5 Unique Marketing Campaigns That You Should Employ

Marketers are open to a wealth of resources and opportunities not available to people back in the day. Making a personal and long-lasting connection with a potential business partner or client can be done by handing out a business card. Or you can post your advertisement with just a click of a mouse button to be viewed by thousands of people online.

Because of the relative ease and comfort of promoting your products and services nowadays, everybody’s not only handing out brochures and postcards, but also posting tweets, messages, and articles using their online social profiles. As a result, it’s becoming much more difficult to rise above the wave of sameness that pervades in marketing.

Instead of trying to outperform the pack with the use of promotional tools and social media, why not take the left hand path and do something out of the ordinary?

Below are unique marketing campaigns that could not only help bolster your campaign, but also make an indelible impression with your business.

Arrow spinning

To call the attention of people to your product or services, you sometimes have to literally point it out to them. This is what the five-foot boards shaped like arrows do for your business.

It all started when Max Durovic and Michael Kenny applied for a post as an advertiser for a local deli shop in California. They got bored with the traditional approach of carrying a sign for people to see, so they flipped the board over the air numerous times to get people riled up about…sandwiches.

Why should your business do it? The “arrow” in itself isn’t what makes this marketing campaign unique – it’s how they are used for promotions. Arrow spinners between the ages of 16 to 24 perform more than 30 tricks with the arrow to pique the interests of passersby before they show the advertisement printed on it. The term “call to action” can’t be any more blatant than that.

Aarrow Advertising is the be-all-end-all of arrow spinning. Founded in 2002 by the aforementioned Durovic, the company has branched out from California to cater to more than 40 locations in the USA, not to mention countries such as Puerto Rico, Canada, and South Korea.

Tissue pack marketing

Whether used for wiping away your tears or blowing snot from your stuffy nose, a pack of tissues is your best friend during these trying times, and with good reason. This was pretext that led Hiroshi Mori, founder of Meisei Industrial Co., to use packs of tissues as a vehicle for advertising.

Why should your business do it? Easy to carry and affordable, tissue packs are also widely accepted by people when handed out for free. In a market study conducted by Marsh Resource to 100,000 Japanese people in 2007, more than 3/4th takes home the free pocket tissues with them. Among those who accepted the tissues, more than half looked at the advertisement with the hope of finding a coupon or offer.

Internetainment

The term was coined by Rhett & Link, a comedy duo that has been making online videos to promote their work on the web since 2005. Only in 2010 did they try their hands on creating free infomercials for different businesses to much success.

Why should your business do it? If you want to approach the marketing campaign for your business with some tongue-in-cheek humor, then these guys are for you. Their off-beat and quirky comedic timing serves well in today’s generation that relies on sharing and word-of-mouth to get their point across. In fact, the numbers don’t lie – the commercial they made for Red House Furniture that featured the bizarre slogan “Where White and Black People Buy Furniture” has garnered almost four million views. Their commercial for Chuck Testa of Ojai Valley Taxidermy has spawned hundreds of memes and parody videos, which attest to the potency of their craft.

Outside niche markets, Rhett & Link also does brand integration for larger companies such as McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Dentyne Gum, and others on custom videos as requested by the client.

Reverse Graffiti

Also known as clean advertising, dust tagging, and clean tagging, reverse graffiti is a technique that makes use of dirt and grime to create semi-permanent images for the advertisement. This is done by cleaning off dirt from a surface and shaping it to the appearance of your ad. Another method is by spraying high-powered washers on hard to reach places.

Why should your business do it? Although reverse graffiti shares the concept of paint-based graffiti art, it nonetheless promotes a safer and environment-friendly way to reach out to your market. The legality of this marketing approach is still a grey area, but unless an outright ban is implemented in your state, reverse graffiti should promote not only your business at high traffic areas, but also a greener community.

Flash mob

There’s a great chance you’ve been part of a social spectacle with a group of strangers in a really crowded place. Flash mobs are intended for the fun of it all – at face value, there’s no subliminal message behind the act other than the pointless dancing performed in unison with people. However, due to its sheer craziness, flash mobs have become viral on video sharing sites and viewed from people from all over the world.

Why should your business do it? On January 15, 2009, T Mobile held a flash mob at the Liverpool Street Station in the UK much to the delight of the unsuspecting passersby. The sync dance performance lasted less than three minutes, but it elicited hundreds of laughs, smiles, and genuine reaction from people. Some people pulled out their mobile phones to capture the event as it unfolds, which was the whole point of the exercise, considering that T Mobile’s slogan reads “Life’s for Sharing.” As a mobile service provider, T Mobile wanted to show how extraordinary moments are documented and shared by people to their friends and loved ones.

Although T Mobile sales records are not made public to gauge the success of the flash mob, it raises an even more important issue with advertising being more than just selling a product. It is about an experience, a culture that you as a business owner would like to impart to your potential customers.

What do you think are the best unique marketing campaigns related to your respective industries? Are there any other campaign not mentioned on the post that has helped you generate profit and expand your clientele? Let us know by commenting below!