Hope you remember the Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner’s breathtaking descent from over 24 miles (39km) above the earth! It was way back on October 14th, 2012 when the spellbinding feat was achieved as part of the Red Bull Stratos project, wherein the company invested 30$ million and raked in 500$ million through sales.
Now, here is an instance of Guerrilla Marketing from the makers of Tamil actor Suriya starring ‘Soorarai Pottru’ along the lines of Baumgartner’s astonishing 2012 feat. But, not exactly.
To be more precise, if it was Felix Baumgartner reaching the stratosphere for Red Bull, then it is a board containing the autographs of thousands of Suriya’s fans for ‘Soorarai Pottru’.
Marketing Journo
The makers of the movie have orchestrated with a German crew to accomplish this ‘OUT OF THE WORLD’ task by fastening the board to an unmanned high-altitude balloon.
Suriya posted a brief video on this promotional effort, dubbed ‘Tribute to my anbanafans!!’ on November 11th, 2020 to his social media profiles.
The clip provides a glimpse of the board floating across space. Also, the altitude last shown in the video appears to be 35km above the earth! ‘Soorarai Pottru’, the first big-ticket movie from Tamil Film Industry to be directly released on an OTT platform, goes for a world premiere on Amazon Prime Video on November 12th, 2020! The latest Guerrilla Marketing stunt from team ‘Soorarai Pottru’ finishes the movie’s vigorous pre-release promotions on a high note.
Featured image courtesy:
2D Entertainment and Sikhya Entertainment
‘The Curse of La Llorona’ impressively jumped on the ‘Avengers: Endgame’ bandwagon
It’s a rarity to see a flick in a movie series, generating massive frenzy all over the world before its theatrical release. Now, when I try to recall one such rare movie, Avengers: Endgame of Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), pops up without a shadow of a doubt.
Since the movie, Avengers: Infinity War ended in a suspenseful manner, fans were left with utmost anxiety as to not miss the film’s sequel. Also, as the sequel, Avengers: Endgame (22nd movie of MCU) being labeled as the last movie of the franchise, the eagerness among the fans got immense. These aspects laid the groundwork for the “last installment” of one of the most memorable franchises of Hollywood to ride high.
For brands looking to promote their product/services, the movie appeared as a significant vehicle to unleash their prowess in marketing. Thereby, we have been observing various brands impressively riding the Avengers: Endgame wave either by associating themselves with the movie or by ambushing the same.
What appeared more interesting in these strategies was a movie doing a marketing ambush at Avengers: Endgame. Wherein, the ambush extended beyond the universe…SHARED UNIVERSE!
Before describing the movie’s marketing ambush, let me brief about a series of promotional contents shared by Marvel Studios for Avengers: Endgame.
A month before the release of Avengers: End game, a series of character posters featuring the MCU superheroes were shared on social media. Superheroes, who survived the snap of Thanos like Tony Stark, Steve Rogers and Thor in ‘Avengers: Infinity War’, appeared in full color. Whereas, the heroes, who turned to dust such as T’Challa, Peter Quill and Gamora, appeared in black and white. Also, each poster featured the tagline, ‘AVENGE THE FALLEN’. As the Hollywood Reporter puts, the tagline offered a new definition of the Avengers title and a callback to 2012’s first Avengers movie, wherein Tony Stark told Loki, “If we can’t protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it.”
The Curse of La Llorona‘s marketing ambush at Avengers: Endgame:
On 25th April 2019, the day before the release of Endgame, the following poster was released in the social media of the movie, The Curse of La Llorona…
The poster featured the titular character, La Llorona looking off camera and the tagline, ‘AVENGE THE CHILDREN’, rephrasing ‘AVENGE THE FALLEN’. The tagline appeared in a similar font and carried the spark effect from the original posters.
The rephrased text makes more sense to the movie’s crux as La Llorona persistently tries to drown children. Also, the social media post carried the text, ‘Twice the scares, half the time’ with the hashtag, ‘#LaLlorona’.
