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This made all kinds of sense until the second time I watched and and found out that it is a “monetized” video, which means there is sometimes an unskippable ad before it starts. Go figure. -via the Presurfer
Each year, America spends about $250 billion on marketing and advertising — more than the entire GDP of Thailand. Too bad most of that money is a complete waste. For an increasingly savvy, TiVo-equipped public, our brains seem to shut down whenever something registers as “advertising.” Which means all those marketing creatives at the big ad firms have had no choice but to, well, get more creative.
Some advertisers have relied on product placement (think James Bond stopping mid-gunfight for a refreshing sip of Heineken). Others have attempted to make their ads so entertaining that people will watch them in spite of the sales pitch. And then there’s the more mischievous route — the grassroots, take-it-to-the-streets method — and that’s where guerrilla marketing comes in.
Dirt-cheap and chock full of trickery, guerrilla marketing is advertising with a wink. The successful campaigns usually corral attention through subversive means before revealing their true purpose, and they distinguish themselves by being so clever that even once the bait and switch is revealed, there’s no negative outcry.
In other words, even though consumers know they’ve been duped, the reaction amounts to nothing more than a bashful, “Oh Pepsi! We can’t stay mad at you!”
And it’s with that good-humored and awe-inspired mindset that we pay homage to the best “gotcha” moments in advertising.
1. The Blair Witch Project
Arguably the most important aspect of a successful guerrilla campaign is staying one step ahead of the public. As consumers become more attuned to ad agency efforts, marketers have to figure out how to attack the mob from unexpected angles. The brand standard for catching the public off guard? 1999′s The Blair Witch Project. With no stars, no script, and a budget of around $50,000, University of Central Florida Film School pals Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez successfully scrubbed out the line between reality and fiction.
The film’s tagline set the stage: “In October of 1994, three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later, their footage was found.” Audiences were expected to believe what they were watching — shaky, low-quality videotape of three runny-nosed kids weeping in the woods — was an edited-down version of real recovered footage. And while it was certainly an inventive way to challenge the boundaries of cinematic storytelling (not to mention justifying the low-budget look of the film), Blair Witch didn’t exactly seem poised to rival Titanic. That is, until an inventive guerrilla marketing scheme was devised.
To ease the suspension of disbelief and stir up some buzz, Sánchez created a Web site devoted to the Blair Witch — a fictitious, woods-based specter who’d been snapping up Maryland kids for the last century. Although the legend was created out of whole cloth, it was soon snapped up by gullible Interneters everywhere, and a first-ballot hall of fame urban legend was born. Pretty soon, thousands of people were terrified of the Blair Witch. Even when the actors who played the “film students” started showing up (alive) doing interviews about the movie, many across the country refused to believe the Blair Witch wasn’t real.
From that point, the “I’ve got to see for myself” effect took over, and Blair Witch dominated at the box office. Considered the most effective horror hoax since Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds broadcast, the film grossed $250 million worldwide. Not a bad return for Artisan Entertainment, which paid only $1 million for the flick after its Sundance screening.
2. Acclaim Entertainment
Nowhere are the semi-criminal aspects of guerrilla marketing more important than in pitching to video gamers. Regular folks might occasionally enjoy being duped by an unusually clever campaign, but gamers seem to suck down daring and deception like a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew. The more the stunts flaunt the law, the more the gaming demographic seems to like them.
The undisputed high-score holder in this renegade arena is Acclaim Entertainment, a plucky little company that began as a one-room outfit in Oyster Bay, New York, and bloomed into a multinational juggernaut. Eschewing artistry in favor of an “all publicity is good publicity” philosophy, Acclaim stirs up the stuffy types — and then laughs all the way to the bank. One of its bedrock tactics is to offer people money for performing some insane stunt on behalf of its upcoming game. Prior to the release of “Turok: Evolution,” for instance, the company offered £500 to the first five U.K. citizens who’d legally change their names to Turok. (Almost 3,000 people tried to claim the prize.) Later, promoting the release of “Shadow Man 2,” Acclaim announced it would pay the relatives of the recently deceased to place promotional ads on the headstones of their dearly departed. The company said the promotional fee might “particularly interest poorer families.”
