Category: Marketing Strategies

bpost: Live Webshop

bpost is Belgium’s biggest postal service. To prove their ability to deliver and to fend of new contenders in the market of delivery services, they decided to open a pop-up store bang in the center of Brussels.

A lot of must-have items were put on display, from smartphones to designer coffeemakers. But then the only way to buy them was through a special online auction where the prices of all products dropped every second. 😎

People had to act really fast to catch the items before someone else did. Once sold, the item was immediately picked up by a postman, right in front of the webcam, and delivered to the winning bidder. This way everyone could see for themselves how fast and reliable bpost was.

As a result the awareness of the specific service – bpack – rocketed to 65%. In 6 days 260,000 unique visitors were registered and for every hour the shop was online, bpost sold 8 products on an average.

Catch the Oreo

Oreo Cookies to commemorate the first video game created by Ralph H. Baer, has used modern day technology to create an augmented reality game called “Catch the Oreo”. The game is available on Android and iOS devices.

People living in Norway and Denmark are automatically entered into a sweepstake competition by just playing and uploading their high score. There are weekly prizes and the winners are decided by drawing lots. Competition lasts from 8th of April to 28th of July 2013 (both dates included). So start playing. 🙂

Toronto Silent Film Festival: Instagram Project

Last month Fox tweeted a Vine mashup of its upcoming Wolverine movie trailer to stir up some hype for the film.

Now, the Toronto Silent Film Festival has taken to Instagram to promote its upcoming event with a first of its kind Instagram trailers. To view each trailer, head over to the relevant Instagram accounts on your smartphone…

Heineken Ignite

Last year I had written about StartCap, the world’s first digitally enabled bottle top. Now, Heineken has created LED based “smart bottles” that puts serious some tech into drinking beer.

These interactive bottles come with motion sensors and tiny lights that illuminate in correspondence to certain party gestures. For example, the LED glows when people cheer and clink bottles against one another, or blink quickly while the person is drinking. It also comes with special software that tunes the bottles with the music for a synchronized light show.

The concept was unveiled during Milan Design Week early this month to showcase how this innovative approach allowed people to be a part of the party in a whole new way. But to reach the commercial market, Heineken still needs to optimize the technology as the prototypes consist of an external module attached to the bottles. Once the tech is embedded directly into the bottles, parties around the world will not be the same again. 😎

A barrel for every Maes

Maes is Belgium’s second most popular beer and also Belgium’s 3rd most common surname. Since the market leader for beer in Belgium was outselling Maes 4 to 1, they decided to garner support from all the Maes families in Belgium by giving them a free barrel of beer.

The eligible families had to sign up for this special offer through a custom Facebook app that also allowed them to book a pub on a chosen date while inviting all their friends. The campaign was a huge success and pushed the Maes fanpage into 6% of the most active Facebook pages worldwide! 😎

A test drive takes a sexy turn

TNT’s “A dramatic surprise on an ice-cold day” meets Pepsi MAX’s “Jeff Gordon test drive prank” in this latest test drive video for the all new Renault Clio.

In the video a couple of guys are seen taking the Renault Clio for a spin. After a regular beginning, the salesman shows of the “va va voom” button, which initiates a romantic scene between a couple set against the Eiffel Tower and then…

And here is a version for the ladies…

3D Printed Superheros and Crayon Cowboys

Creative agencies do all kinds of things in order to boost employee satisfaction and attract future talent. Here are the latest examples:

Dutch agency Resoluut came up with a unique and inspiring way to showcase its employees. Instead of the usual flat business cards, the agency turned its workers into superhero-like characters and had their mini figures created using a 3D printer.

US based agency Red Tettemer + Partners also had a similar idea but with a slight twist. To welcome their new staff the agency created miniature crayon sculptures of each individual.

Wi-Fi Poster

South Korean film distributor CJ Entertainment’s marketing approach relies heavily on conventional poster campaigns that are now becoming less likely to grab the attention of young moviegoers. So they teamed up with advertising agency Cheil to bring the world’s oldest and least popular ad medium into the smartphone era.

Unlike advertisements with QR codes that require the consumer to first download a mobile app then scan the code, the Wi-Fi poster connected the poster to the mobile device by simply tapping the Wi-Fi network menu. The name of the Wi-Fi network matched the film’s title, and tapping that name opened a pop-up with links to Full HD trailers, promotional events and online box offices.

The movie’s official site saw a 28.5% increase in traffic from wireless users, and users that interacted with the movie through the Wi-Fi Posters remained on the site 5x longer than regular users. The posters also translated to success at the box office with more advance ticket sales and better openings.

Volkswagen Search Engine Ad

Everyday millions of people are searching for products and brands on Google. So in this latest example of search optimisation, SEA Team from UK created a search engine advertising campaign for Volkswagen which positioned the car in a unique ‘organic ad’ created by optimising the first five individual URL’s of a Google Image Search.

The campaign does feel realistic but when I searched for ‘ultimate business car’, I got only images from people posting about the campaign.

Mikado Resistance Test

The famous red button is back. 🙂 This time crunchy biscuit sticks brand Mikado has used it to launch their Resistance Test campaign.

A shopping mall in France was selected and passers-by were asked if they should always accept a free packet of Mikado. Then to get the free packet people were invited to press the red button. As soon as they pressed the button and took the package, they fell into a trap… 😎