn it. Your content has to be disarming, and catch people with their guards down. These beer stein decals installed on glass doors are but one example.



• Does it amplify the brand’s story outside the traditional media space? Getting attention is great. But if it doesn’t play back to your core brand story (and what you want people to say about you), you’re likely wasting your time. This urinal poster for the Arizona Science Center is an example of linking non-traditional creative and media to boost the brand.



• Is it sustainable? Coming up with a “blockbuster” event might sound like a good idea, but too often these are little more than closed-ended tactics. This video for Coca Cola showcases one event (in this case, rewarding good samaritans who turned in an unattended wallet with tickets to a soccer match), but it leads to a bigger pay off for the brand–“Buy That Person A Coke.” Works for honest folks who turn in wallets. Works in hundreds of other situations too.
• Is it supported? Is it a stand-alone execution, or is it tied to other things the brand is doing, both on- and off-line? Social media provides your brand many possible ways to reach people. Plan ahead to determine how to amplify your guerilla tactics through social. Check out this video to see how The Opticians Council Of Canada amplified their guerilla tactics.
• Can it do things in a way that can’t be done in a traditional media space? Getting out of the two-dimensional world gives you lots of possibilities to explore. Check out this guerilla tactic for a gym.



• Is it disruptive, without being inconveniencing or annoying? People are used to advertising messages being restricted to specific times and spaces (magazine pages, TV programming breaks, etc.). Once you venture outside the expected ad media, you run the risk of irritating your audience and building resentment against you. If you’re going to intrude into their lives, you better make it worthwhile for them.

With the rise of social media, and your audience’s ability to share and spread things that interest them, guerilla marketing can serve to garner tons of attention to the brand, ignite word of mouth and generate ample free media, and get people talking about the brand. (Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” and Burger King’s “Whopper Sacrifice“ are two of the most famous examples).

In the not-so-best cases, brands have wasted a ton of money, resources and good will developing stuff that their audiences, to put it bluntly, could care less about (Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” web series comes to mind).

For 50 great examples of guerilla tactics that worked, click here.

The net of it then, is that in regard to guerilla tactics, while spending money is not a sure-fire recipe for success, not spending it is a sure-fire way to fail.

Posted by Mickey.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Clients, Uncategorized, how-to, strategy burger king, guerilla advertising, guerilla marketing, non-traditional marketing, old spice, ted from accounting

You gotta love all those end-of-year lists. They’re neat, tidy and timely.

That being said, I thought this might be a great opportunity to unveil our own end-of-year list. But rather than focus on the highs or lows of the past year, I thought, why not revisit campaigns that, quite literally, changed everything.

These are campaigns that gave us not just great ads, but forced us to rethink the very possibilities of persuasive communication. They’re presented in more-or-less sequential order.

1. Volkswagen “Think Small” (Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1962)

The now-famous Beetle campaign from DDB demonstrated how a marketer could succeed by creating a personality for his/her product, not by talking about the product, but by making the campaign more about the buyer. Volkswagen ads were like a dialogue with customers. Buyers could see themselves as part of the Volkswagen community. Looking at the DDB campaign en toto, one would surmise the Volkswagen buyer to be smart, frugal, no-nonsense and possessing an understated sense of humor. Truthfully, who wouldn’t want to be seen like that?

2. Xerox “Brother Dominic” (Needham, Harper Steers, 1976)

Until this famous TV Benedictine monk came along, business-to-business advertising was dull as dirt, pretty much confined to cold, boring sell sheets that reps would leave with their business cards. Business people don’t have time to be entertained, so the thinking went, so advertising to them as we would consumers is a waste of time. Kudos to Needham for remembering that business people are consumers, too. And that the best way to demonstrate a product’s true benefits are through storytelling, not bland bullet points.

3. FedEx “Sedelmaier campaign” (Ally Gargano, 1978)

In the 1970s and 80s, Chicago Director Joe Sedelmaier directed some of the funniest commercials ever aired, whether for FedEx, Wendy’s (“Where’s the Beef”), Alaska Airlines, Sprint (where I got the chance to work with him) and many others. His unique style of visual humor helped expand the definition of “what’s funny” in commercials. Until Joe, humor was pretty much restricted to quippy one-liners. Suddenly, sight gags were funny, characters were funny, ridiculous storytelling was funny. But the key thing was, with Joe, the needle moved. While many in the business derided him for “making fun” of the customer, results showed that “the customer” liked it, remembered it and acted on it.