When all is said and done, it’s really impressive to notice The Curse of La Llorona, the sixth installment in The Conjuring Universe doing a marketing ambush at Avengers: Endgame of Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Recently, I have been reading the late American Business Writer Jay Conrad Levinson’s book, Guerrilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for making big profits from your small business. In a chapter of the book, the author has listed down twenty ways in which guerrilla marketing differs from the old-fashioned brand of marketing. In one of the ways, the writer defines traditional marketing as an approach, which suggests a brand to observe its industrial market completely to decide which of its competitors are to be utterly defeated by it.
Conversely, he proclaims guerrilla marketing as an outlook, which advocates a brand to discover businesses that possess the same kind of potential customers/clients and standards as it does, so that the brand can collaborate with the selected businesses in their marketing endeavours.
By opting the latter, Jay Conrad Levinson asserts that a brand is expanding its marketing reach, but reducing its marketing cost as it is sharing the expenses with the fellow business. And, he puts forth the term Fusion Marketing, which guerrillas use for this viewpoint.
There are tons of great examples for Fusion Marketing out there. To show you what makes them so captivating, I have curated a list of 4 examples of interesting Fusion Marketing instances. Here we go!
1. Burger King and Budweiser
Targeting the 2018 summer, the American brands, Burger King (BK) and Budweiser partnered and launched a limited edition burger named American Brewhouse King Sandwich and a special crown referred as Freedom Crown, for fans of both brands, to celebrate the Independence Day of United States of America. The crown, which holds both an American Brewhouse King Sandwich and a Budweiser beer, was available for people aged 21 or older, for a limited time. In the process, the collaboration revived the American beer maker’s iconic campaign, Whassup. In which, the original Budweiser Whassup commercial was remade by seasoning it with a special cameo from The King himself. To top it all, the BK’s mascot, holding a set of the new burger in his hand, “spoke” for the first time, in the spot. The ad was meant for supporting the revitalized campaign, driven by the agencies MullenLowe and David.
Whassup 2018 is one among the campaigns of BK that epitomizes the fast food restaurant’s Global CMO, Fernando Machado’s regular catchphrase, Burger King team is fighting the good fight for creativity!
When Tom Cruise is committed in doing all his high-risk stunts in the sixth Mission Impossible instalment, Fallout then how are the trained stunt men, hired by Paramount Pictures, occupying themselves?
You get to hear a light-hearted answer encapsulated in a video created by Uber, to promote its sponsorship of the red carpet premiere of Mission Impossible – Fallout that took place on July 12th 2018 in Paris.
In the documentary-style interview video, a fictional stunt man named Adrian Cooper talks about the ways in which he uses his plentiful downtime on the shooting spots.
One best way, in which he spends time, is to drive for Uber. Apart from enthusiastically letting his customers know about Tom’s daredevil stunts in Fallout, he conveys them on him being eager to watch the live streaming of the movie’s world premiere in Uber’s YouTube channel. The video ends with him saying, “I can’t wait to see all the stunts I didn’t do”!
Watch the hilarious video by clicking the link in the below tweet!
Ahead of the upcoming release of The Lego Movie 2, TurkishAirlines partnered with The Lego Movie franchise and created an in-flight safety video, comprising the stars of The Lego Movie, driven predominantly by characters like Emmett and Wyldstyle. In the infotainment video, the cast takes passengers through the safety procedures, which are usually explained by the crew members before the flight takes off. It’s a fun way to kick-start the flight journey with a video, which brings together two brands that are well-known across the globe.
As per The Drum, 16 production specialists have toiled for 950 days to turn 2,938,840 Lego bricks into this edutainment video.
Also, the video kicks off a drive, which will encompass a global TV campaign, themed wrapped airlines, in-flight and in-airport activations and a second safety video.
Click the link in the below tweet to enjoy the Turkish Airlines Safety Video with The LEGO Movie Characters!
Going by Jason Momoa’s comments to Comicbook.com, the threat posed by pollution in the oceans seem to factor into the Aquaman’s portrayal of the conflict between the surface and Atlantis. This major plot point of Aquaman makes sense of its pairing with the non-profit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy for the organization’s 33rd annual International Coastal Cleanup event, conducted on September 15th 2018.