The latter campaign was, of course, shouted down. But Acclaim blew it off and said the whole thing was a joke — right after its name had been conveniently plastered all over the headlines. In fact, many of the company’s schemes are designed to die on the vine that way. Acclaim actually counts on law enforcement and city officials to shut down their antics — preferably as publicly as possible. In 2002, the company announced its plans to promote “Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance” using something called “bloodvertising.” Touting it as the bloodiest game of all time, Acclaim said it was developing bus shelter ads that would seep a red, blood-like substance onto city sidewalks throughout the course of seven days. Officials thought that might not be in the best taste, so the campaign was aborted, as the world looked on. Also in 2002, Acclaim offered to pay all speeding tickets incurred in the U.K. on the day its racing game “Burnout 2″ was released. Naturally, the bobbies balked, feeling that removing the consequences for speeding might encourage people to speed. Acclaim judiciously rescinded the offer, but, yet again, not before the name “Burnout 2″ was burned into the public consciousness.
3. Half.com
I know the idea of going to art school is a concept that we as Americans lampoon every chance we get, but making it out to be some sort of PSA worthy societal problem is downright creative!
This advertising campaign for the aptly named College for Creative Studies features young artists stuck in awkward situations when their parents discover what they’ve been up to. Sculpting is not a crime!
Anti-drug PSA’s just got a whole lot scarier, thanks to this slick new campaign that warns against using Meth.
Directed by Darren Aronofsky, of Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream fame, they all start out with a seemingly benign shot of the user. Then the camera pulls out to reveal a scene of horror meant to illustrate what you’re getting yourself into if you decide to try Meth, and it ain’t pretty.
So, instead of just saying “Don’t Do Meth”, these scary ads show you why you shouldn’t mess around. No argument here! You can see them all at the DesignTAXI link below.
The Boy Scouts Of America are looking to recruit the future Ron Swanson’s of the world, but you don’t need a beard to join, you just need the desire to “be one with the wild” (their campaign slogan). Only time will tell whether their ads, featuring kids with epic beards, will increase their numbers or scare the wits out of potential recruits!
We’ve all heard a marketing campaign at some point and thought, “that is just stupid,” but most bad advertising strategies just result in a few less sales than a successful campaign would have brought in. Sometimes though, a company will run a campaign that’s so idiotic that the company ends up losing thousands, if not millions of dollars. Take, for example, the Silo marketing campaign that said customers could get a new stereo for only “299 bananas.” When customers started actually showing up with bundles of bananas, the store had no choice but to give them stereos in exchange for fruit.
The saddest part? Silo couldn’t even get rid of the bananas (they had thousands of them sitting there, presumably attracting fruit flies), as the local zoos stopped taking them and the food bank didn’t take perishables.
If you want to make an attention-grabbing ad, you have to do something really outrageous these days. That being said, these 10 ads on Oddee -all featuring kids- are utterly disturbing.
If you thought that diamonds are rare or that halitosis is a real disease, then congratulations, you’ve bought in to some of the most manipulative business practices of the last hundred years. Cracked has even more on these practices and the companies that instituted them and the article is simply fascinating.
If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of an Alternate Reality Game, essentially, it’s a viral marketing campaign mixed with a scavenger hunt. Users have to unlock clues to be able to move on to the next step of the puzzle, which almost always involves deciphering even more hints. Over at Cracked, you can learn about the 5 craziest alternate reality games ever played…and discover what Halo has to do with bees.
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It's
no Ralph
Lauren level of photoshopping but cosmetic maker L'Oréal recently
got into trouble for airbrushing (already) beautiful women in its latest
ads:
Mark Sweney of The Guardian explains: LinkL'Oréal has been forced to pull ad campaigns featuring Pretty Woman star Julia Roberts and supermodel Christy Turlington, after the advertising watchdog upheld complaints by Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson that the images were overly airbrushed.