4. Miller Lite “Ex-Jocks” (Backer-Spielvogel, 1976)

The use of jocks in advertising has become somewhat ubiquitous these days. And many of the spots are quite entertaining. But before the original Miller Lite spots, athlete advertising was pretty much of the hold-up-the-product-and-smile variety…not much in the way of capturing the personality of the jocks. Then Miller Lite came along. And Backer-Spielvogel was tasked with making a lite beer acceptable to the largest segment of beer drinkers—men. This campaign did it in spades. It not only propelled Miller Lite from a niche brand to the best selling brand of beer in America, it solidified jocks’ place in advertising lore.

5. Nike “Michael Jordan” (Wieden & Kennedy, 1986)

Nike did dozens of great ad campaigns prior to signing a rookie basketball player named Michael Jordan as a spokesperson in 1985. But Jordan became the brand, and the brand be came Jordan. The two represented the same values, and became inseparable, so far as Nike’s audience was concerned. The spots were so well crafted, they felt as if they were coming directly from Jordan, not scripted for him. Even these earliest spots featuring Spike Lee as Mars Blackman gave a hint at what was to come.

6. Apple MacIntosh “1984” (Chiat/Day, 1983)

Okay, so this is the low-hanging fruit. Yes, it ushered in the era of the bigger-than-life Superbowl commercial. But more importantly, it demonstrated how cinematic production values and flawless storytelling, when combined with a legitimate product promise, can move mountains.

7. National Milk Processors Board “Got Milk” (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, 1994)

A great campaign to be sure, in every sense of the word. But “game changing?” I struggled with this at first, then decided to include it, for much the same reason Volkswagon and Xerox were included. For years, the Milk Board ran a campaign called “Milk Does a Body Good” that did a pretty good job of highlighting all the reasons a consumer should WANT to buy milk. Despite all those millions spent, growth was non-existent. Then Got Milk captured America’s fancy. And it did it by acknowledging HOW people used the product and WHY they wanted it. In short, folks didn’t buy milk because it was loaded with protein and Vitamin D; they bought it because somehow, nothing goes better with those monster chocolate chip cookies you love. Not just storytelling, but honest storytelling.

BONUS – 8. Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” (Wieden & Kennedy, 2010)

Maybe this one is too recent to be included as a campaign of seismic proportions. But to my mind, it is the first campaign that successfully integrated traditional media with community-building Social Media to create unprecedented buzz (more than 1.4 BILLION views and mentions) and sales response (sales up over 100% in the two months following the campaign’s launch). And that doesn’t include the “updating-the-stodgy-brand” factor. From this day forward, I doubt there will be a “big idea” in this business that doesn’t include a strong Social Media component.

Can you think of any other campaigns you felt “changed everything?” Let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

Posted by Mickey

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Mickey Creative, Media, Ramblings 1984, ad list, Apple, FedEx, Great ad campaigns, Milk, Miller, Nike, old spice, Volkswagen, Xerox

It’s certainly not news that all ads are not created equal. Some grab us by the throats (or the funny bone) the very first time we see them. We remember them. We tell others about them. We might even look them up on YouTube. Other spots? There are many we have been exposed to dozens of times but never paid them any mind. Such is the nature of creativity in advertising.

It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that ads that do a better job of engaging or entertaining us also do a better job of selling. Yet there are some in this business who still tend to discount creativity in advertising to be somewhat of a commodity. They see “entertainment” and “selling” as somehow being mutually exclusive. These folks for whatever reason have yet to buy into the notion that the quality of creative corresponds directly to the success of a marketing program. As support, they may point to the success of spots such as the infomercial-esque “as seen on TV” ads as proof that it’s what the ad says, not how it’s said that matters. And they have a point: interrupt people with $30 million in paid media, and the needle will move.

