Category: Marketing Strategies

Social Robots

In 2011, Andes Beer in Argentina used robots in their campaign to enable people to virtually experience a real life event. Fast forward to 2013 and the social robots can now be seen in campaigns from Italy and Israel. 😎

Three minutes in Italy

San Pellegrino an Italian brand of mineral water invited their Facebook fans to come and discover the beautiful Sicilian village of Taormina and explore its cobblestone streets via a special webcam and microphone enabled robot that could be controlled by the users from their own computer…

Coca-Cola Summer Love 2013

Coca-Cola Summer Love is THE annual summer event for Israeli teenagers. Unfortunately, not everyone can join the fun. So to bring the experience to those who can’t physically be there, Coca-Cola created a robot that allowed teenagers to be part of the summer camp without leaving their homes. The special robots carried webcams and microphones and were controlled by users who couldn’t physically be there. Users could control the robots and navigate them around the campus, talk with their friends, watch the shows, participate in the competitions and be part of the experience.

The robots were a hit among the teens and the people around welcomed them to the camp, danced with them, sunbathed with them and surprised them. They became the stars of the show, as well as media magnets…

Coca-Cola Personal Road

Coca-Cola has an ongoing global campaign that allows consumers to personalise bottles and cans…

Building on the success of this campaign Coca-Cola Israel decided to take the idea further with personalised billboards.

A mobile app was developed where consumers could enter their name. Then using geo-fence technology, the Coca-Cola billboard displayed the name when it was approached. The consumer at the same moment also received a message on their smartphone notifying them that their name was up there.

Since its launch the app has reached 100,000 downloads and is currently ranked #1 in Israel’s app store.

A new kind of catalog 2

Last year Ikea re-imagined their catalog via a special visual recognition app that brought its pages and offerings within to life in the form of inspirational videos, designer stories, ‘x-ray’ vision that peeked inside furniture, and more.

Now for their 2014 Ikea catalogue, they have given people the ability to place virtual furniture directly into their homes by simply placing the printed Ikea catalogue where they want the furniture to appear. 🙂

Telekinize the Rainbow

On an average, just 6% of fans engage with a brand’s Facebook page after liking it. So Skittles Australia and their agency BBDO Clemenger decided that the average like just wasn’t enough. To get the attention of Facebook users, they partnered with Ben Cai, Australia’s leading mechanical and aerospace engineer, to create a Facebook app that allowed users to control Skittles with their minds.

The app displayed the Skittles via a live webcam, so that fans could see the Skittles they move in real life and be amazed by their newly discovered powers. As a result, fans spent an average of over 4 minutes interacting with the app, and likes on the Skittles Facebook page increased by 1500% every day.

Media Markt “Money Trucks”

Over the last couple of years I have seen a handful of brands reach the 1 million fans milestone. To celebrate, most of them have created really nice and innovative thank you videos e.g. Tic Tac “Likes” Matt.

Now joining the list of brands with 1 million fans on Facebook is Media Markt, one of the biggest retailers for electronics in Germany. To celebrate this momentous occacion, Ogilvy & Mather Frankfurt created the “Money Trucks” campaign in which Media Markt fans were asked to guess the exact number of small mining trucks required to transport 1 million cents. The contest was started in June with the below launch video…

Then in July one lucky fan from Saßmicke, a small village in western Germany guessed the exact number of trucks required. So on 16th July, Media Markt dispatched 193 small mining trucks to deliver the 1 million cents right to the door step of the fan… 😎

HERE balloons

Seoul has the highest gasoline consumption in the world. With parking space scarce, people in Seoul drive around 15km a month to find space for their cars. This is equivalent to 1 Litre of gasoline being used only for parking.

So to help save gasoline, South Korean oil brand, S-Oil teamed up with Cheil Worldwide to devise a new way of telling people that there was a parking space available right next to them. Bright yellow HERE balloons were setup for each parking space. Then as a car parked, the balloon would fall. On leaving the space the balloon would rise again. Hence drivers around could see the colourful balloons from far away and spot the empty spaces without wandering all over.

In just one day, 700 cars used 23 litres less oil. Over a whole year, they saved much more.

Heineken Departure Roulette

To embody the adventurous spirit of Heineken, Wieden + Kennedy in New York set up a board at JFK’s Terminal 8 and dared travelers to play “Departure Roulette”. Those who dared, had to drop their existing plans and go somewhere totally new and exotic with the push of the red button. 😎

The daring passengers were later also given $2,000 to cover expenses and were booked into a hotel for two nights at the new destination. Below is the recently released video of how things unfolded at JFK…

The game was inspired by “Dropped,” the new Heineken campaign that was launched a month ago from W+K Amsterdam in which four men were sent to remote destinations and their adventure to return filmed.

The Stolen Phone Tour

There are many sources for people to find things to see and do in Shanghai. So Time Out magazine decide to promote its Shanghai city information guide via a marketing stunt created with the help of Energy BBDO China.

The insight for the stunt came from the product itself i.e. Time Out Shanghai digs deeper into the city to find hidden gems that might not otherwise be discovered. To demonstrate this Time Out purposely “lost” a cell phone on a random street in Shanghai. Any passerby who picked it up was in for a suprise, as to return the phone they had to get into a London Taxi that pulled up infront of their location. Here is a video recording of the entire stunt through specially placed hidden cameras…

The surprise plate

Last week I covered how Virgin Atlantic setup a stunt to give the people of New York a taste of their onboard services. Now Lufthansa to give the business people of Frankfurt a taste of their new business class menu decided to take over the lunch recommendation of Restaurant Medici.

Unsuspecting business people who then ordered the restaurants lunch recommendation, were served the new Lufthansa Business Class menu. As they finished the food, they came across a sticker on the plate saying “Be our guest: That was a new dish from the Lufthansa Business Class.” Then to the surprise of the people, a Lufthansa air hostess appeared and mentioned that the lunch was already paid for by Lufthansa.