Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Guerilla marketing


Guerilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget.  Guerilla marketing campaigns are targeting the people in unexpected locations. Guerilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places and street giveaways of products. 
Up to now, I haven’t experienced any guerilla marketing.  In my opinion, it is not accessible to everywhere, but more in bigger and busier places. 
There are many guerilla marketing that I think are really well executed.  Examples are by following:
1.     Fedex-kinkos

It is very smart to create a guerilla marketing campaign for correction fluid product on zebra crossing.  There is a high population of pedestrians in everyday life.  They will see this campaign each time they go across the street.  It draws people’s interest to check what exactly the giant object is and it works very well.
2.     IKEA’s Parisian Guerilla Marketing

The first picture features a boy is trying to turn on the light which it’s just a stage property of this campaign.  The second picture features several people are waiting for the subway while sitting on IKEA products.  It brings the audience the involvement to this guerilla marketing campaign.  When other people see these scenes, they would like to check out what exactly it is.  After noticing it is actually an advertisement for IKEA, people will get more impression of this brand. 
I feel the sentiment expressed in Urban Span is annoying.  It also could create the negative impact to the products or brands being advertised.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Social Contract


Social Contract
We give brands our attention in exchange for something we find valuable. 
Each brand needs awareness to sell, so they need customers’ attention.  In generally speaking, all brands are active and audiences are passive, it brings the companies or agencies to think hard in order to find ways how they could create the brand awareness and draw people’s attention.
For example, companies or sponsorships will bring events to town.  Last year the World EXPO took place in Shanghai, to bring the attention to audiences, Coke Company offered free cokes for the visitors to EXPO.  The visitors were from all over the world and it was a good decision to make this strategy happen. 
Online advertising becomes more and more popular nowadays.  Younger generations tend to use Internet more.  High fashion and electronically brands are using online advertising increasingly.  For instance, PRADA just released fall/winter 2010 fashion show around the same time with live on TV.