Swinson, who has waged a long-running campaign against "overly perfected and unrealistic images" of women in adverts, lodged complaints with the Advertising Standards Authority about the magazine campaigns for L'Oréal-owned brands Lancôme and Maybelline. The ASA ruled that both ads breached the advertising standards code for exaggeration and being misleading and banned them from future publication.
Did you know David Lynch made a series of Japanese coffee commercials based on Twin Peaks? They’re very weird, funny and all interconnected. If you’re a fan of the show, be sure to click on the link to watch all of the ads.
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I’m sure you guys all are familiar with the Scope’s Monkey Trial, but did you know that the whole thing was actually just an overblown publicity stunt to help attract travelers to visit the town of Dayton, Tennessee? Learn more about the trial as well as other irresponsible publicity stunts in this great Cracked article.
Brain Candy Toys came up with a great advertising strategy by simplifying nursery rhymes and fairy tales into adorable little math equations. Check out the rest on the ad company’s site.
Link via Laughing Squid
I remember many of these ads, but of course, at the time nobody knew the actors in them were going to be famous someday! Unknown actors take work where they can, and that’s often commercial ads, which lead to experience, which can lead to starring roles later. Unreality magazine has a collection of ads featuring stars you know, yet you might not recognize at a much younger age.
This list includes everyone from A-listers to TV stars, and products ranging from Pringles to Mylanta. It took me a while to track these down, but if you know of any more I’m missing, I’d be happy to amend the list with your finds. I’m sure there are a ton more out there, it can just be tough to know where to looks.
Enjoy the ones I’ve found so far, and keep in mind when watching commercials today, that someday that annoying kid from the Toyota commercials might be our next big movie star.
Go see them and find out who is in the picture here. Link
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, teamed up with Apple in 1989 to try and sell computers to college kids. The artwork for the “Who Needs a Computer Anyway?” booklet came from Groening’s book, School is Hell. It seems an odd pairing, but it was reprised later by an Etsy seller’s unauthorized Homer Simpson iPhone decal. There are a few more of the pages from “Who Needs a Computer Anyway?” on The Daily What. Link
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Golfer Luke Donald spotted this ad during his travels. Given Arnold’s recent announcement, it seems like he wouldn’t allow his image to be used for such an ad, but as AdFreak points out, Schwarzenegger is rather prolific when it comes to overseas advertising, so why not? Just look at all of these Japanese ads.
(Seriously, if you haven’t clicked on that last link, you need to. Now.)
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If you’re not a football fan, you might still find yourself watching the Super Bowl just for the new and very expensive advertisements the game is famous for. Take a look at years past and see some of the funniest and most memorable ads ever to grace the Super Bowl! Pictured is the EDS ad called “cat herding”, which is included. Link
There’s a lot of ads featuring celebrity endorsers and undoubtedly these celebs are paid a lot of money (I’m looking at you, Lance Armstrong), so those ads must work, right?
Wrong! According to Peter Daboll of AdvertisingAge, having celebrity endorsements do not pay:
Over the course of last year, time and time again we observed incredibly low effectiveness scores of TV ads starring celebrities. From Tiger Woods to Donald Trump, we found that with rare exception, celebrity endorsements were largely ineffective and failed to yield the benefits popular wisdom promises.
Why? Peter blames the changing consumers, though I suspect that the ad makers relied so heavily on the star power of the celebrity that they either neglect to actually make good ads or no longer have enough funds to do so:
Were celebrities losing their pizazz in influencing consumers? Had the age of social media and consumer control ushered in a new consumer that is not as easily won over by a famous face?
In fact, yes. Today’s consumer is a totally different animal than the consumer of even five years ago, meaning that what was effective and influential five years ago is not necessarily so today, as today’s consumer is more likely to be influenced by someone in their social network than a weak celebrity connection. Today’s consumer is informed, time-compressed, and difficult to impress, and they are only influenced by ads that are relevant and provide information. They don’t want to have products pushed at them, even from a celebrity. In fact, the data show that relevance and information attributes were key missing ingredients from most celebrity ads.