But more and more, we are moving to a model of opt-in content. Less are we able to interrupt the consumer with whatever message we feel like and expect them to pay attention to it.

The dynamics of Social Media illustrate this perfectly. There are no multi-million “buys” on YouTube, Facebook, blogs or the like. The barrier to entry is non-existent. Access to Social Media platforms has been democratized. Anyone can post anything. And the success of that content isn’t how much the creator puts behind it. It’s on how many users feel inclined to pass it forward and to talk it up.

In the opt-in world, you’re only as good as your content. A great illustration of this point would be to compare the results of a recent Social Media success (The Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like”) to one that’s not-so-successful (Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series).

In the Old Spice campaign, Social Media users were invited to correspond with The Old Spice Guy. Old Spice’s agency (Wieden & Kennedy) then shot nearly 200 “personalized web videos” addressed to fans (and Social Media heavyweights) over a couple of days and posted them online. The resulting buzz generated an estimated 1.4 BILLION views, hits and mentions over the period of a few weeks. (Oh, and sales were up over 100% over that period.) You can view some of the spots here.

On the other hand, Cisco’s “Ted From Accounting” series was launched as a web series in hopes of going viral.

Response to the web videos was less than overwhelming (fewer than 10,000 views, despite a huge PR push). One commenter on their YouTube page summed up reaction to the campaign this way: “I am embarrassed for your marketing department. This is the sad result of a poorly orchestrated attempt at some sort of viral leaching by a room full of middle aged guys, who’s (sic) kids saw something on YouTube that they thought would be a good idea to copy.”

Ouch.

Granted this is hardly an apples-to-apples comparison. The Old Spice campaign started as a mass media campaign and extended to include the digital component. But while “Ted in Accounting” didn’t have that mass media lift, my bet is that you could have put millions behind it and viewers’ reactions wouldn’t have been any different than the YouTube poster above.

The digital world is proving what we who have developed offline content for years have always known: people aren’t going to waste their time with boring content.

Posted by Mickey

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Mickey Creative, Media, New Media, On Customers, Social Media cisco, old spice, Social Media, success stories, ted from accounting, viral video

Chances are if you sat through an agency creative presentation back in the days BSM (Before Social Media), you probably heard your fill of the importance of “breaking through the clutter.” The idea being that because the consumer is exposed to as many as 4,000 marketing messages (primarily via mass media)  per day, we need to create something amazing that is going to be among the 12 or so he will remember the next day.

Funny how you don’t really hear much anymore about “breaking through the clutter.” Today, we preach the gospel of “going viral.” No longer is the high-bar creating content our audience sees, remembers and likes, but creating something that folks actually pass on to their own personal networks.

So how do we approach the creative challenge when our goal is to not only have our audience remember our messages, but spread them as well?

My take is that not much has changed. The messages that we lauded as “breaking through the clutter” have way more in common with today’s “viral campaigns” than you might think. In both cases, successful messages can be described as being both “sticky” and “slippery.” The “sticky” part is pretty straight forward—it means there is an idea or concept that captured the audience’s imagination and helped them remember the message. It made an impression with them, got them involved in the message.

The “slippery” part is a little trickier to understand. It relates to the ease at which that idea is spread to others. It’s easy to describe (or pass on) to someone else.

“Hey, did you see the E-Trade spot with the talking baby?” “What do you think of that Old Spice spot with the guy on the horse?” “How about the FedEx spot where the company tried to save money with Nordic Tuesdays?” (see below) These conversations are viral. They’re an opportunity to share something you like with others. Conversations like this are nothing new.

What is new are the tools of Social Media. You don’t have to meet at the water cooler or wait for some sort of invitation to join a conversation. You can simple post it on your Facebook wall, for all your friends to see.  You can even link the spot as part of the conversation. And everytime one of them reacts to it, that messages gets even more slippery.

Content that is both “sticky and slippery.” This is where your emphasis should be. These are the filters you should use when creating or evaluating content.

My advice is, don’t get so hung up on the tools you’re relying on to spread the message. Get hung up on the message itself.

Posted by Mickey

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Mickey Creative, New Media, Social Media content, e-trade, FedEx, old spice, slippery, sticky, strategy, viral video