Sometimes what makes an alternative campaign work is to toy with consumer perceptions, challenging their notions of things in ways that engage them in the very messages you want to convey.
Which brings us to the subject of origami, the Japanese art form in which paper is folded to make various shapes, often of animals.
The catch, if you know your origami, is that's it's actually a Chinese art form, or more properly it began there and was later picked up by the Japanese.
And that was just the angle taken by HSBC for an alternative campaign in London two weeks ago to promote the bank’s sponsorship of the China Design Now exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
One weekday morning the bank's agency, JWT, scattered 5,000 origami pigeons across Leicester Square in London’s West End. A passerby picking up one of the paper pigeons and unfolding would have learned about the exhibit and also get a coupon for discounted entry.
Leicester Square was chosen because it gets a lot of foot traffic and it's a major haunt for pigeons. So there they were, 500 paper pigeons scattered among live pigeons.
Good idea, right?
Yes, but there were two problems the folks at JWT had not anticipated, and one was rain, which is never good thing when you want people's attention.
But also people seemed reluctant to reach down and pick up the pigeons, at least at first.
“Passersby were a little apprehensive about touching or engaging with the event at first,” says Joseph Petyan, who leads the HSBC team at JWT. “But people soon picked up and unfolded the pigeons to reveal the artwork.”
The China Design Now exhibit actually focuses more on paper cutting, another ancient Chinese art, but Petyan says the origami birds worked as the perfect attention-grabber.
“Origami is often misassociated with Japan, yet, like paper cutting, the art of paper folding began in China,” he says.
Petyan says both consumer and commuter newspapers picked up the event as a story, as did a local TV news station. He says the pigeons were going fast, but that any leftovers were to be handed out in London's Chinatown that night.
