Hasta La Creative!

If you wish you could be like Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt, here’s a fun bit of stunt marketing for you.

To promote Rogue Nation, the fifth movie in the franchise, agency Grandesign set up a spy-thriller- inspired obstacle course for passersby in Hollywood over July 4th weekend.

The accompanying case study video shows Simon Pegg, who plays IMF agent Benji Dunn in the Mission Impossible movies, serving as the emcee for a set of reality-TV-style challenges. A dozen or so contestants end up chasing down a specific briefcase in a plaza full of businessmen; swimming through a winding tank to unlock an underwater box; climbing soaking wet up a slippery, wobbly, and inclined plane wing (or falling into the foam pit beside it); and ultimately rappelling from a third story walkway.

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Who, you might ask, are all these upbeat athletic people, with approachable good looks and a vaguely representative demographic spread, who are happy to drop whatever they’re doing to go gallivanting through some movie marketing campaign?

Grandesign insists, for its part, that the participants were real and random. But it’s almost impossible to ever believe these elaborately produced events are not staged—or at least heavily manipulated—in all aspects from concept to set design to casting, and so forth.

Regardless, the contestants with the best times did get a trip to the red carpet premiere in Vienna, Austria as proven by an on-site photo-op with Tom Cruise—which also happens to reveal the true criterion for participating: be pretty, so long as you’re not prettier than he is.

In June, Beyond Madison Avenue ran a post about designer Rachel Nasvik, a New York City designer famous for chic, custom-made handbags, and the “scavenger hunt” in New York city where consumers followed clues published on social media sites to discover where she had hidden 96 of these designer handbags around the city. The campaign was a great success, and displayed a great use of social media as well as a natural knack for getting noticed.

Well, Rachel Nasvik has again taken to the streets, but in an entirely different manner.

New York City (NYC) is known for many things, one of them being a place where consumers can purchase merchandise that has been pirated from well-known designers. Basically, knock-offs sold on the street for nothing that look like the original.

Well Nasvik and team turned the tables on the design pirates by using their fly-by-night grocery carts as a means of promoting original Nasvik designs. In what could be called a second scavenger hunt, Nasvik sent clues to her 1,000+ followers on Twitter, alerting them that the game, once again, was a-foot. This time she was hiding her designer goods amidst the copycats roaming the streets of NYC. The cost for a Nasvik original off the cart was an affordable $10, while down the street at Saks, the same bag brought in $300. This obviously was not going to make Nasvik any money.

Yet, what she lost in terms of dollars was replaced by her gains in public relations, love from her fans, earned media coverage, and a creative use of distribution channels. She has taken social media to a whole new level, interacting with her fan-base personally with a fun and competitive game that was not online, but in the “real” world.

Plus, her brand is now being copied by pirates…meaning that Nasvik’s designs have truly “made it.”

Jeff Louis is a Strategic Media Planner, Brand Project Manager, blogger, and aspiring writer. You can reach him on Twittter or LinkedIn. He is always searching for great ideas and new friends.

During his rapid ascent from a senator to President of the United States, Barack Obama effectively rewrote the rules of political marketing. By embracing the Internet and relying on strong grassroots fundraising, Obama raised enough money to dominate opponent John McCain with television ads that included an unprecedented 30-minute documentary style ad that delayed the start of the MLB World Series.

Predictably, President Obama’s marketing methods have been embraced by the rest of the Democratic Party (note the similarities between the White House homepage and the Democratic Party’s homepage). Of course, it’s not just friends of the President who have taken to alternative advertising, but his enemies, as well.

Recently, images of President Obama made to resemble Heath Ledger’s Joker from the blockbuster film The Dark Knight have popped up all over Los Angeles.  Illustrated in a style somewhat similar to Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama ‘Hope’ portrait, the poster splashes the word socialism underneath the President’s creepily smiling face.

It is unclear at this point whether the Obama/Joker posters are the work of a lone individual or if they are tied to a formal guerrilla marketing campaign. For some reason, I’m inclined to believe the latter. We’ve seen Astroturfing campaigns from both side of the political aisle, so I wouldn’t be shocked to find out in a month that this was conceived by some Conservative organization. If so, the question is, “Why?”

Why appropriate such a well-known image from The Dark Knight? Is the artist implying that the President, like the Joker in the movie, is a terrorist? That tactic didn’t work in the Presidential campaign, so why would it work now? Furthermore, if these posters are indeed being bankrolled by members of a conservative group, why would these people risk being tied to such a blatant attack?

If Obama/Joker is actually part of a greater campaign, I can’t see how it will be effective. Despite the President’s slipping approval ratings, I believe that in these fragile times, Americans aren’t interested in getting back to divisive politics. What do you think?

Rob Frappier is a marketing copywriter and blogger working in the social media sphere. To reach Rob, visit his blog, or follow him on Twitter.