Be Careful With Your Brand Message

Candy can be a very effective promotional item to use as trade show and street marketing giveaways, but you'll probably want to avoid hiring 80's icons to shoot them at the recipients. This TV spot done by AMV BBDO for Mars might have gone viral, but any positive impressions of the spot will be tainted by the contention that it is homophobic. It's a good reminder of the dangers of not carefully controlling your brand message.

La Gazzatta dello Sport - Abandoned Baby Strollers

This guerrilla marketing stunt was part of the brand repositioning effort done by G-Com for La Gazzetta dello Sport, an Italian newspaper dedicated to covering sports. The stroller stunt followed a pink confetti marketing stunt that was unfortunately, not very successful. The strollers, with their baby sound effects, were far more effective in attracting attention.

The event might have been even more memorable if the marketing team had imprinted some newspaper-shaped stress balls with subscription information and left them in the strollers for passersby to take.

MTV Cribs - Celebrity Lost Keys

To promote the launch of the Polish version of MTV Cribs, Change Communications developed this interactive guerrilla marketing campaign. Four thousand sets of keys attached to promotional keychains were scattered around the streets of two major Polish cities.

When passersby find the keys and call back on the number provided, they discover that the keys belongs to a celebrity, who invites them to stop by for a reward. The promotion was wildly successful, with almost 5,000 people calling back...far more than the number of keys planted for the campaign.

Vauxhall - The Insignia Invades London

Vauxhall (Opel) wanted to give the launch of the new Insignia an otherworldly vibe. Some companies might just do a marketing stunt with people dressed up in promotional costumes or conduct a street marketing campaign handing out alien-shaped stress balls, but apparently, a simple campaign like that is just too low-key for this company.

Working with the public relations agency, Cow, Vauxhall introduced their newest car in a dramatic fashion by literally dropping the car out of the sky. The marketing stunt, conducted at the Tower Bridge at Potters Field in London, involved an elaborate setup that created the illusion of an mysterious UFO crash. The breathtaking climax to the stunt occurred on Monday when a crane lifted the UFO out of the crater and revealed the car hidden inside.

Oreo - Milk's Favorite Cookie

Here's another fun ambient marketing campaign showing off the incredible versatility of promotional stickers. Agency DRAFTFCB designed this clever promotion for Nabisco, showing why Oreo is "Milk's favorite cookie." Each time the elevator descended, it demonstrated the familiar Oreo milk dunk.

Simpsons Movie - Mmm....Donuts.

Here's a Simpsons Movie promo we missed the first time around:

Not content with simple promotions, like handing out out promotional balloons and donuts at Byrant Park, their marketing team went all out in the weeks preceeding the movie premiere. Their marketing antics included stunts like converting 7-11s into Kwik-E-Marts and tie-ins with JetBlue Airlines.

The above video, featuring the familiar pink Simpsons donut on the Statue of Liberty, was one of several viral videos made to promote the Simpsons movie launch. Other videos, featuring landmarks like the Hollywood sign and the Seattle Space Needle were also made. Unlike this bizzare promotion, the viral videos were apparently just clever CGI work.

NEWYORKESE - It's Raining Dollars

You don't often see people dropping real money in a street marketing campaign, since there's a tendency for it to incite riots. Usually, a promotional stunt will just substitute fake money or use harmless look-alikes, but apparently the value of the U.S. dollar have dropped so low that these folks are not afraid to use the real thing. The majority of this crowd certainly didn't look like they could be bothered to actually bend down and pick up the free money.

This rain of dollars occurred during the opening moments of the 74th Pitti Immagine Uomo a fashion and apparel trade show in Italy. The guerrilla marketing stunt (called a "low-budget advertising campaign" by the CEO) was done to promote a new Italian apparel brand NEWYORKESE. Each dollar was imprinted with the copy "Tu vuo fa l'americano ma si Made in Italy," which basically translates to "You want to be American, but you were made in Italy." Can't say that it's a sentiment my wallet shares right now -- my dollars might be American, but I sure wish they are Euros right now.

Arrive Alive - Speed Kills

South African agency Joe Public designed and executed this pro bono marketing project for Arrive Alive. The public awareness campaign came in response to the increasing number of reckless driving incidents in South Africa after drivers began removing their license plates to avoid speeding fines.

