Here’s the scoop.
It’s Sunday. And I was a little bored so decided to look into funny marketing strategies.
The number of search results for this is huge. And honestly, most aren’t the kind of things I’m looking fior.
Most were simple explanations of how to be “witty” or how to write with humour.
Not what I’m after.
I wanted to find a handful of funny and entertaining marketing campaigns.
Here’s a few of the favourites I found.
Dropping a man from space
Do you remember that fella Felix Baumgartner who, after travelling to the edge of our atmosphere, did what no sane person would do and jumped out of his aircraft?
Crazy right.
Images and video of his jump were on every news station across the globe.
Here’s the video.
Here’s the thing. That jump was crazy.
But he also did it in head to toe Red Bull branded gear.
I’m sure Red Bull paid a small fortune to get this stunt performed.
But it worked.
Everyone was talking about it.
Even my mates brought it up when we were down the pub. Which, I guess, is a weird metric for success.
If your marketing campaign gets talked about by non-marketers in the pub, it’s a win.
Stealing views with Wikipedia
I’ve always loved a bit of a roguish approach to life.
Which is why I love this approach north Face took that got them in a spot of bother with judgemental buggers everywhere.
Here’s the scoop.
North face obviously has a huge range of products for people who love the outdoors.
To get their brand in front of people without paying a penny (beyond manpower costs) they made use of Wikipedia.
They found the pages on Wiki for outdoor travel hotspots (Wiki often ranks #1 for these kind of terms) and they switched out the images.
They used images of the location, but people in the image were all wearing north face gear.
Gonna be hard to measure the return from that.
Rut it’s a great exercise in branding and getting your products in front of a relevant audience.
ED jokes get the job done
Speaking of rogues, we’ve gotta mention Richard Branson.
Richard has some great, fun marketing experiments behind his success.
One of my favourites comes from Virgin Atlantic’s rivalry with British Airways.
Back in ’99 the London Eye was being erected.
BA owned a third of the London Eye and was the title sponsor.
Obviously, the erection of the landmark is something they’d want to go well.
Surprise – it didn’t.
There was a technical fault which had the London Eye laying flat on the ground.
So, what does Richard do?
Well, this is how he tells the story.
“I was woken up at 5.30 one morning to be told that the BA-sponsored London Eye had a technical problem – they couldn’t erect it,”
He went on to say… “They had the world’s press waiting to see it going up and I knew we had a duty to give them something to look at.”
Branson acted quickly and got an airship out that read… “BA can’t get it up!!”
He flew that blimp over the flaccid London Eye.
People around the world would have seen Virgin’s dig at BA and, probably, had a good chuckle at it.
Well, as I mentioned. It’s Sunday.
So I’m gonna leave it there for now, pop the kettle on, and kick my feet up.
Before I go, let’s look at the takeaways here.
Key takeaways for fun marketing
This isn’t really an analytical piece.
But I guess there’s something to be learned.
Namely…
- Marketing doesn’t have to be serious
- Sometimes an underhanded strategy can work in your favour (just be careful to not put yourself in hot water)
- Do things worth talking about and people will, unsurprisingly, talk about them.
If you want more of these kind of insights, consider joining the newsletter.