Novel marketing ideas that work
by Abdul Aziz Mondal Marketing Published on: 11 June 2018 Last Updated on: 19 October 2024
In the competitive modern economy, you have to work hard to attract customers. Everyone from major corporations to small start-ups is aware of the vital importance of marketing, which means that standing out from the crowd is a daily struggle.
Some businesses keep it simple, using everything from human billboards to chalkboards to detail the latest special offers. Chalkboards are a great example of a proven marketing tool which has evolved over the years. The introduction of liquid chalk markers has enabled businesses to be more creative in their efforts to reel in customers, and there are plenty of product reviews available to help you understand just how effective they can be.
Creativity is the key to marketing and there are some great quirky attention-grabbing ideas that your business can use to stand out in crowded marketplace.
The Target Hotel Light Show :
Innovative marketing strategies are not just the preserve of small, trendy start-ups. With its Hotel Light Show, Target showed a creative approach to putting its name in the public spotlight. It successfully built an enormous physical multimedia advertisement by renting every single street-facing room at the Standard Hotel in Manhattan and projecting light out through the window. The ad also included dancers in all of the rooms and a score orchestrated by a DJ, creating a compelling and imaginative display that was able to reference the traditional billboard while transcending the limits of the medium.
Air guitars for free :
Giving away free products is a great way to get people talking about your company, but the downside of free offers is that they can be fairly expensive, which is why this ad from a radio station in Glasgow, Scotland was so ingenious. They wanted to promote themselves without having to spend a fortune, so they came up with the genius notion of giving away air guitars for free.
The ad works because of its humor that catches people off-guard and is the sort of gimmick that encourages people to tell their friends and work colleagues about. In this case, the ad proved extremely popular and was soon being shared worldwide on social media.
Hack the world :
For companies trying to introduce a new video game or film into a crowded marketplace, getting attention can be tough. When software company Ubisoft was developing a new video game, they knew they had to come up with something eye-catching to grab attention.
The game was called Watch Dogs and is based on the idea that the protagonist is able to use a smartphone to interact with the world around him or her, hacking into streetlights and cars. So, to fit with the theme of the game, Ubisoft created a marketing campaign in conjunction with a mobile phone retailer, which consisted of a series of public stunts in which volunteers were told that their smartphones could turn off the lights inside the store and perform other similar actions to be found in the game itself.
Giving volunteers the opportunity to experience an aspect of the gameplay but in a real-life setting was an inspirational way to get people talking about the game and generate considerable interest ahead of its release.
Coffee cup faces :
Humor is a great way to connect with people and get them thinking positively about your brand. Starbucks may be one of the world’s leading coffee brands, but they have retained the ability to think outside the box with their marketing, including a famous campaign in which they printed images of mouths and teeth on their coffee cups that created a striking and humorous effect, shared all over social media, bringing the company much positive attention.
Eat Mor Chikin :
This is a famous billboard campaign from Chick-Fil-A that dates back to the mid-1990s. The theme is of cows attempting to persuade people to eat chicken, and one of the defining features of the ads is their consistent appearance. The ads always feature physical cow props and employ a clear black, red and white color palette, which illustrates the value that you can derive from maintaining a consistent theme and aesthetic in your marketing efforts.
This campaign is also another demonstration of the fact that quirky marketing can often be cheaper than conventional alternatives. At a time when their main market rivals were paying millions of dollars for commercials, Chick-Fil-A was able to make a big impact with a campaign that cost a fraction of that.
As these examples show, whatever the size of your business or your budget, by thinking outside the box when it comes to marketing, you can make a big impact in your market and get people interested in your brand. The only limit is your imagination!
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