Squirt and sniff:
One way to sell a perfume
Alt media campaign hangs squirt guns all over town
By Toni Fitzgerald
Aug 31, 2010
It's not very often that you're allowed, nay encouraged, to point a gun at someone in a public place.
But that was the idea behind a recent alternative media campaign in Israel that used thousands of squirt guns to deliver a messy message.
The water guns themselves were impossible to miss. Brightly colored, with two yellow attachments that held the water supply, they were planted in public places in towns across the country.
The guns were tied by the dozens to park fences and hung from trees. They could even be found tied to the brakes of bicycles.
Each gun had attached to it a short note to which had been applied a sample of the perfume. The perfume, of course, had dried, but the card claimed the perfume could be revived simply by sprinkling a drop of water where the fragrance had been applied.
Which answers the question: Why the water guns? To test out the claim.
"Our mission was to create an unexpected campaign that would motivate consumers to experience the advantage of reactivation technology that will allow the wearer to revive the scent with a single drop of water," says a brief provided by Shelly's Card, the Israeli agency that executed the campaign for Replay perfume.
The agency bought tens of thousands of water guns and filled them with 10,000 liters of imported mineral water.
"We can't waste water in Israel," notes the brief.
The water guns and cards were then distributed in mid-February by street teams in cities across the country, including major ones like Tel Aviv, where passersby quickly noticed the guns and picked them up.
Not everyone shot them, but a lot of children got a kick out of playing with them.
The cards attached to the guns also included an invitation to receive a daily text message reminder to refresh the perfume fragrance.
Shelly's Card estimates that 200,000 people saw the water guns during the campaign, and the result was a boost in sales for the perfume.
The stunt succeeded because it was funny and lighthearted, which generally produces better results than pushy, obnoxious alternative media campaigns. And it made a clear connection between the water guns and the product.
Plus, local media loved that Shelly's Card used foreign mineral water rather than domestic, the agency says, leading to more coverage of the stunt.
|
|
|
