Unconventional and imaginative ideas pay off in almost every business field. While there are limitless examples of eccentric marketing in the real world, the turf of online marketing is not that exciting. However, this is changing as small as well as big brands have realized how they can catch the imagination of web users by thinking outside of the box and planning their social presence smartly.
Here are some unconventional online marketing campaigns run by brands in different fields of business.
Snickers AdWords Campaign
Snickers is an exciting brand that clearly knows how to keep the buzz alive. Last month, the candy bar brand took the game to another level with its Ad Words campaign based on misspelled keywords. The hilarious ad copy based on the same concept helped the brand connect with their audience in a humorous way.
On clicking the banner ad, web users are taken to specially branded website built solely around a hunger-typo message. The campaign didn't directly sell the candy bars but phenomenally increased the mind recall for the Snickers brand.
The proof of "You Are Not You When You're Hungry" Ad campaign's success is 558,589 impressions on chosen misspellings in just two days.
http://www.yourenotyouwhenyourehungry.com/
Facebook - Burrito Combo
Every brand aiming for web dominance is active on social media in one way or the other but not all of them are successful at it. Engaging social followers and deriving real business benefit from them is difficult but some brands manage it well.
Boojum is a burrito brand in Ireland with one branch each in Belfast and Dublin. The popular joint grew its Facebook likes from 398 to 2982 in just one week by starting an online campaign named Burrito Revolution. It was based on the idea of letting fans from both cities compete against each other for LIKES to get a free burrito day for the whole city.
An app was set to record, visualize and encourage shares and likes, recording 4919 page views in a single day.
http://mammoth.tv/work/Marketing_a_Revolucin_Online
7Up Augmented Reality
Technology has made its presence felt in every part of the world. The PepsiCo augmented reality campaign in India some years ago for its product 7Up is a good proof of the same.
The campaign used real and virtual elements to create an experience worth remembering for its young dance fans. The 7Up pet bottles carried the coded image that served as a virtual link that gave access to the videos of dancing sensation, Allu Arjun available on the 7Up website.
The main campaign objective was to connect with the youth of the region. Dancing was a craze amongst youngsters and Allu was an icon at that time. 7Up built on both these elements to leave a lasting impression.
This shows how paying attention to what your target audience likes can multiply chances of success in your online marketing efforts.
GE Social Media Presence
Infrastructure and heavy machinery companies are usually stereotyped as serious and boring with no real interest in online marketing and engagement.
General Electric, however, throws such thoughts in the bin with its Pinterest, Facebook and Tumblr presence.
The conglomerate active in Energy, Technology Infrastructure, Capital Finance, and Consumer & Industrial segments takes a very creative and planned approach to engage web audience. Very few brands can match GE in content curation, organization and making airplane engines look beautiful.
If you are interested in the funny side of GE, then, Hey Girl series on Pinterest is a must-glance.
http://generalelectric.tumblr.com/
http://pinterest.com/generalelectric/
Civil Rights Captcha
While advertisements are certainly the most annoying things on web, captcha (short for 'Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart') is a strong contender for the second spot.
Google derives its share of benefit from captcha by linking the concept with content digitization but Civil Rights Defenders, an NGO dedicated to human rights, gave a humane twist to the spam control concept. In addition to achieving the goal of spam control, it helped in making web community more sensitive about glaring human rights issues around the world.
In the form of captcha, a promising advertising medium has also evolved that helps online marketers to communicate without irking their audience.
Dr Pepper uses the captcha concept beautifully.
Nissan Gameloft Partnership
Nissan is known to look beyond accepted marketing wisdom when it comes to launching its new products. For its new high performance sport cross, Juke Nismo, it partnered with Gameloft - a renowned mobile gaming company - to create a virtual test drive experience with the mobile game "Asphalt 7: Heat".
The game integrates with Facebook, creating new tracking and brand possibilities for Nissan.
2 millions downloads, brand introduction to a unique demographic, and various other analytics findings suggest that Nissan successfully created the hype around its new introduction.
Effective Email Marketing
Email marketing is not everyone's cup of tea but some brands derive serious business benefits from such programs. ThePetangoStore.com is a pet healthcare brand that leverages business mileage by regularly connecting with 3 million people through emails. The brand also runs contests to acquire new customers through referrals.
No one likes boring emails that try to sell something you have no interest in. Thus, it is important to have strong factual proofs that your email recipients fancy what you are pitching. PetangoStore gives serious thought to it and perhaps that is why it is good, or should we say fabulous, with email campaigns.
http://pethealthpost.wordpress.com/
Conclusion
Online marketing is less about following established wisdom and more about finding ways to engage target audience.
While the list has more examples of established brands making it big on web, small and medium businesses can also gain business mileage with right marketing assistance and social media efforts.
In case you know any example of unconventional marketing campaign, please share in the comments section.