I remember when a carton of cigarettes was considered a nice Christmas gift. After all, they were three or four dollars a carton! Flickr has tons of old ads like these that might bring back memories or put you in the holiday spirit or possibly horrify you. Link -via J-Walk Blog
(Image credit: Flickr user clotho98)
The Pocket Fisherman Makes it Big
The history of pitching unusual gadgets on television begins with S.J. Popeil. Born into a family of roadside salesmen, S.J. had the vision to break into a much larger audience via TV. The first gizmo he hawked on the small screen was the Pocket Fisherman -a fishing rod small enough to fit in your glove compartment or briefcase. While veteran anglers debated the utility of the flimsy rod, Popeil maintained, “It’s not for using. It’s for giving.” He had a point. Forty years after the first commercial aired, The Pocket Fisherman continues to sell millions of units worldwide every year.
The Genius that Bred the Chia Pet
In the early 1970s, entrepreneur Joseph Pedott heard about a failing Chicago company that was selling seeds from the chia plant, a member of the mint family. He bought the company and sold the seeds along with a terra cotta figurine that could sprout vegetation. The result was the Chia Pet -one of the most successful infomercial products in history. But Pedott is hardly a one-trick pony, He’s also the genius behind another TV favorite, The Clapper. He took an existing sound-activated device called The Great American Turn-On, tweaked it, and renamed it. The rest is “clap on, clap off” history.
The Lesson Behind “I’ve Fallen, and I Can’t Get Up”
LifeCall, a medical alert system, launched one of the most popular catchphrases of the 1980s, when it aired the “I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up” commercial. Radio DJs and stand-up comics endlessly made fun of Mrs. Fletcher, the elderly woman sprawled on the floor. The character was played by Edith Fore, a 70-something widow who’d actually been saved by LifeCall after a tumble down her stairs in 1989. Fore was paid a one-time fee for her performance and never received any royalties. Although her phrase was printed on T-shirts and parodied in songs for years, LifeCall never saw an increase in sales and eventually filed for bankruptcy. The problem was that the public remembered the slogan but couldn’t recall the name of the product.
The Knives That Served Up Catchphrases
Despite the Japanese name, Ginsu knives were originally manufactured in Fremont, Ohio. The company, formerly known as Quikut, hired an advertising copywriter named Arthur Schiff to spice up its sales pitch. Schiff not only came up with the name Ginsu, he also coined several phrases that are still infomercial staples today, such as, “Now, how much would you pay?” and “Act now, and you’ll receive…” But his pièce de résistance was “But wait! There’s more!”
All These Hits on One Giant LP
Long before there was Now That’s What I Call Music, there was K-Tel, the affordable pipeline to the hits of the 1970s and 1980s. Salesman Philip Kives had the idea to cram 20 to 25 songs onto one LP and pitch them on rapid-fire TV commercials. The ads were ahead of their time, because serious musical artists of that era didn’t advertise on television, and young music buyers were mesmerized when they heard a succession of 5-second snippets of their favorite tunes on TV. Kives was able to sell his LPs for less than half the normal cost by using cheap, ultra-thin vinyl. He also mastered the records at a lower volume, which produced thin grooves, allowing for more songs on each side.
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Great Moments in Infomercial History was written by Kara Kovalchik. It is reprinted with permission from the Scatterbrained section of the May/June 2008 issue of mental_floss magazine.
Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ entertaining website and blog for more fun stuff!
Viral marketing has become so commonplace that it is now a household term even in the least media-savvy households. Even so, many marketing agencies have managed to fool the world into thinking that certain outrageous stories are genuine articles and not simply a clever ruse to bring nationwide attention to a product or event.
These viral marketing campaigns have managed to trick their way into the public eye and managed to fool us all into believing their ads were real.
