"The Asian Art Museum today announced that its 'lost' Chinese terracotta warrior, reported missing and wandering the Bay Area, has been found."

Thus concluded one of the more memorable, unconventional recent attempts by a museum to promote an exhibition. The "lost" warrior—an exquisitely made-up and costumed actor—is meant to draw attention to San Francisco's recently rebranded Asian Art Museum show of antiquities from China's famous Xian Terracotta Army (Feb. 22–May 27).

We spoke with the museum about the ins and outs of the unique campaign and how they introduced the idea to their Chinese partners. Continue reading...

You've heard of guerrilla marketing — how about gorilla marketing? The Rolling Stones have a greatest hits album that's being released on Nov. 12 called GRRR!, featuring a gorilla on the cover with the band's iconic "big lips logo" superimposed on its face. So don’t be alarmed when you see large images of the cheeky gorilla popping up around the world to promote the album.

The gorillas are taking over 50 cities and 3,000+ locations around the globe, being tagged on such landmarks as Sydney's Opera House, New York’s Empire State Building and London’s Elizabeth Tower (that’s Big Ben to all of you who missed the renaming for Her Majesty). They can be seen in 3D augmented reality via mobile devices that have downloaded UView's app, so fans can "watch the stunning GRRR! artwork fully realized in 3D animation right before their eyes .... some exciting content and have the chance to enter an exclusive competition plus pre-order a copy of GRRR!"

As part of the marketing stunt that's billed as the "biggest global Augmented Reality music campaign" to date, the Stones are encouraging fans to take pics of the gorillas and tweet them with the #GRRR! hashtag to the Stones’ Twitter feed, @RollingStones. The photos will also show up on an interactive wall on the Rolling Stones website.

That #GRRR hashtag is more commonly used on Twitter, by the way, to express frustration — which is what real gorilla lovers are feeling.Continue reading...

Coca-Cola’s "Open Happiness" global marketing campaign kicked off in January 2009, when Cee Lo Green and Janelle Monae appeared in a music video that exclusively debuted on FOX's American Idol.

A year later, the "Open Happiness" theme took a tangible, and unforgettable form — a vending machine that appeared in the common room of St. John’s University in New York. It was rigged to dispense flowers, pizza and a six-foot sub resulting in a viral swish of happiness, generating more than 1 million views in the first week and still attracting comments 2 million views later.

The campus Coke machine stunt migrated to London, and morphed into a Hug Machine at the National University of Singapore in a gestural marketing stunt where a squeeze yielded a soda. Since then the Coca-Cola Happiness machine has popped up in local activations around the world, in markets including India, Buenos Aires, Indonesia, Tokyo, Istanbul for a special Valentine's Day stunt, and back to Singapore, this time promoting recycling in June.Continue reading...

To no one's surprise, the New York City Board of Health approved on Thursday a ban on the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, street cars and movie theaters. It was the first restriction of its kind and scale in the country.

It also surprised no one that Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the spiritual father and political force behind the ban, quickly hailed the enactment of his brainchild. "NYC's sugary drink policy is the single biggest step any gov't has taken to curb obesity," he stated. "It will help save lives." The Mayor's Office also released statements of support, along with the news that the new Barclays Center will comply.

The measure will take effect in six months unless the American soft-drink industry manages to get some judge to overturn it. Of course, there's always the possibility that popular sentiment could turn heavily against the ban and result in political pressure that would cause its reversal. But no one is betting on that.

"This is not the end," Eliot Hoff, a spokesman for New Yorkers for Beverage Choices, an industry-financed group opposed to the ban, commented in a statement to the New York Times. "We are exploring legal options, and all other avenues available to us." The coalition's chairwoman, Liz Berman, also released a video statement reiterating that stance.Continue reading...

In the 1920s and early ‘30s of New York, as Prohibition ruled the land, folks didn’t have to go without a drink. There were speakeasies aplenty back on those days that would be happy to quench your thirst as long as you didn’t mind needing to remember the password, being ready to dump your liquor at the drop of a hat, and having a few extra bucks to help pay off any police that happened by the place.

The folks at Mountain Dew seem to think that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is about to return the Big Apple to those long-gone days if his suggested bill — which could be passed today — winds up restricting consumers from buying sodas that are bigger than 16 ounces goes through. Some call it a gamble; Bloomberg says he’s looking out for the long-term health of his city’s dwellers and visitors.

The whole thing has got Mountain Dew execs and indeed the entire beverage industry agitated — and not because of the caffeine in their beverages, either. The PepsiCo-owned soda brand has teamed up with "cultural production" studio New York Art Department to plaster ads around New York City that say “Prohibition” and feature a 17 ounce, vintage can of Mountain Dew (long before it was abbreviated to Mtn. Dew). To drive the message home, a smaller message quips: “Also available in legal sizes!” 

On a more serious note, New Yorkers for Beverage Choices, an industry coalition backed by the American Beverage Association, says more than 250,000 New Yorkers have signed a petition. While small business and industry lobbying has failed to sway New York City’s Board of Health, which appears poised to pass the ban on Big Soda (update: it passed), you can be sure Bloomberg's public health watchdog is unhappy with another move Mountain Dew has made as well.Continue reading...

Long before the London Games kicked off in July, the International Olympic Committee made it very clear to big businesses and small that you don’t want to mess with them, that they would come after anybody who used the Olympic name or image or implied an affiliation with the Olympics.

The IOC- and LOCOG-empowered ambush marketing squad of branding police got busy, so a small café once called Olympic suddenly became the Lympic and a British florist and shopkeepers were made to take down the bras and window displays set up to look like the sainted Olympic rings.

Areas were designated around all Olympic sporting venues where only official sponsors of the Games, all of which had rolled out barrels of dough, were allowed to show off their logos.

Leave it to Nike, the supposed founder of guerrilla marketing, to break through, though, with not only a rules-testing "Find Your Greatness" TV campaign that featured everyday athletes going for the gusto in other Londons around the world as well as track shoes that were worn by a number of gold medalists and given a bright greenish-yellow chartreuse hue that “the human eye is most sensitive” to, according to NBC News.Continue reading...

Toyota and its agency Saatchi & Saatchi are being sued for $10 million for a guerilla marketing campaign run amok. 

The campaign, launched in 2008 to promote sales of the automaker's 2011 Matrix model, was dubbed "Your Other You” — a name that tipped off that doppelgangers might be heading consumers' way. Little did consumers know was based on ‘virtual lunatics’ harassing unsuspecting real people.

With a tagline of "Get in touch with your dark side. YourOtherYou.com", the concept ran as follows: "YourOtherYou is a unique interactive experience enabling consumers to play extravagant pranks. Simply input a little info about a friend (phone, address, etc.) and we’ll then use it, without their knowledge, to freak them out through a series of dynamically personalized phone calls, texts, emails and videos."

That Toyota and its agency didn't suspect that "freaking people out" might be construed as "terrifying unwitting victims" will be discussed in marketing and advertising classes for years to come.Continue reading...

Continuing the trend of brands taking over Times Square, FIAT North America brought its first TV commercial, "Drive-in," to life with an event that evoked Italia for Big Apple tourists and shoppers this past weekend, not letting Sunday's rain spoil the fun.

The lure of free espresso and gelato, bocce ball, music and a drive-in movie experience — thirty Fiat 500 sedans and cabrios arranged,  drive-in style, to watch movies on the Times Square jumbotron as dusk fell — wooed passersby to check out the "Simply More by Fiat" experience, where they could chat with Fiat product specialists (including Fiat North America head Laura Soave) and check out the 2012 Fiat 500 and Fiat 500 Cabrio.Continue reading...