Gutzy Guerillas

I feel like I’ve totally missed out on the Guerilla Marketing thing. Living in Ottawa, I never get to see anything truly ground breaking, and the underground advertising element here is pretty much non-existent. For cool Guerilla executuions, I pretty much have to resort – like just about everyone else – to the Internet.


Here are a couple of really cool examples of Guerilla Marketing done well.

Stadt Apotheke – a pharmaceutical company in Switzerland with offerings like sunscreen and skin care products – took to Zurich’s biggest park to spread the word about skin cancer (and establish a little branding to boot). I love how they effectively turned a field of sunbathers into a living morgue, complete with toe-tags. You can see the great campaign developed by Wirz/BBDO Switzerland here. The campaign not only elicits a deep emotional reaction relevant to those who “participate”, but it also uses the “participants” to create a greater picture à la collective. Very cool stuff.

Another simple idea was executed by Shiner Beer and their agency, McGarrah Jessee, outside of the Heineken-sponsored 2008 Austin City Limits music festival. It was a hot day in Texas, and Shiner distributed free beer Kozies (to keep beer cold) just outside the gates to people entering the festival. You can see it here. It feels a little cutthroat, but it was a really simple idea and I like that it not only gave people something they wanted (to keep their beer cold), but also gave buzz to a rivalry between Heineken and the local favourite in Austin: Shiner Beer.


As far as the sentiments expressed in Urban Spam, I feel a counterculture to advertising overload is a completely constructive resource for the industry. Having people react so strongly to advertising tells us advertisers a little something about what we should be striving for. Interruption-based advertising is becoming more scarce, and there’s a growing movement against it. Permission-based advertising is the way of the future, it seems, and rightly so. Also, the type of counterculture showcased in Urban Spam can bring serious issues about a company to light. It’s an effective way for consumers to find out those nasty little details about a company’s ethics, and those brands that feel the counterculture wrath serve as a warning to others. It says, be very careful about everything you do, and always be accountable OR THIS COULD HAPPEN TO YOU! Yes, it makes it harder for advertisers to get good messaging out in an effective (and less intrusive) way, but that’s the way it should be. Adversity breeds creativity and focus which breeds better advertising.

Look into my crystal Oscar

Our task this week is to predict the winner of the Oscar for Best Picture using social media tools.  As a starting point, we were given a list of some of the more credible websites which can be used in tracking/measuring social media. 

 

And the nominees are :

Avatar

The Blind Side

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Up in the Air

Up

A Serious Man

Precious

An Education

District 9

 

So how does one predict a winner based solely on what people are saying, and how they are saying it?

 

I started out by simply opening the recommended websites and typing the movie titles into the search bar.  I also tried ‘Oscars’ and ‘Academy Awards’ and sometimes the names of hte actors.  I found some interesting stuff.  Like:

 

• Most of the websites provided make mention of the more popular films (such as the top 4 listed above) and not of the rest.
• Some sites ask you to register your information before being granted an account.  (some sites even ask you to pay).
• Trendhunter.com only really made mention of Avatar and Inglourious Basterds.  There were all sorts of interesting movie-related items for sale (like leather Pandora masks and miniature figurines of Aldo Raine in Nazi-fighting gear)
• There’s a really cool article about how District 9 used QR coding as part of their advertising campaign.
• I found forums, like Y!Buzz, where people were debating which films were better.
• You can find how a movie – like Inglourious Basterds – was received soon after its release at websites like CrimsonHexagon.com (looks like it did pretty well!)
• You cant track the progression of a movie’s reception – like Avatar – with tracking sites like BuzzStudy.com (looks like it did pretty well too!)

 

I think what I’ll primarily base my guess on is an awesome website called SocialMention.com.  It tracks keywords used all over the Internet, the sentiment in which it’s being used, and even time stats letting you know when the last person mentioned the keyword.  Of all the movies nominated, Avatar is by far the most discussed.  This is true for all the social media sites I visited, but especially so on Social Mention.  The Hurt locker didn’t do nearly as well as I thought it would (based solely on my overhearing the conversations of friends).  The two real contenders were The Blind Side and Inglourious Basterds.  Both had high Strenght, Sentiment, Passion, and Reach ratings, and both had the same average minutes per mention.  The real difference came down to the Sentiment chart where The Blind Side had 65 positive, 56 neutral, and 9 negative sentiments while Inglourious Basterds had 55 positive, 63 neutral, and 9 negative sentiments.  These stats tell me that lots of people are engaged in conversations with these two movies, but that the opinion is more overtly positive towards the Blind Side than it is for Basterds. 

 

So that’s my guess.  The Blind Side will win it.

 

Stay tuned for future postings where I evaluate how successful my basis for predictions really is.