One of the first and most famous viral marketing campaigns was the one involving the promotion of The Blair Witch Project. Those of you who remember when this film hit the theaters likely remember at least one person you knew thought this was a real documentary and that a group of student film makers was really killed while getting the footage. Some people were so terrified of this mediocre fear-fest that they actually lost sleep after seeing it.
It was so successful that the maker of the movie, Eduardo Sanchez claimed, “One of the guys from Artisan told me the other day, ‘Everything that could possibly go right on the film has gone right on this film, and you’re never going to experience that again in your career and I’m never going to experience it again in my career.’”
Sources CNN, Viral Blog
More recently, you probably remember the video featuring the hipster who was apparently stupid enough to get Buddy Holly sunglasses tattooed on his face. This one spread throughout the web before anyone started realizing that maybe, just maybe, he was actually working with RayBan. Humorously, even after everyone discovered he was working with the company, no one has yet proven if the tattoo is real or not.
This wasn’t the first time RayBan managed to fool the masses though, remember the two guys who managed to keep catching RayBans on their faces?
Source: Mashable
Levis had a similar success story as RayBan when blogs across the net picked up on this clever video showing a guy jumping into his pants. The commercial isn’t branded, but people started being tipped off when they heard the comment on the tape that mentions “at least there’s no zipper” and then noticed the video was put on YouTube by “unbuttonedfilms.” Levis is the only jeans company that markets their button-up flies, which really helped limit down the choices when it came time to figure out who made the promotion.
A while later the company tried to pull a similar stunt with their helium-inflated pants video, but no one really picked it up because it was a) obviously impossible (there’s no where near enough helium in his pants to lift him off the ground) and b) an obvious advertisement. Instead the company decided to just use the ad as a television commercial.
Sources: Trend Hunter, Gawker, Adrants
What happens when you combine illegal activities, extreme sports and poor video quality? You get a surefire viral video hit that’s sure to spawn some idiotic imitations. That’s how Quicksilver landed a major success with this questionable video showing someone surfing in an English river thanks to a hefty load of dynamite.
Source: Daily Mail
This video was obviously branded for Guitar Hero, but it originally seemed to be a fan project. It also made its rounds on the blogosphere before someone discovered it was created by an advertising agency and not “Kevin in Indiana” like the YouTube profile page indicated.
Source: Multi-Player Blog
Do you remember when everyone thought for a split second that cell phones popping popcorn with radiation could be the new Mentos and Coke? That is until people actually tried it and realized it was a complete hoax.
Then the news quickly arose that the video was actually created by a Bluetooth headset company called Cardo. Lets just hope people were smart enough to test this bunk science before running out and buying a headset.
Sources: Boing Boing Gadgets
Now it’s your turn readers. There’s been thousands of these promotions in the last ten years, most of which were unsuccessful. But I’m sure many of you have fallen for these tricks at least once? What was the most convincing viral ad you’ve seen?
Aren’t you glad we can just cover those legs with jeans these days? This strange ad from the August 1953 issue of Mechanix Illustrated is one of many old ads featured at the blog Centuries of Advice & Advertisements. Link -via TYWKIWDBI
Unlike the flier posted yesterday, this one advertises a real service. A dentist in Minnesota Muskegon had fliers posted with detachable teeth! Each one has the office address a potential patient can keep. Link -via Laughing Squid
Ever think about which veggies look like our insides? This clever ad can help…not that you need to think about food anymore after your Thanksgiving feast.
Link Via Craftzine Image Via International Vegetarian Union
This 1936 ad for Camel cigarettes encourages you to stop and smoke between each course of your Thanksgiving feast. Link to Flickr page (full size). -via Metafilter
Think that websites and blogs are so laden with ads? Well, the virtual page is nothing compared to the physical space when it comes to ads – take Times Square, for instance. Back in 2007, David Friedman of Ironic Sans blog decided to take a photo of every single ad in Times Square. It took him 20 minutes, and he came up with 183 ads total.
