Creating buzz underground
It seems that this is your first time to my blog. Welcome! In this blog I will share my ideas on how you can make a living in a way that feels good to you, your family, your environment and everyone around you. If you want to know more about me and this blog, check out my about page. And if you want to stay updated on my new posts, subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by!
Yesterday on my way home I was surprised to see that the metro (subway, tube, whatever you want to call it) had a completely different look than before. Instead of the regular bright red it was all gray and stained. To see the difference you can compare the photo above with the one below:
In the spirit of the Insanely Interesting September I rushed to see as much of this special metro cart as possible. I guess the other passengers must have thought I was a bit crazy when I pulled out my mobile phone and started shooting pictures.
It turns out that this was a rather clever marketing campaign by the biggest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat. They are organizing a giveaway in which you can win a trip to New York. To support the giveaway they painted the metro carts to make them look like the New York subway.
I’ve never been to New York, but based on some pictures I found on the Internet they got pretty close.
Inside the cart there were 27 different questions related to metro traffic in different countries (For example: “Question #26: Where was the first metro station in Helsinki located?”). By sending an SMS with the number of the question to the number given you receive the answer as an SMS and are added to the giveaway.
Naturally the returned SMS also contains an offer for subscribing to Helsingin Sanomat.
As you see, this stuff works: Helsingin Sanomat got me to take action.
I became curious wanting to know why the metro looked different than usual.
I took some pictures, showed them to my wife, some of my colleagues at work.
And today I even wrote about the campaign in my blog.
That’s the lesson to be learned: If you do something out of the ordinary, people will notice. If you want to create buzz you need to give people something to talk about.
But where the campaign failed (at least in my case) is that while I was interested enough to send an SMS, at no point was I thinking about subscribing to the newspaper. Maybe the campaign - while interesting - wasn’t tied to the product it was marketing well enough, or maybe it’s just that I really don’t need a newspaper subscription.
What do you think? Does a campaign like this make sense?
Also, if you have seen some interesting and buzz-worthy marketing lately, it would be great to hear about it! Comment on this post or send your insanely interesting images to me via e-mail (good ones will appear on this blog).
This month we’re celebrating Insanely Interesting September. Check out the announcement and participate in the group writing project: What do you find interesting today? What makes this September the most interesting so far? Why are you insanely interested in something? Share your thoughts and see what others have written.
If you enjoyed this post and don't want to miss any of my new content, subscribe to my RSS feed or have the latest posts delivered straight to your e-mail inbox.
September 8th, 2007 at 2:10 am
You know that’s a pretty interesting way to advertise for a Newspaper… I wouldn’t think a news agency would do something like that. What it will do is achieve brand awareness, although you did not take direct action to sign up for the paper… you did express interest in their product. You interacted with the company (by sending the SMS) and you told others. So although it didn’t have an immediate impact on you it might in the future. The next time you are at a news stand you might see a Helsingin Sanomat and decide to pick it up.
September 8th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Good point!
Helsingin Sanomat has been pretty innovative and aggressive in their advertisement lately. Usually when you see something interesting happening here in Helsinki, they are somehow behind it ;)
I wonder if it’s because they are worried that people will give up newspapers and get their news from the web…
But yeah, you’re right: they got me involved, and while I didn’t subscribe yet, their image in my mind became still more positive than before.