The empty license plate space on the offending cars were just perfect for placing promotional magnets. The copy on the promotional plates read 'SPEEDKILLS.GP' on the front and alternating Arrive Alive messages on the back: 'When you have a head-on collision at 180KM/H, a speeding fine will be the least of your worries,' 'When you end a child's life at 200KM/H, a speeding fine will be the least of your worries' and 'When you dismember a pedestrian at 160KM/H, a speeding fine will be the least of your worries.'

Pillows Against Poverty

Here's a very simple, but effective, guerrilla action using promotional pillows to raise awareness of a social issue. Pieter-Jan Fraussen, a Belgian designer, placed 60 pillows imprinted with a copy that translates to: "Too many people still sleep on the street. Sign the petition at www.stoparmoede.nu" on benches at a highly trafficked shopping street. The www.stoparmoede.nu website is part of a collaboration between a number of Antwerp organizations dedicated in one way or another to reducing poverty.

This particular action took place at the Meir in Antwerp, Belgium and garnered a lot of attention from the Belgian national TV and local newspapers. The organization's goal is to raise as much awareness of their social project as they can and it seems like they were highly successful. For more action shots of their other demonstrations, check out the photos at the Belgian Independent Media Center here.

Adidas & Ajax - Shirt Swap Viral

Adidas and Ajax Amsterdam wanted to create buzz for the launch of the Netherlands soccer team's new home jersey for the 2008-2009 season and decided to try their hand at viral video advertising. This little bit of street marketing was the result of their collaboration with TBWA agency. The video was shot at Leidseplein, a lively square in central Amsterdam often crowded with shoppers, providing plenty of people for the street marketing team to engage.

The street marketing stunt began with a person dressed as a soccer referee blowing a whistle to attract attention. Immediately afterwards, a mob of people dressed in promotional team uniforms descended on the scene, asking strangers to exchange shirts. The rest of the video show people of all ages and body shapes undressing and exchanging shirts. As far as viral videos go, this one's pretty successful, garnering nearly one hundred thousand views in about a week.

Guerrilla Marketing With Balloons at the Piazza del Papa

I love this video. It's amazing how effective a bunch of promotional balloons or inflatable beach balls can be in getting strangers in a large crowd to interact with each other. It's a very simple and inexpensive promotion that has the potential to have a very high payoff. My Italian isn't very good, so I am not entirely sure what the occasion is, but it looks like a White Night event at the Piazza del Papa in Ancona, Italy.

FBTO - Bokito Viewers

The insurance company FBTO wanted to find a creative way to promote their message of providing simple solutions to their customers. Their brand's selling point is that the company can make insurance so simple that anyone could do it through the Internet. Their ad agency, DDB Amsterdam, saw an opportunity to market the 'simple solutions' theme when a gorilla named Bokito escaped from the Rotterdam Zoo on May 18, 2007.

During its brief period of freedom, the gorilla attacked a woman who had frequently made eye contact with the gorilla -- body language behavior that gorillas consider to be threatening. The weekend following the attack, a street marketing team distributed more than 2,000 'Bokito Viewers,' simple cardboard pinprick spectacles, all imprinted with an averted gaze on the outside to enable zoo visitors to stare directly at the gorillas without threatening them.

The promotional stunt was highly successful, garnering significant media coverage on television, radio and newspapers as well as online sources like YouTube. The Bokito Viewer itself garnered around 26.000 Google hits during that period, earning the promotion a Cannes Bronze Lion. As cool as those spectacles are, I'd be afraid of wearing them in fear of accidentally provoking the gorillas when I turn to speak with a friend. Sticking with promotional sunglasses would be a far safer option.

Simyo - Backstabbing Mobile Carriers

Here's a video of another shockvertising street marketing campaign that makes use of gore to capture attention. Simyo a no-frills, low-cost mobile telephone carrier wanted to inform the Spanish market that their services can save subscribers up to 50% of their current phone bill. To convey their strong selling point, they recruited a street marketing team to perform a bit of street theater in Barcelona, Madrid and Valencia. The street teams were outfitted in promotional apparel with fake knives stuck into their chest or backs. The message is that the customers of the competing carriers are being stabbed in the back by those companies.