As a lead-up to the event, people were encouraged through the Aquaman’s social media to be an Ocean Hero by joining it, downloading the organization’s app, Clean Swell and subsequently, participating in a Cleanup event near them. Post cleanup, volunteers were asked to submit data related to the marine debris collected by them in the app. Volunteers using Cleanup data cards were provided with an option to enter the details into Ocean Conservancy’s database. Eventually, the data will be formulated to Ocean Trash Index, which will then be an information source for everyone on the impact of the ocean trashes.
Please find below the peek into the International Coastal Cleaup, which happened on September 15th 2018.
In the aforementioned fusion marketing campaigns, it is evident that the brands have adopted the guerrilla marketing outlook by discovering businesses that possess the same kind of potential customers/clients and standards as they do and collaborated with the selected businesses in their marketing endeavours. These approaches would have helped the brands to get more bang for their bucks, with less work.
Alive Humans’ body spaces for Advertising: 3 Weird but Interesting Strategies
Of late, I have been trying to dig deep into the concept of Guerrilla Marketing. While trying to do so, I came across the terminology, Forehead Advertising. As the name suggests, the advertising is carried out on a person’s forehead… of course after obtaining consent from the concerned person.
A prominent case study of forehead advertising occurred way back in April 2004. To publicize tC coupe, a new model of the now defunct Scion (a discontinued brand of Toyota), Cunning, a London-based firm conducted an event. The event took place in Times Square. Wherein, 40 young adults, employed by the firm, participated to advertise tC. Cunning made the participants wear one or more of the below messages as temporary tattoos in their foreheads
tC (Coupe’s model name)
$16,465 (Price of the car)
Scion (Company’s name)
Each enlistee got paid $11 per hour. The event ran from 10 A.M – 1 P.M on the day when Toyota launched tC at New York Auto Show.
Much like the above forehead advert, there is this weird “billboard” drive of Air New Zealand in 2009. The airline recruited 30 people. It made them shave their heads. And, stick the below message over their bald heads as temporary tattoos for 2 weeks
“Need A Change? Head Down to New Zealand. www.airnewzealand.com.”
Air New Zealand labelled the advertisements as “cranial billboards”. In return, the temps received either of the below options
A round-trip ticket to New Zealand (Cost of the ticket was about $1,200)
Cash reward of $777 (The cash amount was an indirect reference to Boeing 777, a model in Air New Zealand’s fleet)
Likewise, FeelUnique.com, an online beauty store conducted a marketing drive in 2009. The company hired 10 men and women, in a random manner, from 6,000 who applied for the campaign online. The store made them apply the store’s web address as temporary tattoos on the eyelids. And, asked them to wink at strangers. FeelUnique.com paid them 100 pounds.
The London-based firm, Mischief ran the campaign. As per Mischief, the drive generated significant referral traffic to FeelUnique.com… as a result of articles about the campaign which appeared in various media.
Conclusion:
In the past, tattoo-related ads weren’t confined to the heads and eyelids alone. They have extended even to the rounded bellies of pregnant women. But, not all such strategies have turned out into a win-win like the above mentioned three cases. Hence, the instances serve as ideal case studies of how brands leveraged alive humans’ body spaces… for advertising.
A collage of stills from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Ant-Man, IT and Deadpool
This happened a week ago.
IT looked much like how the savage beast thrust the doors of a cargo hold in the climax of The Lost World: Jurassic Park.
IT prompted many among the passersby to double-check on what they saw.
IT made the commuters click photos and share them on social media.
Thereby, IT spurred a series of conversations from netizens… and a sequence of interpretations from media houses.
IT…IT…IT…IT…What was IT?
IT was a giant replica of a dinosaur breaking out of a container on a boat, which floated on River Thames in London.
Giant replica of T-Rex on River Thames in London
IT appeared like the ‘recreation’ of the below scene from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
This event, presumed to be a stunt for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, is unusual… unusual in the case of movie marketing. By that means, it serves as an ideal example of Guerrilla Marketing.
This occurrence made me recall few Guerrilla Marketing campaigns… campaigns implemented for certain movies. In this article, I present them to you.
‘Ant-sized’ bill boards for Ant-Man:
A still from Ant-Man
It was way back in 2015. Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero, Ant-Man was about to launch his first feature film. By then, Mr. Glasses (an Australian experiential marketing agency) pitched in to promote Ant-Man among the Australian audience.
