As a marketer, you’re well aware that creating memorable content designed to set you apart from your competitors is a major challenge.. And, things have gotten only more complicated with viral content. After all, how do you expect to compete with dancing babies or a dog doing back-flips when its owner comes home?
That’s why you should consider getting a little out there with your content .
By “out there” I mean creating content that is on the funny, quirky, and weird side that can help your brand not only create a competitive advantage, but also assist you in reaching those marketing goals.
To give you a little inspiration, here are 13 brands that have successfully created content that’s “out there”.
1. Pizza Hut: ‘Eau de Pizza Hut’
I’m a huge pizza fan. It’s one of my favorite foods. However, I don’t know if I would want to walk around smelling like a delicious pie all day. Pizza Hut Canada didn’t share this thought, apparently. The chain released a fragrance that smelled like a Pizza Hut pizza fresh out of the oven.
The fragrance actually began as a joke when Pizza Hut Canada asked pizza-lovers on Facebook“Do you love the smell of a box of Pizza Hut pizza being opened? We thought so. If that smell was a perfume, what would it be called?” The social engagement strategy, which was created by creative and digital agency Grip Limited, quickly resulted in more than 280 comments and 180 likes .
The winning entry, Eau de Pizza Hut, became a reality after the positive response from fans and was sent to 110 fans to celebrate Pizza Hut reaching 100,000 Facebook fans. According to Grip’s director of business, Eric Vieira, Pizza Hut’s unique social media campaigns and communication with fans lead to a 548% engagement rate increase over the past five months in 2012.
The idea was so successful that the fragrance was brought to fans in the United States for Valentine’s Day 2013. Fans who tweeted at @PizzaHut using the hashtag #LastMinuteLovers could receive a bottle of Eau de Pizza Hut along with a $20 Pizza Hut gift card.
2. Old Spice: ‘Momsong’
Old Spice is no stranger to releasing off-the-wall content – and that’s why I’m fascinated with its marketing campaigns. The brand has been creating humorous advertisements for years starting with the viral ad campaigns starring”the man your man could smell like”.
Old Spice continued it’s winning strategy when it unveiled “Momsong” in 2014. The video was produced Portland advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy and featured upset moms creepily following their teenage sons as they become men. The video rapidly generated 1.2 million views on YouTube and Facebook .
While Old Spice had tremendous success with the campaigns starring Isaiah Mustafa, the move to feature the viewpoint of mothers was due to targeting. Since the market for its Re-fresh Body Spray is for males between the ages of 12-24 and their moms who may make purchasing decisions for them, Old Spice wanted to “entertain both of them.”
“Momsong” continued the winning Old Spice marketing strategy that focuses on short videos, spreading lots of content out across multiple channels, and keeping fans engaged by allowing them to be a part of the fun.
3. Humane Society Silicon Valley: ‘Eddie The Terrible’
Sometimes on a lazy weekend afternoon I want to veg out and enjoy something light-hearted on Comedy Central. Without fail Sarah McLachlan appears on the screen and makes me feel like a horrible human being because I’m not donating to the ASPCA – despite being a proud dog owner. Thankfully, the Humane Society in Silicon Valley went a different route and a little fun with “Eddie the Terrible”.
Instead of sugar coating the problems with the two-year chihuahua and changing the misconception that shelters are depressing, the Humane Society created a humorous and honest listing entitled A Full Disclosure Blog: Three Reasons You DON’T Want To Adopt Eddie The Terrible . The wacky ad was picked by local and national publications that praised the shelter for being truthful and creative. And, most importantly, Eddie was adopted by a retired couple who spotted the listing being discussed on a local news station.
4. PooPourri: ‘Girls Don’t Poop’
How can you market a product about a taboo topic like going to the bathroom? You own it and have some fun. That’s exactly what the makers of PooPourri, an actual product, accomplished with its 2013 viral video ‘Girls Don’t Poop.’ The before you go spray which contains natural oil blends was a success because it went directly after its target audience (women) and didn’t beat around the bush. By doing so, it made the conversion about going to the bathroom a little less awkward and helped its customers resolve a problem that we all face.
Not only has the video been viewed more than 33 million times on YouTube , the brand also shares similar lighthearted content on its social media channels. The company even asks fans to share selfies on channels like Instagram which has resulted in more than 9,000 photos with the tag #poopouri.
5. Milka Chocolate
When Swiss chocolate company Milka launched in France, they turned to Paris-based agency Buzzman to devise a unique way to introduce their product to the French people. The chocolatiers ended up removing a small square from 13 million of their classic milk chocolate bars, and giving consumers a choice: Do you want the “last square” sent back to you, or do you want to send it to a loved one?
Consumers who received a Milka bar with a missing square were given a code they could enter online, where they could either send a small piece of chocolate — along with a personalized message — to a friend or family member, or enter their own address to have the missing piece returned to them.
6. Cub Cadet PRO Z Riding Lawnmower
Who says the physical press release is completely dead? To promote industrial brand Cub Cadet’s newest riding lawnmower, agency Colle+McVoy came up with a steel alternative to the classic 8.5-by-11 inch paper document.
The press release — which weighed in at a hefty 14 pounds, 13 ounces — was made entirely of Cub Cadet’s signature Triple 7-gauge steel, the same material used in their rugged lawnmowers. Outfitted with bolts and shipped to media outlets in a custom crate, the press release also came with a free crowbar (because why not?).
