3 Off The Wall Advertising Methods
If you own a business, you’ve no doubt had some crazy brainstorming sessions trying to think up new ways to promote your products or services. Here are 3 companies that didn’t stop with just the ideas:
Sheep-vertising
A Dutch horse breeder looked out at the sprawling land and herds of livestock around and saw a huge blank advertising canvas. The progressive company Hotels.nl was the first to try his idea of branded shirts for sheep, paying 1 euro per shirt, per sheep. What happened next couldn’t have been better. The authorities demanded the advertisements had to go and fined Hotels.nl 1000 Euro per day. Hotels.nl decided to pay the fines, refuse to remove the ads, and take the city to court as the dispute escalated into news. As a result, sales at Hotels.nl increase by 15%.
Alien Marketing
In a boardroom somewhere, a group of KFC execs decided that what they absolutely needed was to build a KFC logo that could be seen from space. KFC hired a team that spent 3,000 hours painstakingly designing, creating, and positioning 65,000 1 foot by 1 foot tiles to create an 87,500 square foot logo that is visible from space.
Watch the video of it’s creation and ultimate destruction:
Bumvertising
This is my personal favorite. A big thanks to Jonathan who linked to this post on Small Business Branding who introducing me to bumvertising! Bumvertising’s president Benjamin Rogovy recognized that “bums use a business model that takes advantage of high volume traffic,” and “imagined that there had to be some value that was not being utilized.” A lot of people are in a frenzy over Bumvertising, claiming that it exploits bums. I disagree! As someone who has hitchhiked across the country and met bums and vagrants and train hoppers from coast to coast (and even held up a sign myself once or twice) I can’t think of one person I’ve ever met who would have been offended to get paid for taping an advertisement to their sign. No matter what you think, Benjamin’s Bumvertising site is getting a lot of links and generating a lot of exposure for PokerFaceBook.com!
January 21 2008 06:00 am | Marketing
Joshua on 21 Jan 2008 at 6:52 am #
Can’t forget GoldenPalace.com with their crazy eBay tricks and publicity stunts!
I’m going to have to start eating toast again…
Christine on 21 Jan 2008 at 11:06 am #
Thanks Joshua – I hadn’t heard of that one… what did they do?!? It already sounds interesting!
Joshua on 22 Jan 2008 at 2:30 am #
They’ve paid streakers to run through major sports games, paid people to get their domain tattooed on their forehead…hmm…
They buy a lot of crazy stuff on eBay to get attention, like the grill cheese sandwich (from 1984!) that had the image of the Virgin Mary on it…oh damn, so many crazy things.
Check their Wikipedia entry for a good roundup: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldenPalace.com
They practice guerrilla-style marketing with a budget above the normal guerrilla marketer!
Conrad Hees on 22 Jan 2008 at 6:05 pm #
Hey Christine! Great post!
This type of marketing is really savvy and smart, because it is doing exactly what advertising is supposed to be doing…getting lots of attention! Unconventional= noteworthy.
Although, I do not know if I would want my company associated with a bum, I think that it is a great idea, and is obviously working. And how do you exploit someone by giving them money to do something that they were already doing in the first place! Some people are offended by anything.
This article fits right into the premise of my new blog I will be launching shortly ( the reason for my hiatus), which is innovative, unique, remarkable marketing. Great post and keep it up!
Advertising That Actually Gets Attention | MarketingRockstar on 18 Feb 2008 at 5:01 pm #
[...] 3 Off the Wall Advertising Methods [...]
Advertising That Actually Gets Attention | on 23 Feb 2008 at 6:35 pm #
[...] 3 Off the Wall Advertising Methods [...]
B2B Marketplace News Trends Commentaries Articles on 09 Nov 2009 at 6:19 pm #
Best Advertising Methods To Put Your Site On The Map…
It is hard to attract potential customers for your website with millions of other websites out there. Even your best effort is not enough unless you are using the right advertising strategies for your business.
You can develop and optimize advertising …