For promotion, they launched a ‘miniature campaign’. As part of the campaign, they created 200 mini billboards. In other words, they shrunk traditional billboards… like how Ant-Man contracted in size in the film.
A mini billboard created for the ‘miniature campaign’
The boards contained the name of the movie, production house and the movie’s release date. The boards were then placed in areas where they could garner much audience attention. They got placed across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
This promotional activity created a sensation. The campaign got mentioned in a handful of world renowned newspapers and magazines. As a result of the surge in the popularity of the drive, Marvel booked mini billboards worldwide.
The campaign done on a budget of $22K yielded the well-set launch pad for the movie, Ant-Man.
Marketing Journo
‘Scary’ drive for IT:
A still from IT
In 2017, Village Roadshow deployed a weird drive to promote the horror flick, IT. This promotion is yet another brain child of Mr. Glasses.
The campaign included two activities. First was to create hand painted murals. The agency made street artists to create murals depicting their versions of Pennywise. They did so as they had restrictions in using the imageries of the clown that appears in the movie. The artists splashed their artworks on the walls of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The drawings contained texts such as ‘YOU’LL FLOAT TOO‘, movie name, release date and the hashtag, ‘#ITMOVIE‘.
A hand painted mural
And, second was to tie red balloons to storm water drains. Alongside the drains was the message, ‘IT IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK. #ITMOVIE IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 7.‘.
Balloons tied to storm water drains alongside which is the message, ‘IT IS CLOSER THAN YOU THINK. #ITMOVIE IN CINEMAS SEPTEMBER 7.‘
This marketing by the agency went viral globally.
The red balloon has been prominent not only in the movie, IT but also in its marketing as mentioned above.
Both activities sound striking despite the very tight budget (as mentioned in the website of Mr. Glasses) of the client.
Blu-ray packaging stunt for Deadpool:
A still from Deadpool 2
Among the many innovative marketing of Deadpool 2 is this one, which happened in Walmart. It was business as usual for Deadpool. Once again, he broke the fourth wall and got into the act of the movie’s marketing.
People were in for a surprise to see Deadpool taking over the endcap of Blu-ray movies of which he is not a part of. Some of the movies that Deadpool took over are Predator, The Terminator and Logan. In specific, the packaging stunt involved movies affiliated with Fox Home Entertainment. And, those which were iconic to a degree and had a noticeable art.
Deadpool taking over the endcap of Blu-ray movies in a Walmart store
The stunt appeared as bizarre and witty as the nature of Deapool. Fox Home Entertainment‘s in-house team along with Neuron Syndicate (Los Angeles based advertising agency) pulled off the stunt.
Conclusion:
All the above mentioned advertisements got placed in unusual and unexpected locations. And, the methods used by them were unconventional. Also, the strategies should be the first or the only ad executions of this kind (or should be so for a period of time). Thereby, they serve as perfect illustrations of Guerrilla Marketing.
What other movie marketing tactics you sense to fit the bill? Let me know in the comments!
5 Amazing Guerrilla Marketing Strategies from Popular Brands
After reading the article titled, ‘What Is Guerrilla Marketing? 7 Examples to Inspire Your Brand’ written by Amanda Zantel-Weiner for Hubspot, I had surfed the internet to know more of such interesting Guerrilla Marketing strategies. Consequently, I came across innumerable strategies which I felt as being interesting. Among those, I have picked 5 and briefed about them in this post. Let’s take a look on them:
1. ‘Eyes On The Road’ Campaign for ‘Volkswagen’:
‘Eyes On The Road’ Campaign for ‘Volkswagen’
Via the ‘Eyes On the Road’ campaign, Volkswagen, in association with Ogilvy & Mather China, had offered societal values in a creative manner with the assistance of technology. In the campaign, they raised awareness among the people by highlighting the dangers of texting while driving.
