When marketing fails to hit the spot
I can’t help wonder what goes on in marketing meetings sometimes. Having been in more than my fair share over the years, I know that most bad ideas are thrown out before they even make it to the presentation stage, yet it seems that some companies take those bad ideas and not only run with them, but invest heavily in them! It’s as crazy as Shell or BP running ads for biodiesel storage tanks…
There was the Californian restaurant that offered a free lunch for life to anyone who had their logo tattooed on a visible part of their body, or the Starbucks free coffee offer that had no restrictions and ended up costing the company thousands of dollars. During the dotcom era, there were a number of companies that offered cash if people named their babies after the business or one of their products. Parents actually went for it, including the family of Widget Smith; the only problem being that most of these companies had gone out of business before Widget and his friends had even celebrated their first birthday.
So that’s marketing campaigns that didn’t hit the spot, but there are so many marketing campaigns that have worked so well, they almost deserve a blog each! One of my particular favourites is the Livestrong plastic bracelets. Nowadays, it seems like you can buy one of the plastic bracelets to support any cause; anti-bullying, pro-gay, heart disease and bright pink ones for breast cancer. But it was the yellow Livestrong bracelets, raising awareness and cash for cancer that started the whole process, and created a hugely successful charity at the same time. Yellow was an obvious choice for the founder of the campaign, Lance Armstrong, who is very used to wearing the leader’s yellow jersey on the Tour de France.
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