On The Ground Looking Up

The Homeland Tour Teaser Video

Here is a little teaser video we created for the 5 city Homeland tour we recently completed for Showtime. If you have not watched the show, you should (no, we are not being paid to say that :), it is an addicting show. Enjoy

World's Largest 3D Street Art For Reebok

This does not look cheap, but it looks pretty cool (even if I am a little tired of 3D street art). Regardless, the effect works and the idea of marrying it to death defying sport works for me. Enjoy the viral-ness.

Get Your Hands Dirty

I abolutely LOVE this sentiment and execution from artist Roland Tiangco.

This is only a slice of the full experience. See the whole sequence here.

The New Marketing Vehicle: Sperm!

Nordisk Cryobank in Copenhagen wanted to come up with an answer to 2 problems. 1. How to deliver the genetic material it works with in a timely manner and 2. How to generate attention and talk value for it's service helping solve fertility issues.

Enter the Sperm Bullitt! A mobile cycle (Copenhagen is a cycling city) that serves as advert and utility at the same time. While delivering to clinics all over town, who can resist paying attention to, snapping pictures of and generally chatting about the speedy semen trailing through the streets? 

I hope more take notice that your marketing choices can satifsy many purposes in aiding your solutions to business problems. While we may not all need a spermcycle, we can all take note of this idea pregnant with inspiration!

(yes, I need more coffee)

More info here. Thanks to Jimin Yoo for the find!

Be Brave Get Free Beer

No, not a promo for Sons of Anarchy (awesome show btw) but for Carlsberg beer. Are you brave enough to hang with this crowd as you and your date go to the movies? If so, you are rewarded with a cold beer!

 

Creative Guerrillas Take On White Supremacists

In one of the more brilliant guerrilla initiatives I have seen in a while, a group called Exit Deutschland sent a large batch of t-shirts to an right wing event on August 6th in Germany to be distributed to attendees. The shirts bore a skull and crossbones and the message 'Hardcore Rebels - National and Free.'  The rub is that after the first washing, the message changed to read 'If your T-shirt can do it, so can you. We'll help to free you from right-wing extremism.'

While we don't know how many minds it changed, it was a great awareness activation and I am sure it got under the skin of the target group they most want to effect.

It also reminds me of the protest clothing line targeting airport security's use of x-ray scanners from 4th Amendment Wear.  If you have not seen that, it was wonderful as well.

 

VIA and ThePentagon.

Had Not Seen This H. Potter Promo Vehicle Before

But it works so damn well. These should have hit the streets for the movie, or did they?

Anyone with some info, get in touch with me. Email / Twitter

Top 7 SharkWeek Marketing Stunts

As Tracy Jordan so eloquently put it, "Live every week like it's SharkWeek"

Well the 24th SharkWeek is upon us and in recognition of this special time of planktonian fear I bring you the top 7 SharkWeek Marketing Stunts ever created. 

 

7. Australia Coastal Watch - Lovely little map trickery for the Australian edition.(Thx Cor for the memories :)

6. Worlds Largest Aerial Billboard - At over 13,000 square feet we created this gem to buzz the people of Los Angeles, giving them quite the scare. It was the largest aerial billboard ever at point of creation, that may no longer be true. (Disclosure: we did this)

5. SharkFin Media - For 2 weeks this 30 foot Shark Fin floated the waterways of New York and The Hamptons (also an Interference project).

4. Shark Runners - area/code created this gem for the 20th anniversary. It was a hybrid online-offline game where you maneuvered your virtual boat through dangerous waters trying to find sharks. The catch, the movement of the sharks was real as actual sharks were tagged with GPS.

3. SharkBite Media - Done in NY and LA, we found anything we could get on Ebay and Craigslist and took a shark bite out of it. The pieces were then stenciled and left around for people to see, photograph and steal. Many ended up back on the sites we bought them from, this time at a higher price.

This idea was then copied borrowed for another promotion for SharkWeek Australia (see below)

 

2. Discovery's Offices Have Been SharkWeek'd - This huge and pressworthy inflatable showed up a few years ago (and has made a return visit here and there since) generating some serious excitement around SilverSpring, MD and it made many headlines as well. Interference did not do this one, but I wish I had :)

1. The 80ft Underwater Billboard - As mentioned too many times, one of the campaigns I am most proud of in my career.

Sam Ewen in Mashable

In case you did not see it, an article I wrote was posted in Mashable yesterday.

How Augmented Reality, Kinect Hacking and Projection Mapping Will Change Marketing.

Check it out if you want. I am also giving a presentation on the topic at the Creativity Creative & Technology conference, If they video it, I will post that as well.

10 Years After — 3. Random Acts of Kindness and Gratitude Marketing

In the late 90s, with my last company, Eisnor Interactive, we started to execute campaigns, mainly for Internet start-ups at the time, that involved the idea of using generosity as a marketing vehicle. Random act of kindness as the industry deemed it. I distinctly remember the conversations I had with the transportation authority of San Francisco on behalf of the newly launched Cars.com. I was asking to pay for everyone’s tolls for a day in each direction of the Golden Gate bridge on behalf of the newly launched entity. Of course they had no idea how to do it back then and basically told us that their system had no way of not charging people. We ended up hiring cars and having them go through the tolls and give cash to the toll-takers for the 10 cars in back of them. They did this time and time again. 500 yards down, brand ambassadors held large signs telling people who paid for their tolls and we got some good ink on it.

Since then I have done wallet drops with random amounts of currency in them, given thousands of free metro rides for mobile New York and Chicago residents, helped old ladies across the streets and assisted new moms with their bags. I have also handed out $50,000 in $2 bills, bought people drinks over the Internet at Carribean islands and distributed $100,000 to a variety of charities and nurses as a thank you for doing the work they do. All of this has been done on behalf of brands and we never received a negative comment or article when doing things for other people, even if we did it for a bit of corporate attention.

And while at one point it seemed that this tactic has jumped the shark, it now it seems that these were only the tip if the iceberg in the branded give back. The Groupon and daily deal craze could be seen as companies foregoing dollars in exchange for loyalty (whether it works in the long run is another story). Others brands are trying to reward people for watching and participating in their advertisements. Social endorsement for reward is commonplace and brands recognizing their fans on their own media channels is growing ever more popular. Additionally, brands supporting causes has gone from a reluctant must-do to an enthusiastic love-to-do tactic In the last few years.  It seems that we have successfully transitioned a portion of our media thinking from a purely brand centric attitude to one where gratitude marketing is not only accepted, but encouraged. And I for one, thank you all for doing so.