7. The Art Institute of Chicago and Airbnb
Have you even dreamed of walking into one of your favorite paintings? How about staying the night? In this creative campaign to generate publicity for the Art Institute of Chicago’s Van Gogh exhibit in 2016, agency Leo Burnett partnered with Airbnb to create a unique, immersive experience for art lovers.
The agency worked with designers and museum curators to meticulously transform a simple studio apartment in Chicago into one of the Dutch artist’s most recognizable paintings, Bedroom in Arles.
As part of the campaign, posters advertising a room to rent and resembling vintage newspaper classified ads were plastered around Chicago, inviting passersby to text “Van Gogh” — aka, Leo Burnett’s clever social media team, who fielded all messages in character. A few lucky early respondents were able to rent the room via Airbnb for only $10 a night.
The campaign was a massive success for the Art Institute, leading to the museum’s largest daily exhibition attendance in 15 years, and earning them national media attention.
8. Tiger Beer’s Air-Ink
Tiger Beer — an American-owned company that operates out of Singapore — wanted to find a way to turn air pollution into something useful and positive. Enter the talented team at Graviky Labs, who devised a scientific process to capture pollution and transform it into Air-Ink — a fluid black paint. The brand then worked with Australian agency Marcel Sydney to put the ink in the hands of influential street artists and film the results.
It turns out just 40-50 minutes of diesel car pollution can produce a rich shade of black ink, and artists were more than willing to incorporate the paint into their work for the project.
9. Adobe Stock Apparel
If you’re a marketer, you’ve experienced the pain of sorting through seemingly endless pages of bad stock photos in search of one that just isn’t too awful. To promote their new stock photo service Adobe Stock, Adobe partnered with Swedish agency Abby Priest to develop a tongue-in-cheek fashion line that features outdated, overused stock photos.
“Some stock images have earned their place in the history books,” said Abby Priest’s Creative Director, Oskar Hellqvist, in a Q&A on Adobe’s blog. “Classic motifs that have been overused and established as hilarious clichés, known, loved and/or hated by all … Turning them into a limited edition clothing line is our way to salute them and an attempt to create something disruptive and unconventional in the genre.”
10. UberPOOL
As part of a major advertising push in Latin America, Uber’s in-house marketing team launched a guerrilla campaign in Mexico City, sending out a small army of drones equipped with cheeky signs promoting UberPOOL. Drivers were confronted with the small aircrafts and their mini-billboards while waiting in stagnant rush hour traffic.
Although they don’t plan to replicate the stunt in other markets (since doing something similar in the U.S. or Europe would require some major bureaucratic hoop-jumping), the stunt gained significant earned media attention for the car service app.
11. KMFA-FM Austin
How do you get millennials interested in a classical radio station? This Twitter-powered metronome is a good start. Developed by agency Archer Malmo for Austin’s classical music station KMFA-FM, this metronome ticks at a tempo determined by the number of Tweets sent in the Texan city.
“We want people to give KMFA a try — it’s not a stereotypical, stodgy classical music station,” Archer Malmo executive creative director Matt Rand told AdWeek. “That audience happens to be younger and use Twitter more, so basing our ‘heartbeat of the city’ off Twitter volume is a fitting way to connect with them.”
12. Laphroaig
Most ads run for 30 seconds. This spot from Laphroaig Whiskey clocks in at three and a half hours — and it was all filmed in a single take.
U.K. agency Multiply was behind the video, which features comedian Andy Daly reading real reviews of Laphroaig in a filibuster-style speech. Ranging from glowing to downright disgusted, the strongly worded and ultimately mixed reviews are intended to highlight the polarizing nature of Laphroaig — you either love it, or you hate it. But the brand wants to hear about it.
13. Lipton Green Tea
To encourage consumers to make healthier choices while shopping for groceries, Lipton Green Tea partnered with agency Wunderman MENA to create a shopping cart that tracks your steps, calories burned, and time spent moving at the grocery store.
Aimed at people too busy for regular exercise, the cart is intended to show consumers how many calories they can burn just by walking around at the grocery store. The hope is that they’ll also think twice about what they put in their shopping cart if they can see the calories they’re burning in real time.
Conclusion
Creating weird, quirky, and humorous content can be a major assist for your brand if you’re looking to achieve goals like spreading brand awareness, educating your customers, improving lead generation, and increasing customer engagement. However, you should definitely keep the following pointers in mind before embarking on a wacky campaign.
- The humor matches your brand or personality. I wouldn’t think that Showtime would create humorous content to promote the upcoming season of Homeland . That certainly wouldn’t be a good match. However, Michael Dubin, the CEO of Dollar Shave Club, studied at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater, so it was natural for him to create an ad that was comical.
- The humor matches with your audience.
Even if your brand is on the quirky side, you still have to create humor that matches your audience. Old Spice’s audience is mostly male, which is why the odd ‘Momsong’ appealed to that audience, as well as their mothers. It wouldn’t work if the song was about fathers and daughters.
- It’s culturally relevant. British humor and American humor isn’t the same. Humor from other countries might actually be offensive elsewhere. Make sure you pay attention to what type of humor will work for your target audience.
- Match the platform. Consider what format of content works best on certain platforms and consider what section of your audiences is best reached by a specific platform. For example, content directed to Millenials might be best served on Snapchat versus Facebook.
