Finding Red: Find out how this famous brand wowed its fans with a candy-coated treasure hunt!

From the desk of Miles Everson:

Hi!

Guerrilla marketing holds a special place in my heart because it’s all about capturing the attention of an audience in a unique and engaging way.

Today, I’m thrilled to share another example of a guerrilla marketing campaign that successfully captured the attention of its target audience.

Are you ready?

Continue reading to know how this brand took its audience into a treasure hunt that harnessed both physical and digital spaces!

Finding Red: Find out how this famous brand wowed its fans with a candy-coated treasure hunt!

In 2010, there were rumblings that the  Google Street View  (a tech featured in  Google  Maps and Earth) camera car was going to make a visit in Toronto, Canada.

Such an occurrence wasn’t something out of the ordinary since it was part of Google’s standard practice to map out various locations on earth.

Knowing this,  M&M Canada  crafted a guerrilla marketing campaign that took its fans on a treasure hunt!

Here’s how the campaign played out…

A Digital Treasure Hunt

The initial idea for the campaign came to life when it was announced that Google Street View’s car was going to visit Toronto to shoot Street View footage.

Upon finding this out, M&M Canada and its partner, ad agency  Proximity Canada, immediately went to work to take advantage of this rare advertising opportunity.

Their strategy?

A virtual treasure hunt that fans would embark on through Google Maps!

According to Rene Rouleau, former creative director at Proximity Canada and one of the creatives who worked on the campaign, pulling off the idea was difficult because Google did not publicize where its car was going to visit.

This essentially made it difficult for Proximity Canada’s team to find out where to position themselves so that M&M and its brand could be captured by the camera.

Even Rouleau himself took a chance, when he attempted to get captured in Google Street View’s car by wearing a giant M&M while roaming around the streets of Toronto in the sweltering heat of the summer.

The ad agency then decided to covertly place M&M icons made of red cardboard in front of the windows of houses located in Toronto.

Proximity Canada’s team pulled this off by asking 30 employees to put up these cardboards in their homes.

Out of these 30 homes, four M&M icons managed to appear on Google Maps, with three of those being included in the virtual treasure hunt contest that was cooked up for fans.

Over the course of a month, Proximity Canada and M&M fed fans with hints on social media websites like  Facebook, and  Twitter  (Now known as  X) that pointed them towards the houses that contained a red M&M in Google Maps’ street view function.

Additionally, the ad agency also put up hints linked to QR codes on street posters and put UPC codes on packages that can be scanned, increasing visibility and interaction.

A special website and  YouTube   video  were even put up as part of the campaign, with the latter providing hints to fans as to where to locate the red M&M icon in Google Maps.

So, after all this effort, was the campaign a success?

The answer is YES!

Social media users who interacted with the campaign spent more than 19 minutes on average. Also, the initiative racked up 8.4 million media impressions.

The QR codes received over 7 million views and the campaign received 225,000 mentions on Twitter.

These results enabled M&M to establish a strong social media presence in Canada.

What’s more?

Aside from those achievements, the campaign won an accolade in the 2011  D&AD Awards.

Kudos to M&M and Proximity Canada for a job well done!

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By putting a creative spin on its promotion for its brand, M&M was able to generate buzz for itself in front of an audience that already knew about it in the first place.

Leveraging both digital and physical spaces enabled M&M to expand its reach in a memorable and meaningful way.

So, when you plan or look for inspiration for your next guerrilla marketing campaign, try to keep M&M’s out-of-the-box campaign in mind!

You never know, a dash of creativity just might be what you need to succeed!

Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful.

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Stay tuned for next Thursday’s Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing!

Do you want to know  how one cookie brand created a barcode that you can TWIST, LICK, and DUNK?

See it in next week’s article!