Happy balloons

Yesterday, while driving my little vitamin car around Stockholm, I noticed that someone had been placing colorful balloons on various lamp posts around the city center.

The balloons had different messages on them: "Hakuna Matata", "Feed the birds" and "Say hi to the palace guard".

I have no idea whose idea this is and what purpose the balloons have, but they sure brightened up my day. :)

(And sorry about the poor quality of the pictures. It's kind of hard to drive a car and take photos with your cell phone at the same time. ;)

Pilates, anyone?

The other day, when I was driving up Odengatan in Stockholm, I spotted some green balloons on lamp posts along the street. I had to stop and see what they were.

They were a guerrilla marketing campaign for Stockholm Pilates Center, who will host an open house event this Friday, to celebrate that they moved to new and bigger premises. The folder attached to the balloons said something like: "Help us puncture the myth. More than just balls, individual training for the whole body." I must say I thought the slogan was quite catchy, and today when passing by again, many of the ballons were actually punctured...

Catchy and eye-catching. And probably not too expensive. That's my kind of guerrilla campaign! :) Well done, Stockholm Pilates Center!

Make sure to also check out Stockholm Pilates Center's Facebook page!

(And if you look closely in the second picture, you can see my Glacéau Vitaminwater car in the background. Yep, that's the car I'm driving around in Stockholm all day long... :)

Glacéau Vitaminwater "Guerrilla" Campaign

On Monday, Glacéau Vitaminwater was launched in Stockholm. The hydrating, great-tasting vitamin enhanced beverage comes in 6 different flavors and functions, and is only promoted through sampling and PR activities. No commercials on TV or in magazines. Interesting. Read more about it in Dagens Media.

Picture from glaceau.se.

Of course, I might be a bit biased reporting about Glacéau Vitaminwater, since I'll be working for UMG with the PR activites... but, hey, I wouldn't be human if I had always been objective. ;)

The only downsize is that the glaceau.se web page is not finished yet, apparently due to the IT guys playing too much online poker. ;)

True Blood Guerrilla

I ran across this inventive guerrilla campaign for True Blood season 2 (in Sweden the series apparently airs on Canal+).

This lightboard is at a bus stop, and the picture of this guy is advertising some shopping mall. Oddly enough I didn't even check what mall, I was just so amused by the True Blood campaign... Anyway, someone attached a transparent sticker to the guys neck, making it look like he's been bitten by a vampire. There is also text saying "True Blood, season 2, Wednesdays at 20.00, Canal+". I liked it and it made me smile! :)

The show has been aired since September though, and I wonder if I'm just slow on noticing the campaign, or if Canal+ needs more wievers?

An older blog post about True Blood can be found here.

Paint, or insurance, anyone?

I stumbled across this lovely guerrilla/ambient marketing campaign for Nationwide insurances, called "Life comes at you fast". The campaign is quite old, from 2007 or so, but I think it's really funny so I decided to feature it anyway.

I found a post about it at adsoftheworld.com, and that's also from where I borrowed the picture.

The agency who created the campaign was TM Advertising, in Texas.

This ad cost nothing

Marketing agency The Via Group donated a guerrilla campagin to The Salvation Army in Portland, Oregon. They used local businesses, and the campaign was known as "This ad cost nothing". The campaign site can be found here. (Picture borrowed from the site.)

The campaign was quite inventive and cute, and the agency embraces one of the trends that is growing bigger and bigger; CSR, Corporate Social Responsability.

An article in English, from Springwise, and an article in Swedish, from CSR i praktiken.

And by the way, The Via Group probably has the coolest tagline ever: "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible will be done by Thursday." I love it! :)

Göteborg Guerrilla

This post should have been published some time ago, but here goes...

I was in Göteborg a few months ago, and found these really funny signs in different locations. They looked like road signs but had other meanings. The signs were art work, from a Danish duo, Bosch & Fjord, , but they also doubled as guerrilla marketing for the exhibition in which they participated, at Göteborgs Konsthall.

A quite funny and startling intentional (?) guerrilla campaign.

Ambient marketing

I found this blog: Crooked Brains, where they have lot's of interesting marketing blog posts and also lot's of not so much interesting, but even so, sometimes hilarious, blog posts with cats that look like Hitler.
Anyway, this post was of particular interest for me, since it has lot's of funny examples of ambient/guerrilla marketing. Check it out!

A few guerrilla marketing tips

Find some guerrilla marketing tips in the article: Guerrilla Marketing Isn't Just Monkey Business, from TheStreet.com. (Though the site itself doesn't seem to be marketing related...)

Italian Guerrilla Blog

OK, so it is all in Italian, but you can pretty much figure out what they want to say anyway, thanks to the many YouTube clips. Check out the Italian Bloguerrilla blog!

Shame on me!

I'm not thoroughly updated! Miami has a new website design and a blog! Check them out! NOW! It's an order! ;)
I love their website design so much! It really makes me long for sugary breakfasts at American 50's style café Egg & Milk in Göteborg (no website, but contact information can be found here).

