Guerrilla Marketing for Obama: Vending Machine "Change"

It's been a long election season, so needless to say I'm excited to go cast my vote on Tuesday! Which leads me to a very important reminder: GO VOTE ON TUESDAY! We've seen in the past few elections that every vote really, truly counts, so please, regardless of who you're planning to vote for, just get out to the polls on November 4th. It's important, and we are so lucky to have the opportunity to choose our next leader during this difficult time in our nation's existence.

OK, off my soapbox and on to the fun stuff. While I won't get into the politics of either candidate, I will say that from a marketing perspective, Obama's campaign has been a breath of fresh air. Whether you love him or hate him, you must admit that Obama's marketing campaign has been brilliant.

Obama's logo and campaign materials, unlike so many political campaigns before them (and after them, I'm sure) are well designed, not only from a visual standpoint, but also from a branding standpoint. They're patriotic, but also clean and simple, touting "Change" and "Hope" more than the candidate's name, and making these words almost synonymous with "Obama."

To quote a great blog post from earlier this year,

...we are living through the first Presidential campaign that is being marketed like a high-end consumer brand...The typical Presidential campaign logo usually features some variant of the stars and stripes. Beyond patriotism, they have no message. They are pretty much interchangeable between Republicans and Democrats. Obama’s logo rearranges these patriotic elements into an emblem that distills his message to the core: the hope of the sun rising [or, Republicans, is it setting?] over amber waves of grain, with the novelty of the candidate’s unusual last name reinforced in an “O”...And like good corporate logos, this logomark can be disaggregated from the candidate’s name, in the same way that the swoosh instantly screams “Nike” or the circular logos of BMW and Mercedes spark instant associations with affluence and prestige.

There was the viral Yes We Can video:
Yes We Can Obama Song by Will.I.Am


Then there was that 30 minute "infomercial" this week across most major networks with absolutely no mention of his opponent. Not to mention a brilliant Internet campaign including Twitter, Facebook, and an email announcement to subscribers the moment Obama chose his vice presidential candidate. I could go on...

But the item that inspired me enough to actually blog about his campaign was the brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign I read about on Trend Hunter this morning, called "Press for Change." The Press for Change campaign encourages Obama supporters to transform the change buttons on vending machines into a political message for Obama, adding his "O" logo to the button with a "press for change" sticker above it. Genius! Here are some pictures:

































Now I'm not condoning vandalism here, nor am I suggesting that seeing the Obama message on a vending machine is going to sway a vote one way or the other, but again, regardless of politics, you must admit that this one is clever, and totally in-line with Obama's brand promise.

I hope that future politicians are taking (marketing) notes from Obama's campaign, and I look forward to seeing how future elections take Obama's strategies one step further as our marketing landscape continues to evolve.

Don't forget to vote on Tuesday. Promise?

Ruby Tuesday Demolition: A "Cheeky" Viral Marketing Stunt

I was intrigued when I saw the following Ruby Tuesday commercial on TV on Monday night, and made a mental note to myself to go check out their website at 3pm on Tuesday.



I should learn not to depend on mental notes, because I just now remembered (on Wednesday!) that I was supposed to go watch the live Ruby Tuesday demolition. I went to the Ruby Tuesday website to see if they'd posted the demolition there for those of us with memory problems, but it appears that this was a viral marketing stunt by Ruby Tuesday, and a disappointing one at that.

The premise was that the newly re-branded Ruby Tuesday, which recently adopted a new logo







and more upscale interior design for their restaurants (which is a big improvement, if you haven't been there lately...still not a huge fan of the food though!), was going to demolish their last "old" store live on the internet to symbolize how different they had now become from other casual dining restaurants. Here's a video of the result:



Apparently, the demolition crew "accidentally" blew up Cheeky's Bar & Grill next door instead due to its "sameness," but now, because of the "sweeping changes that have taken place within (the Ruby Tuesday) organization, it's extremely unlikely that a Ruby Tuesday restaurant will ever be confused for another casual dining establishment again." Hardy har har.

They have an apology letter up to Cheeky's Bar and Grill on the Ruby Tuesday website, but of course the whole stunt was just a gimmick. I appreciated the symbolic nature of what Ruby Tuesday was trying to do when I saw the commercial on Monday, but I'm very disappointed with the result, as are others and others to say the least.

Had they actually demolished their last restaurant instead of the fake Cheeky's Bar & Grill (for which they even created a website), I would have had a lot more respect for the marketing stunt, because it really did seem like an interesting idea. I was definitely intrigued after seeing that initial commercial for the Ruby Tuesday demolition, but now I'm just disappointed. To quote the Serious Eats blog, "Ruby Tuesday arguably botched what could have been a complicated, humorous campaign, and this whole debacle shows how talented and clever you need to be to successfully pull off viral marketing stunts." Amen.

Viral Marketing: Popcorn Cell Phones

Did you know that cell phones can make kernels of popcorn pop? Just think what they must be doing to your brain! Mass pandemonium ensues!



Wrong! It turns out the video was a marketing ploy by Cardo Systems, makers of a Bluetooth headset. It was officially debunked by physicists here, and Snopes here but everyone doesn't do the research before believing their email forwards. Hence the video has gone "viral," with millions of people spreading it around.

Viral marketing is defined as a marketing strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.

Marketers have been using the viral marketing medium quite successfully. Some famous viral marketing examples that you may have participated in yourself include Burger King's Subservient Chicken which allowed users to control a creepy chicken character to promote their BK Tendercrisp sandwich that you can get "just the way you like it" just like you can get the subservient chicken to do anything you want it to do.

Another of my favorite viral marketing examples is the Dove Evolution campaign, which has won multiple awards, and goes beyond the "silly" factor to present a very valid and important message to women around the world. I received it quite a few times in email forwards myself, did you?



Goofy, meaningful or just plain weird, viral marketing is certainly a new medium that many big companies are using quite successfully.