Category: Marketing Strategies

Zappos Thanksgiving Baggage Claim

Zappos is an online shoe and clothing shop that loves to create unexpected stories that surprise and delight people while they go about their every day activities. So on the eve of Thanksgiving 2013 they created a delightful surprise for weary airplane passengers on what has come to be known as the worst travel day of the year.

At Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport, American Airlines travelers were presented with a baggage claim that had been transformed into a wheel of fortune game in which everyone came out as a winner. The results…

This reminds me of a similar activitation done by Spainair on the eve of Christmas 2010. Click here for details.

Burger King Anti-pre-roll pre-roll

Pre-rolls on YouTube are considered as one of the most annoying things on the internet. Its a fact that even Burger King acknowledges, even though they profit enormously from them.

So for their campaign in New Zealand they decided to take a slightly different approach. They created 64 videos that made fun of the annoying pre-rolls and then tailored it to the video that was about to be watched.

Whopper Sellout

Handing out your competitors product for free may sound like marketing suicide, but Burger King Norway did exactly just that in order to further social engagement with their fans.

On noticing that some of its 38,000 Facebook fans weren’t real fans. They decided to find out exactly how many of them were “true” fans by offering them a Big Mac from McDonalds to go away. From the 38.000 fans, Burger King lost 30.000 and with their new dedicated fan base of 8.000, they received 5x higher engagement.

British Airways #lookup

Last month, BA setup a first of its kind interactive digital billboard in London’s Piccadilly Circus, that used custom built surveillance technology to track passing by BA flights.

On detecting a BA flight, the boy in the ad would get up and point to the plane while an accompanying message displayed the flight number and destination it was arriving from. 😎

Interactive advertisements are getting more popular with brands. In May, a Spanish organization called ANAR had used lenticular printing to show different messages to kids and adults in their campaign for anti-child abuse.

Adidas Boost

The new boost technology in the running shoes from Adidas helps return energy to runners. To promote this, TBWA\Moscow developed a unique running project called “Charge the city with the energy of running”.

The project covered 4 running races i.e. Adidas Energy Run, Autumn Thunder, Color Run and the Moscow Marathon. All runners who participated in them were given mobile generators that transformed kinetic energy into electricity. The collected energy from these hundreds of runners was then channeled to illuminate a stadium in the town of Protvino that has had no light since 1984.

Video Stamps

Unpacking post is a bit like unpacking gifts. So for this Christmas, Australia Post has created a video stamp that lets senders add a more personal touch to their packets via a QR code stamp that is linked to a custom video message.

J.C. Penney has already linked QR Codes to voice messages during their Santa Tags sticker campaign in 2011. And at the beginning of 2012 there was also a concept video doing rounds on YouTube about a similar DHL Christmas Video packet service. So I am just surprised that it took so long for a postal service to pick up on the concept and implement it. 🙂

BBM Channels

Who has 1 Billion users and is about to overtake Facebook? It’s not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. It’s a company that most people in the West don’t know. That, however, is set to change, with the explosive growth of China’s Tencent and its mobile messaging app WeChat…

Source: WorldOfCEOs, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Bloomberg & company announcement

On November 13th, Snapchat rejected the $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. These are all signs that tell us that the battle for social dominance is going to take place via mobile chat apps. Brands however are finding it difficult to reach their audience through these apps as most of them don’t allow in app advertising. This has lead to creation of experimental campaigns as seen on WhatsApp from Klick Chocolate and Absolut Vodka.

Now BlackBerry has announced that it is bringing BBM Channels into open beta. BBM Channels is going to be a separate part of their BBM app where users will be able to follow and converse with their favorite brands and businesses. Users will be able to like, comment and share content posted by a BBM Channel, or enter a one-to-one private chat session with the owner or manager of the page. It will also be possible to subscribe to a BBM Channel and receive notifications when new content is uploaded.

The update is available as of yesterday on handsets running BlackBerry OS 5 and above. It will hit iOS and Android in the coming months.

I think this will simplify things drastically for brands, as reaching and engaging with the target audience in their favorite chat app will help them achieve a top of mind presence. This for sure will spur on the competitors like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat etc. 😎

UPDATE

Macy’s first to use iBeacon

Apple is currently working to bring their iBeacon technology to retail stores around the world. But on November 20th, Shopkick deployed the first iBeacon system at Macy’s to beat Apple to the punch.

The technology, which is new to iOS 7, uses Bluetooth Low Energy signaling to enable micro-location services and is expected to be a huge hit with retailers. The technology allows stores to deliver targeted information (location-specific deals, discounts, recommendations, rewards etc) to further enhance the retail shopping experience of their customers. 😎

At Macy’s the technology is being called shopBeacon and is currently live in a closed beta trial at Macy’s Herald Square in New York and Union Square in San Francisco.

Absolut Unique Access

In October, Klik (a chocolate snack) was the first brand to use WhatsApp to increase brand engagement amongst its teen audience.

Now a month later, Absolut Vodka in Argentina has decided to use WhatsApp as well. This time to invite people to an exclusive launch party. To build awareness and engagement with people in Buenos Aires, Absolut created “Sven the doorman”. Interested people had to then contact Sven via WhatsApp and convince him to give them access to the party. Since he was not easy to convince, the people had to become creative. The results…

The Epic Split

Brands all over the world are trying to create branded content. Volvo did that with great success last month when they filmed a hamster drive their entire truck up a mountain.

Now in their latest video, Volvo has demonstrated the precision and directional stability of its dynamic steering by getting Jean-Claude Van Damme to carry out his famous split between two reversing Volvo FM trucks. The video since its release has already got over 7 million views.