As part of the campaign, a video was released, wherein the people initially seem to be waiting to watch a movie in ‘MCL Cinema’ in Hong Kong. In the movie hall, the lights go down and a video depicting the driving of a car, from the driver’s viewpoint, starts playing on the big screen. Then, a location-based short message is sent from the projector room to the defined Geo location within the theater i.e., to the mobile devices of the people who are out there in the theater. When everyone tries to take a look at the message in their respective mobiles, the car in the big screen is shown crashing. When everyone in the movie hall is rendering a clueless stare over the on-screen happening, the message, “Mobile use is now the leading cause of death behind the wheel” is displayed on the screen. Following which the audience are let known that all what they experienced till that moment was a reminder to them to keep their eyes on the road while driving. The Volkswagen logo accompanied by the phrase, ‘Das Auto.’ gets displayed at the end of the ad.
2. ‘A Telekinetic Surprise in a Coffee Shop’ prank for ‘Carrie’:
‘A Telekinetic Surprise in a Coffee Shop’ prank for ‘Carrie’
To promote the 2013 Hollywood horror film Carrie, its makers, in association with Thinkmodo, had staged a larger than life situation in Snice Coffee Shop in West Village, New York.
Before staging the event in the cafe; a fake wall was put up in the shop, a pulley system was integrated to the fake wall, tables and chairs were remote controlled and pictures and books were spring loaded. Following which, few actors – including the primary characters, a stunt man and a woman – posing as customers, were made to sit inside the coffee shop.
Whenever a customer, who is unaware of the above mentioned setup, visits the shop, the stunt man topples the coffee of the woman, who is seated in the nearby table, and pretends as if he unintentionally did so. Getting angry over her coffee being spilt, the woman is shown unleashing her telekinetic powers. As a result of which, the customers see the stunt man getting lifted up the fake wall, chairs and tables being moved randomly from their positions and pictures and books being thrown from the shelves and walls.
3. ‘Unbelievable Bus Shelter’ prank for ‘Pepsi Max’:
‘Unbelievable Bus Shelter’ prank for ‘Pepsi Max’
To promote PepsiCo’s ‘Pepsi Max’, Augmented Reality was deployed – in an interesting manner – over a see through window, available in the bus shelter of London’s New Oxford Street.
In the bus shelter, people were surprised on seeing unbelievable events on the see through window; a bomb approaching the bus shelter and exploding after dashing the glass, a tentacle of an octopus popping up from the drainage pit and abducting a person into the hole, a set of flying saucers floating above the skyline, a man hanging from balloons advancing towards the bus shelter, a giant laser-shooting robot and a fully grown tiger running towards the bus shelter.
Click here to have a look at the Augmented Reality stunt of Pepsi Max.
4. ‘Invisible Car’ Campaign for ‘Mercedez-Benz’:
‘Invisible Car’ Campaign for ‘Mercedez Benz’
Mercedez-Benz, in association with Jung von Matt (an Advertising agency headquartered in Germany), had implemented an innovative campaign to promote their F-CELL hydrogen fuel cell technology (a technology that allows the car to have zero-emissions or emit no pollutants to the environment).
As part of the campaign, mats containing numerous LEDs were utilized to cover the driver side of the car leaving out the tyres. A camera that was placed on the other side of the car captured the happenings on its side and transmitted them to the LEDs. Initially, the public were puzzled to see the car. Later, after getting to know on how the technology operates, they gathered around the car to enjoy watching their own reflections on the LEDs.
Click here to watch the glimpse of the ‘Invisible Car’ campaign.
5. ‘So Real, it’s Scary’ prank video for ‘LG’:
‘So Real, it’s Scary’ prank video for ‘LG’
To advertise their IPS monitors, LG, along with SuperHeroes (an Advertising agency based in Amsterdam, Netherlands) had come up with a video where unsuspecting people were pranked of dropping floors in a moving elevator.
Before the prank, 3’*3’ of IPS monitors were placed over the lower surface of an elevator to actually look like the lift’s floor. After people got into the elevator and it started moving, in each monitor, a video played in such a way that the floor of the lift appeared dropping. The perplexed reactions of the people, in response to the prank, were captured on hidden cameras that were placed inside the elevator.
Click here to watch the ‘So Real, it’s Scary’ prank video.
So, here I end my article about the 5 amazing Guerrilla Marketing strategies that have been implemented by 5 popular brands to promote their respective products.
Do you feel the above mentioned Guerrilla Marketing strategies to be amazing? Sound off in the comments section below.
