Get inspired with this FAST campaign and make your guerrilla marketing stunts "twice as effective" too!

Thursday: Gorillas of Guerilla Marketing FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: Guerrilla Marketing is amazing! As a business leader, I’ve seen how this marketing strategy contributes to the achievement of a brand’s goals. According to Jay Conrad Levinson, the Father of Guerrilla Marketing, this technique looks beyond the traditional ways of advertising a product or service. Campaigns of this type are engaging, easy to execute, and sometimes, inexpensive. Allow us to share with you an example of a creative guerrilla marketing strategy. Continue reading to know how one brand of pain reliever raised awareness about its new product and interacted with commuters and employees in London in 2008. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

Get inspired with this FAST campaign and make your guerrilla marketing stunts "twice as effective" too! Headache… Muscle pain… Sore throat and fever… It’s hard to do your job as usual when you’re experiencing any of these symptoms. With pain or uneasiness getting in the way of your work, you’ll likely struggle concentrating on your task/s. Thankfully, there are various brands of medications that help relieve these types of pain. One of these brands? Nurofen! Nurofen is an Ibuprofen brand manufactured by pharmaceutical company Reckitt Benckiser. The medicine provides relief from pain and inflammation, and its products range from cold and flu symptom relief to fast absorbing Zavance formulas. [Nurofen Zavance: This medicine targets and relieves pain faster than the standard Nurofen.] In October 2008, the brand launched a new product—the Nurofen Express, a pain killer designed to work “twice as fast as its competitors” because its capsules are in liquid format. According to Nurofen, the liquid is more easily absorbed by the body and therefore targets the source of the pain faster. So… what did the brand do to promote this new product? In the same year, Nurofen partnered with London-based experiential marketing agency Hotcow to launch a guerrilla marketing strategy: The “Fast to Work” campaign! Here’s the context of the 3-month interactive marketing tactic: Busy workers in the UK don’t have a lot of time during the day. They’re usually on-the-go and some of them rarely have the time to cook their meals or pay attention to what their bodies are feeling such as muscle ache, headache, fever, etc. Using this insight, Nurofen’s campaign team brainstormed about an engaging strategy that would appeal to these types of workers. … and what was that strategy? An experience that fitted into busy workers’ lifestyles and at the same time delivered Nurofen Express’ “twice as fast” message! The “Fast to Work” campaign has 3 components. Let’s talk about them one by one… Free “Fast to Work” rides Using customized London taxi trikes with Nurofen Express stickers, the campaign team offered FREE rides to commuters at Charing Cross. The goal? To get passengers to their destinations faster compared to when they walked or rode a public transport vehicle that had a lot of stopovers or was stuck in traffic! This was the metaphor the campaign team used to communicate how the new Nurofen Express works inside a person’s body. Rollerblading Nurofen employees Aside from free rides, Nurofen sent out a team of rollerblading employees to roam the streets in London and distribute product pamphlets to passersby. The team had a lot of fun doing “express work.” Whenever a passerby asked them a question regarding Nurofen’s new product, they answered the query and supplied additional information. … and there’s more! The pamphlets didn’t just contain information about Nurofen Express. It also had a section that recipients filled out with their personal contact details. Once done, they cut that portion and dropped it in any Nurofen dropboxes installed around London—wherever was nearest to them. The reward for those 5 lucky names that were picked out from the draw? A Nurofen-sponsored trip to New York! Many of those who received the pamphlet participated in the raffle draw with hopes they’d be one of the winners. Ambient ads Nurofen and Hotcow created the campaign with a goal to target not only commuters and busy workers but also businesses. To get the attention of these firms, the campaign team made sure to set up ambient ads across 5 cities in the UK. These ads were placed near office buildings to further heighten awareness of the product launch. Was Nurofen’s “Fast to Work” campaign effective? Thousands of commuters, passersby, and busy workers interacted with the campaign. Many of them got curious about Nurofen’s new product and asked the campaign team to provide additional information about it. Some businesses also noticed the medicine brand’s ads. A few employees saw the customized Nurofen taxi trikes through their office windows and wondered what the campaign was all about. Here are the other results of the guerrilla marketing stunt: The campaign team had a total of 18,400 interactions with their target market through the taxi trikes and pamphlets. After conducting a post-campaign survey, Nurofen found out it increased its brand awareness score by 171,400 points. Over 1,000 free “Fast to Work” rides were given away during the campaign. The campaign was featured in various articles published by The Drum, Marketing Week, PRWeek, Campaign Live London, and more. Based on these numbers, we can see that Nurofen managed to capture its target market’s attention and interact with them through various “Fast to Work” strategies and activities. The campaign also effectively communicated its message that workers could “do the busy day,” and Nurofen will take care of whatever body ache they were experiencing. — One of the factors that contributed to the “Fast to Work” campaign’s success was the energetic approach and execution by Nurofen and Hotcow’s marketing team. By organizing a guerrilla marketing strategy that was similar to how the medicine actually works, the brand got its message across while happily interacting with consumers. Besides, who wouldn’t want to have a free, faster, AND more convenient ride to their destinations on a busy work day? Plus, there was also the offer of free trips to New York and several ambient ads displayed across 5 UK cities! These things hyped up those who experienced the campaign. They enjoyed riding the taxi trikes and seeing those bubbly and energetic Nurofen rollerbladers. Way to go, Nurofen and Hotcow! *Clap clap clap* We hope the “Fast to Work” campaign inspired you to strategize and execute your own guerrilla marketing stunts well, too! Through a creative, engaging, and captivating campaign, you’ll also establish positive connections with your target market and leave a lasting brand recall. Start planning NOW and make your guerrilla marketing campaigns “twice as effective” as any other marketing stunt! Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn. Stay tuned for next Thursday’s Gorillas of Guerrilla Marketing! Do you want to learn how one Canadian automobile insurance and licensing corporation raised awareness and educated drivers about road safety? See it in next week’s article!