Would you purposefully put something on your label or packaging to get people talking about your product? If you wouldn’t, you aren’t interested in getting the most buck for your marketing buck.
Tom Bihn Inc. decided to have a little fun with their care labels by putting something in the French part of the label that isn’t in the English- you can read their reply on the Urban References Page above- but the translation is something like: “we’re sorry our president is an idiot, we didn’t vote for him.”
I’m not going to make a guess if this is about President George W. Bush, or the company president “Tom Bihn” as the company claims- but, it has made it onto the Urban Legends Reference page (snopes.com) where people go to check out if an e-mail is a hoax or not.
Now, I’m writing about this in 2006, and the answer about this tag was answered in 2004- so you can see, a good stunt can keep working long after the initial buzz is over. There are people who probably would never buy a Tom Bihn bag because of the label, and there are others that absolutely would- but, here is the zinger- this little stunt probably made more people go look up Tom Bihn than could have possibly be accomplished any other way for a lot less money than a conventional ad campaign. That, my friend, is the premise of both a guerrilla campaign and a viral campaign- and that’s the kind of advertising we at The Next Wave like (make that love).
It’s coming- and if you are a middleman in the content delivery system, watch out. To define middlemen: record labels, movie studios, television networks (cable, broadcast, pay-per-view)- the people who come between the content producers - and their audience. The only people who will still be able to profit from this are the quality aggregator distributors like the Apple iTunes store, Amazon and probably Google (who may or may not - own the online world in the near distant future).
Read the link above- to find out how an unknown, small time singer, gave a concert to 70,000 people from her basement. Even if this was a set-up by a label, there are enough nerdy music geeks out there that can figure out how to do this on their own.
Sandi Thom now has a number one UK single- just recently the hip-hop band Gnarls Brakley have a UK number 1 hit purely from downloads.
Music is driven by word-of-mouth and the preferences of the “early adopters/ innovators”- more so than other product or service categories. If you are trying to build a brand quickly- using good webstrategy can get you to the top quicker than conventional media. If you don’t believe it, go ask Sandi Thom.
Advertising you don’t have to pay for is like warm cookies and cold milk before bed, getting a puppy on your birthday, or winning the lottery on the only ticket you ever bought. Well, maybe you bought a bunch of tickets and won the lottery.
It’s been said that the most powerful word in advertising is “Free”- and if you look at the stats for Jud Laipply’s “Evolution of Dance” video on You Tube- you’ll see how powerful even a low quality video can be.
In advertising, marketing, public relations (PR) the idea is to get your message out in front of your audience in the most cost effective way possible- and the Internet is certainly making that possible. Here is a six-minute, single camera production with over 22,623,270 views. It’s got 5191 comments and has been favorited 41210 times (as of 11 June 2006) – all at a minimal cost.
For an unknown motivational speaker, this bit of brilliant marketing has changed his world- opening doors to appearances on national TV morning shows and speaking engagements as well as his own line of merchandise.
Compare the costs of this video to the Burger King Manthem spot- and you quickly see who gets more bang for their buck. However, for all his genius, Jud is getting away with something no ad agency or major corporation can do- he’s using some of the best-known music in the world as his background track- without securing rights or paying royalties.
From reading his site, it is clear that Mr. Laipply is acutely aware of the rights issues- and he is not selling his video or providing the mix for people to download and do their own dance.
Our only hope is that this mix starts getting played at every sporting event in America- so sports fans only have to suffer through a small section of the Village People’s YMCA, Cotton Eye Joe by Rednex, the Macarena by Los Del Rio instead of the whole thing at every game.
What do you think?
Sometimes things happen beyond your control. Sometimes they are good things, and sometimes, they are not so good. We have done award winning posters for the 2nd Street Public market for the last few years. People want to steal the posters. One woman told me her boss decorated his living room based on our color scheme for a poster- and had it framed on the wall. We’ve talked about selling copies of the poster, that’s the difference between good and great.
As Howard Luck Gossage said “people don’t read ads, they read what interests them- and sometimes it’s an ad.” These posters are interesting, people read them- well, we’ll let you pick-
this year, before we were scheduled to be done with the poster, another publication was going to press and a page was donated- as was the labor, there is a saying, you get what you pay for… so compare:
The “Free” poster or:
The Next Wave poster. (click on image to enlarge)
Would you purposefully put something on your label or packaging to get people talking about your product? If you wouldn’t, you aren’t interested in getting the most buck for your marketing buck.
