matchbox puts your ride in their hands

found these pics on adsoftheworld.com



a simple, inexpensive and smart guerrilla marketing technique by our friends at matchbox. i wonder how many pictures people have taken on their cell phones of their own cars on these spots? how many of those do you think you could find on the most popular social network in the country these spots are at?

Royals: Opportunity Lost

As i'm sure you didn't know, Kaufman Stadium, home of the Kansas City Royals baseball team now currently has the largest HD screen in the world.

They installed this bad boy this year after a multi-million dollar renovation taking place at the stadium.

So why is this local piece of flavor important to my blog?

Having a conversation last night over a couple of beers with Jason Bedell, it hit us in the face pretty quickly. Where the hell was the Royals PR on this? This is the largest HD monitor currently on earth! That's news! That's a big deal(pardon the pun)! This could have been in every tech blog, it would have for sure been picked up on the AP Wire if it were out there in any form.

There's a ton of geeks out there that love this stuff, me included. I heard about it by word of mouth! That's an insult to me and my 1 billion rss feeds streaming in front of my face daily.

It's a missed opportunity. With the right spin applied to this, they could have almost recouped the cost of the damn gigantor monitor with FREE advertising via PR. This isn't you're usual cheesy local PR thing, this is the LARGEST HD SCREENY THING IN THE WORLD!!!

Here's some video from one of my twitter friends Jeffisageek, he was at the home opener this Tuesday.



One thing I've hear that may be a bit of a downer for baseball players everywhere is that with this HD monitor, we all know how fugly these guys really are up close. It might be time to start exfoliating fellas!

Marlboro Lights up Spring Break

It really doesn't get much better than this in the world of non-traditional, subliminal, guerrilla marketing now does it?
I found this at jaffejuice, if he's not on your reader than he needs to be.
I love these marketing ideas. The narrator on the video is wrong. This is not taking advantage of kids at spring break. I seriously doubt it was intended to subliminally get drunken travelers to go buy a pack of smokes (ok maybe it was). However,It doesn't need to work like that, it only needs to be a good story. Just one student shaking their head on the dance floor notices this and it spreads like wildfire through the club, and once it's found it will be a tale that frat boys and coeds from all over will be singing when they get back on campus. It will be shared, and that's a win for anyone.
Of course the guy speaking on the video is full of it when he's speaking about the legal aspects of the lighting trick. I really don't see anyting illegal, but you tell me.

Red Bull Cola? FAIL!

it seems that energy drink giant Red Bull will be launching there first product outside the energy drink that made them in the late 90's here in the U.S.
Boy, i gotta tell you, I'm just not seeing what direction they are moving in. With such a strong brand image and attitude, why a cola? Aren't cola's dead? Do they possibly know something that no one else does. doubt it!
I think the Austrians may have their heads way too far up their asses on this one. With such a strong brand, wouldn't you start to think outside the beverage box? Why not take that premium, bad-boy, party, mischievous personality and take it to other products, gear, wearables, something other than a boring soda.
I could be eating crow in a couple of years, but i doubt it. You're a company based on innovation and creativity....this is neither. FAIL!
I am interested in how they utilize their sampling teams. Will they create new street teams in bigger markets with new vehicles? Hopefully they will bring in something new. Everyone and their brother's are using street teams now. How can you set yourself apart, or re-invent the guerrilla team.

Go ahead and check out the article on bev-net.

B.J. Novak said Cadbury Eggs have gotten smaller! So what did Cadbury say?

Though this post does stray a bit from it's guerilla roots, i am writing about this to show how much the internet can work for or against companies that have never began to believe that it would. Now this is from about a year ago, but I just found it and it's fun to see what the impact was. It's also my blog and I can do whatever the hell I want. It's also a pain in the ass to find anything sexy about easter.

To give you some back story, check out the youtube of B.J. Novak from The Office explain his problem with last years Cadbury Eggs.

(Note that either Cadbury or NBC has taken the clip down from youtube so you'll have to do w/ this link)

In a seemingly random and silly outing of this on Conan Obrien, it caused a mini-storm on the internet. Now the cadbury site has changed it's FAQ, wording the reason behind the size change to a more corporate answer. You can run into the video on all kinds of social sites and sweet innocent cadbury felt a little heat.

This initially got my attention because if felt like a bit of a random pr nightmare and i wanted to investigate more, but the deeper i dug, the more i feel that cadbury didn't make the best out of their situation.

Here's how i see it. They were thrust into the limelight in a very non-positive way, but as we all know, it's all about the follow through. Did they take this opportunity and make that lemonade?

Nope! Cadbury just sat on their ass and did nothing. Here's a couple of reasons why Cadbury should have gotten a new agency.

1. Searching for Cadbury Creme Eggs on google, the Cadbury site (which is lame, but i'm sure cost them an arm and a leg) comes up a very unimpressive 6th. That's just laziness folks! If you don't believe that your brand should strive to make the #1 spot under candy distributors and wikipedia entries than you obviously don't understand interactive marketing and or you don't care. My bet is on the prior.

2. Their site has a loading page and filled with a bunch of games. I know this may seem like a seemingly unimportant observation but haven't we gotten any further since 1997? It's been over a decade folks. Get another agency! The one you got is laughing all the way to the bank.

If you're company is thrust into the public eye like Cadbury was last year, you need a PR team that can spin this baby and use the momentum of the less favorable light to get your brand some new eyeballs! Don't be so proactive that you forget how to react!

Fifa Street 3 video mixes soccer w/ Parkour

If your on the coast or in a bigger city, you're probably already familiar with the sport or activity of Parkour. It's kind of a street version of acrobatics or a heritage like sport without the need of a bike, board or motor.

Recently Fifa Street 3 has used a mixture of this and street soccer in a viral video they've released. Pretty impressive stuff, even though we can guess that the soccer ball is cgi in many of the scenes.

It's really got a great mix and looks really at home with soccer, especially if you've ever seen the movie Shaolin Soccer .

I love the campaign and I believe that this Parkour popularity is just starting to take hold. Won't take long before Red Bull will have a street team. They have already started a freestyle almost b-boy group that travels around the country performing known as Reaccion.



Look for more of this to start popping up in different forms.

UPDATE:

Ok, so I've done a bit more searching and have found the actual website for this newest Electronic Arts release. Wow they must have broken the bank on the site. It really does a great job of having a game feel, even allowing you to unlock (rather easily) gamebreaker moves. You should give it a go!

Look at the big Guerilla on Adidas!

I was really glad I ran into this video the other day. This showcases Adidas AdBOOST. It's a perfect Guerrilla campaign. It's fun, it's functional, and it really speaks to the brand. Check out the video below. It actually reminds me a lot of some Red Bull activations.



I will say, that they could have shot a little better video and I would have still gotten the idea. The tactic itself was the Guerrilla part, the presentation of it can look a bit more slick.

What I didn't realize is that Adidas has been doing this for a while now. Check out this other activation using a Carnival ride we've all seen a hundred times in an urban and fun way. I like it Adidas! Keep it up!