Swedish Guerrilla Marketing blog (My Quest)

Yay! I found this blog: Icke-traditionella medier (translates: non-traditional media) that has posts about, yes, you guessed; non-traditional media, such as guerrilla marketing and ambient media. The blog is in Swedish, but contains lot's of pictures and film clips. It's hosted by a communication agency in Malmö; Crowd, and from what I can read on their webpage, they do quite a lot of guerrilla marketing campaigns. Me like!

Well, Crowd did a mini campaign together with one of my favourite agencies; Miami. It was during Eventdagarna, a Swedish fair for, amongst others, event agencies. The fair had the subject of "Event Marketing", and neither Crowd nor Miami attended. They sprayed water logos on and around the fair area, stating "Guerrilla and ambient are not events", in order to make a statement that they would have liked to have representatives from guerrilla agencies there, and that maybe the fair should not have been called Eventdagarna (The Event Days). Read an article about the campaign, from Dagens Media here.

I do agree that guerrilla and ambient are not events, BUT I do firmly believe that you might need to incorporate many different parts of different media in order to get a campaign that reaches your target group to a full extent. It is normally not enought to just buy an ad in a magazine or newspaper, you need to follow up with TV, maybe radio, a few events and maybe som attention-creating guerrilla actions.

1st of May Guerrilla, cont.

They May Flower organisation (Majblomman) is continuing the campaign. They have posters/boards all over town promoting Majblomman and the fact that you actually can vote for next years colour. Resumé has an article about it (in Swedish only). The fun part is that on the outdoor posters/boards, you can press a button to cast your vote, so people can vote while waiting for the bus. Fun!

I wonder if I can find a poster somewhere?!?

1st of May Guerrilla

In Sweden, 1st of May is sacred. Most people go out on the streets for demonstrations, solidarity is shown everywhere.

But 1st of May also holds another Swedish tradition; Majblomman, the May Flower (no, not the ship ;). The May Flower is an organisation that engages school kids all over Sweden. They go out on the streets and sell small flower pins and stickers (a different colour every year).



The income from the sales go towards helping other kids, the slogan being: "kids helping kids".



So, every year, around the middle of April, kids turn up everywhere, selling flowers. They usually have a small cardboard box where they have their flowers, and keep the money in their pockets.

This year (or maybe last year? I haven't really stayed up to date with the May Flower organisation), I'm guessing the May Flower contracted a communication agency to improve the May Flower brand and to communicate it, through guerrilla marketing.

First of all, the web page seems to be updated, and contains games and other fun stuff, in order to generate traffic.

Second of all: the kids have new nice bags that carry the flowers and their money.

















Third of all: a few days ago I saw stickers on many subway stations, promoting the May Flower.













And fourth: yesterday, at Hötorget in central Stockholm, I found this:
Flowers put up in the trees! That's what I call guerrilla! Fun, cheap, and attention driving!



Edit: Check out this article in the May Flower's press room, about the "start of sales" event at Hötorget.

Black Money

In need of some extra cash? Print them yourself at Diesel Black Friday.
(Unfortunately they are only valid in Diesel stores ;)

An interesting and more fun way to promote "30 % off-coupons"!

Another guerrilla/ambient marketing blog

Through twitter I found some new interesting stuff. Check out Mastercom advertising and communication blog here!

Guerrilla tips

I really enjoyed this post when I read it: 50 Guerrilla Marketing Tactics You Should Be Using. I actually wanted to try number 8, to promote this blog when I first started writing, but since I live in Sweden, I would probably get fined for littering, so I decided no to. (Yeah, I know, boring, but I am really attached to my money! ;)

Anyway, lots of good and quite inspiring tips on how to promote you/your company/your event through guerrilla marketing.

My Quest (again)

On my quest to find GOOD Swedish guerrilla marketing agencies, Google guided me to this Swedish guerrilla marketing (allegedly) agency: Contras. (Site only in Swedish, sorry.)

On their site they claim to be using guerrilla marketing methods, but
1) they only seem to be doing web sites, and marketing for web sites on the internet (which in my world doesn't count as guerrilla), and
2) I am really allergic to companies that don't spell properly, on purpose.

I am contra Contras.

My Quest

I have a quest. The quest is to find good Swedish guerrilla marketing agencies.

I stumbled upon a site this morning: Gerilla Produktion. Unfortunatley the site is being updated, so there isn't that much information on it right now, but I will keep an eye on them for the future...

Smokin' guerrilla letters?

Scandinavias biggest business magazine about media and marketing communication, Resumé, reports that the advertising agency Mecka worked together with Nexans, in order to promote Nexans' new electrical halogen free cables. Having no halogen in the cables apparently makes them "low smoke & flame retardant". (Sorry, the article at Resumé is only in Swedish.)

So, Mecka sent out a first letter that smelled of smoke (written by a fire fighter) and and a second, water damaged, letter (written by a risk engineer). The third letter they sent out was written by Nexans and it adviced the receivers to visit the campaign site. (Unfortunately, Resumé did not link to that site, and I haven't been able to find it...)
EDIT: http://www.nexans.se/halogenfritt/ (Thank you Anders!)

A fun idea, and hopefully a smoke-smelling letter will attract the eyes (or nose) of the recipients.