Jas Business Blog

To know what is best for your eyes, come to Magrabi.

These guerrilla campaigns never fail to amaze me; the latest has been by Fortune Promoseven advertising agency of Oman. Established as the first private specialized facility in the Middle East and North Africa, Magrabi has gone to become largest medical care network in Middle East. And as I have written before, the guerrilla works either to please loyalists or to create a new buzz, breaking the mental block created due to advertising noise.

One must appreciate that it was a completely novel idea of using the carrots in supermart to attract one’s attention to eye care. Carrots, known well for its high Vit A content are taken to be best natural source for healthy eyesight. But to comment on ad’s effectiveness I would like to know about the class to which the store was catering to. Point is that guerilla campaign has to be very customer specific. The place of execution should be one where you will find lot of intended customers. Now to define the intended customers for a private eye hospital, I would say that it has to be SEC A and B; with disposable income high enough to take care of normal family expenses. As Maslow pointed out, your basic needs need to be taken care of before you delve in these issues present on higher side of ladder.

At the same time I feel that the campaign could have been more vocal. Just asking one to come to hospital for knowing what is good for eyes may not move one to go for a check up or catch information from doctors, who are anyway busy enough to sit with you and discuss the good, bad and ugly stuff for eyes! They could have offered a free eye check up or could have arranged for an eye camp and advertised for it. We must not forget that a normal healthy person would not ideally want to gofor check up as there is a kind of cognitive dissonance there, its not the desired state as we all want to be see ourselves fit and believe that bad wont happen.

Advertising Agency: Fortune Promoseven, Oman
Copywriter: Vikramaditya Maity
Illustrator: Renjith pillai
Released: November 2007

Via: Ads of the world

Then there was another campaign by a restaurant named Spar by placing artificial clams on the beaches of Mumbai. When you open thhe clams there´s a text inside saying: ” Looking for seafood? Spars Seafood festival” The campaign is again quite old

Credits

And lastly i would like to point this Bloody Coasters campaign. These Bloody Coasters (for Mumbai Traffic Police) were printed using a special invisible red ink, wich spreads only when moistened. They were placed at tables and bar counters in Mumbai’s prominent bars and watering holes. When a customer places his frosted, moist glass of alchohol on it, the red ink starts spreading; and the normal face starts bleeding.
Alongside, the message reads: Just a reminder: Drunken driving kills.

Agency: Contract, Mumbai, India.

Credits: Directdaily

OK, am late for this The news may be about a month old, but it just never caught my senses, any one of those for the record…

Have been going through the new marketing adverts lately; though many argue that this kind of marketing has suddenly taken world by surprise, I prefer not to agree with this argument. Let’s first take a look at the new marketing, the in-thing for most of the blogs.

With traditional marketing being equated to ennui, the ad gurus have thought of new and innovative ideas for long to cater to the slow paced results of traditional marketing. But this was to change suddenly in 1982 with launch of a book by Mr. Jay Conrad Levinson, named Guerrilla Marketing. Defined as, “Unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources.” by www.marketingterms.com , this kind of marketing is best suited for small businesses which otherwise cannot take on the market leaders using traditional marketing. And these campaigns are none of the traditional adverts too, they either showcase a differential attribute of the product, or else create an image or perception using non- product attributes i.e. which is not an actual or rational benefit from that product but may be perceived as such; the whole idea being to transform cold prospects into consenting partners.

Wikipedia defines it as a descriptor of many other types of non-traditional media:

• Viral marketing — through social networks
• Buzz marketing — word of mouth marketing
• Undercover marketing — subtle product placement
• Astroturfing… etc

The list is a long one. But something that’s really interesting is the tactics used. Some of these are Word of mouth campaigns, Personal canvassing, Forehead advertising/Headvertise campaigns, blue jacking, Telemarketing, Personal letters, Circulars and brochures distributed at parking lots, homes, offices, malls, etc.; Billboards, Truck and automotive signs, Direct mail campaigns, T-shirts and even Interactive Urinal Communicator !!!!

Check some of these:

1. HAUB (Heat Activated Urinal Billboards) – based on heat sensitive ink technology, the ad gets visible when the (warm) urine falls on the ink delivering an interactive message to a captive audience. The cold water in flush makes the ad disappear again.

2. Another toilet billboard. When Zee Studio premiered Kill Bill, it launched following promo in Asia.

3. This one is superb! The campaign for HBO Sopranos in Russia and Spain!!!

4. This one will beat your spirit out of you. With Halloween around the corner, marketers found a sexy way to gain publicity for Britain ‘ s new show Afterlife

5. Finally on the kinky side – the text reads “ You do not know when it can be necessary ”. It was posted on the entrance floors of men’s toilets by Jontex, a condom brand. Country: Brazil, Agency: McCann Erickson

So convinced that the new marketing is catching up these days? WRONG!!! I would like to say that this kind has caught the attention because of easy information sharing on net, it was always there and dint need a Jay Conrad to be invented but only to be named. It may work wonders for small time, but for mature corps and bigger brands, the majority of sales will always be through the traditional channel of marketing, and that requires bucks, strategy in long term and much more resources than this. I would say that this is not even 10% of traditional one in sales revenue, and the day it becomes, that would be the day we can say that it has finally arrived! Till then these flashes wont harm and are a nice welcome.
~Jasginder

Sources: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/; www.wikipedia.com; http://www.spotanatomy.info/; http://www.coloribus.com/blog