Thanks to the democratic broadcasting capabilities of YouTube, the Internet has been a boon for event and stunt marketing. Brand-sponsored promotions with a handful of live viewers -- from dancing flash mobs in London's tube stations to a human stampede chasing a wheel of cheese down Whistler mountain -- can now potentially be seen by millions of people around the world.
That trend will get even bigger this year as an increasing number of brands fuse reality television with event marketing, chronicling the results in pieces of branded entertainment that can be seen in traditional and digital channels. More...
The medium's popularity with viewers is also raising the ante on the quality of the stunts and the relative clout of the brands behind them.
Tropicana Canada, the PepsiCoowned juice brand, embarked on its own piece of reality advertising-meets-adventure-travel last weekend when it shone a spotlight, quite literally, on Inuvik, N.W.T., which spends 30 days each winter in 24-hour darkness.
To coincide with Inuvik's annual Sunrise Festival, a local celebration of the sun's return after the dark weeks, ad agency BBDO Canada and Tropicana marketers enlisted a documentary crew to chronicle their efforts to bring a giant light-emitting balloon to the town on Jan. 9, to create a "raising of the sun."
"Tropicana has been in Canada for almost 20 years now, and it has always been known as a little bit of sunshine for Canadians, given that oranges don't grow here," explains Dale Hooper, vice-president of marketing at PepsiCo Beverages Canada.
"The whole idea was how do we bring brighter mornings to Canadians, and kick it off in a way where it is more than just a TV ad. It is about going out and doing more expedition marketing."
The 35-foot-wide helium-filled orb emitted 100,000 lumens, roughly the light output of the bright sun on a clear day, which lit up a radius of about four kilometres.
Tropicana also gave every household in the town (1,200) a carton of Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice, which retails for about $12-$13 in Inuvik. In addition to filming 30-and 60-second TV spots, BBDO also filmed a documentary short to run on a Facebook page and Tropicana.ca.The sites will also feature blogged commentary as the "brighter mornings" campaign visits locations across the country in a partnership with Breakfast Television.
Expedition marketing has been fuelled by the popularity of British adventurer Bear Grylls, star of the Man vs. Wild television show, and programming featuring ordinary folks who journey to far-flung locations on shows like Survivor and the Amazing Race. Last week, the highly publicized Summit on the Summit expedition sponsored by Hewlett-Packard began, complete with celebrity climbers Jessica Biel and Into the Wild star Emile Hirsch, a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness of the global clean-water crisis. "With its constant, boots-on-the-ground updating, this might be the most socially mediated climb ever attempted," noted a recent comment in the LA Times on HP's marketing effort. "As such, it's brilliant positioning for HP and Windows, which are waging a war of cultural attrition against the presumably hipper, younger, more social Mac."
Beyond a basic stunt, which can generate plenty of viral video attention, it fuels consumers' increasing appetites for seeing remote places and unfamiliar situations.
"I think that offers more of an opportunity to get connected with people, and others who might not even [be involved with] the Tropicana brand, but just love the north and would be interested," Mr. Hooper said.
And in an age where consumers are more brand savvy than ever before and freely air their opinions about brands in online forums, advertising that features "real" people, rather than actors, is regarded as an increasingly valuable, more genuine form of commercial communication.
"It is sort of the reality TV version of advertising," says Ian MacKellar, executive creative director at BBDO Toronto, which enlisted a documentary filmmaker to chronicle the event rather than a standard TV commercial director. "It's way more powerful -- the community [in Inuvik] got involved. And because it's authentic, because it's real, I guarantee you you'll have a more emotional response to it. When people see the ad or hear about what we did, the fact that it was real and really happened I think it will resonate more with consumers and with Canadians in general."
Miles Nadal, chief executive of Toronto-based advertising conglomerate MDC Partners Inc., which owns stakes in shops from Zig to Crispin Porter Bogusky, has cited the rise of "reality advertising" as one of the most important trends of this era.
"More and more brands are looking at experiential and reality advertising as a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors," he said, adding it is an asset in an era of ongoing media fragmentation.
Digital media, with their multiple points of distribution and broader potential to earn media exposure through social media, "allow marketers to amplify a message, program or idea at a much lower cost, and with an opportunity to increase return on marketing investment," he said.
hshaw@nationalpost.com