Link [Flickr] | David’s post: Every ad in Times Square
Lest you think that this ad business is a recent invention, check out this photo of Times Square back at the turn of the century:
Photo via The Dust Congress
Household chores may never feel effortless, but appliances that make our day-to-day lives easier have definitely come a long way over the decades. Take a fun look back at vintage ads that tout then-innovative inventions, such as the gas range, electric broom, portable television and more!
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by ahammel.
In the early 90s, Old Milwaukee decided to compete with the imports by inventing the Old Milwaukee Swedish Bikini Team. The ad features a bunch of guys out fishing and being manly men and they think that it just can’t get any better. And then, of course, the Swedish Bikini Team shows up wearing spandex, cans and six-packs of Old Milwaukee parachute in, and the camera pans in on lots of jiggling boobs.
The ad triggered a sexual harassment suit by five members of the Stroh Brewery who said that the ads perpetuated an environment of verbal and physical abuse that had been going on since the mid 80s anyway. You can tell it really scared the company – shortly thereafter, the “bikini team” was featured in Playboy For your viewing pleasure…
In 1989, Miller ruffled more than a few feathers with a 16-page pamphlet distributed in 55 college newspapers across the country. Called “Beachin’ Times,” it instructed college students on how to get drunk and pick up babes. One such gem includes a piece on “Lite Beer Pro Beach Volleyball” which asked readers to “Name something you can dink, bump, and poke. Hint – it’s not a babe.” You can tell it was 1989 because the pamphlet is liberally peppered with “babe” references – another section was called “Four Sure-Fire Ways to Scam Babes.” I don’t know about you guys, but I’m totally hearing Jeff Spicoli in my head. Even college students were offended – groups of students at two universities organized protests and threatened to boycott Miller, which was enough to scare the company into an apology. They sent letters with the headline “We Blew It” to all 55 student newspapers the pamphlet had appeared in. It didn’t impress some people, though – the University of Iowa’s Daily Iowan ran an opinion column that compared the apology to after-the-fact birth control – “It might make you feel better, but it doesn’t do a damn bit of good.”
Looks pretty tame, right? But when this ad was first published, complaints rolled in by the barrel-ful. The look on the girl in the barley’s face was apparently much too suggestive for the liking of the general public, because the Minneapolis Brewing Company received so many letters that they recalled the posters as so not to offend any more potential customers. Photo from Land of Amber Waters by Doug Hoverson.
This is actually not a controversial ad, but Rolling Rock wanted you to think it was. I watched the You Tube video and wondered what people found so offensive about it – girls in bikinis? Because there’s much more scantily-clad women on Rock of Love every week (trust me, as an avid viewer, I know). But that was all just part of the scam. A little more digging revealed that Rolling Rock actually released “Beer Ape” as a viral Internet campaign. They put up billboards and other ads, apologizing to anyone who was “offended” by the campaign… the campaign that never actually aired anywhere except YouTube. Of course, this resulted in people flocking to YouTube to see what this offensive commercial was all about. Kind of genius… kind of underhanded and sneaky. Check it out for yourself:
Photo from World News’ 25 Most Controversial Ads
If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember Miller Lite’s “Catfight” ad. It ran in 2002 and showed two women getting in an out-and-out down-and-dirty catfight over whether Miller Lite tasted great or was less filling… you know the schtick. They end up tearing off each other’s clothes, wrestling into a public fountain and eventually tear it up in a pool of cement. At the end of the ad, we see that the whole thing was really just the fantasy of two guys sitting at a bar.
Miller contends that they were mocking the stereotypical male mentality, but that didn’t really hold water with the hundreds of people who called or wrote to complain. Miller made it a point of pointing out that the majority of people who complained were women over the age of 40 who had children… I find the fact that they pointed this out more offensive than the actual commercial, personally. Here it is in all its racy glory:
Before the newest Super Bowl ads roll out today, refresh yourself with some of the biggest ads from Super Bowls past. I totally remember the Michael Jordan/Larry Bird commercial, and I’m amused by the Michael J. Fox ad for Diet Pepsi. It’s so ’80s! Warning: there are current ads sprinkled here and there as well.
From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by 
