Notes From the Underground

Sampling is increasingly being integrated into the overall marketing mix for almost every consumer product launch. Getting the goods out on the street is a vital component to brand awareness pushes, product launches and trial. Targeted, focused and ROI-driven sampling campaigns are increasingly preferred over mass blow-outs.

Experiential sampling is the buzzword these days, a concept that emphasizes a consumer's value-added experience to drive trial and sales. It's hard to find sampling campaigns that rely on simply handing out product on the street corner. Sampling has become much more sophisticated than that.

For instance, a Dasani campaign for Coca-Cola gave consumers massages with their sample-size bottle of water. A Unilever campaign in the U.S. affixed three million samples of its new antibacterial wipes on popcorn bags at movie theatre concession stands. My firm conducted an in-mall sampling campaign for Rimmel London cosmetics by offering teenage girls and their mothers an on-site make-over, while a branded über-cool environment let their friends hang out and listen to a live DJ.

Experiential sampling introduces and keeps a brand or product on the consumer's radar screen. And in the youth market's cluttered brand landscape, a unique experience translates into a powerful purchasing incentive. Teens and young adults love freebies and tactical sampling is a highly effective way to reach them.

As youth marketers, we've found that when a sampling campaign is supported by a trend seeding campaign, response and pick-up rates jump to exciting levels. The notion and methodology of guerrilla "buzz" marketing has certainly been getting ample attention as more and more marketers see the value of a targeted word-of-mouth viral program.

Seeding (i.e. feeding the product to) trend-setting youth - the so-called mavens and connectors of their generation - is a powerful tool when creating buzz. The inherent youthful mistrust of all things marketing is effectively eroded when a hip peer has been seen using or talking about a particular product. Since sampling programs are increasingly market-specific, it's quite convenient to seed one market at a time, then sample with an experiential campaign people would not easily pass up nor forget.

Trend seeding relies on influencers who are obsessed with being ahead of the curve when it comes to new products and trends. Identifying and recruiting these influencers is the most arduous task. Trend seeders don't want to be an instrument of marketing; they want to be appreciated and made important by their VIP access to new products and brands.

Once on-board, these trend seeders naturally and enthusiastically take over spreading word-of-mouth. Hollywood studios, record labels, liquor companies and even automotive giants consistently use trend seeding to drive interest and buzz.

Mass market campaigns are costly and prone to be lost in the media shuffle, but trend seeding can sometimes have much more impact on results. One only has to read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference to realize the potential of riding the trend wave. The potential of tipping a product into mass-appeal hysteria is nowhere greater than with the youth market, and a sampling campaign can only feed the fire once word starts getting around.

A trend-seeding campaign can also fuel your creative fire. Since youth sampling is heavily dependent on the experience, feedback from trend seeders can greatly improve your experiential sampling campaign. Do not, however, use trend seeders as a focus group. That's not their purpose and their trend-setting egos will be badly bruised if they feel they are not the VIPs you purport them to be.

The danger with buzz marketing is its own popularity and the glut of undercover messaging that comes out of it.

Buzz or viral marketing is paradoxical in nature: the more marketers use it, the less effective it is. Yet a sample of a product or brand enjoying viral buzz legitimizes that word-of-mouth with actual product on the street. Sampling takes buzz to the next level, since getting and trying the product is a cool thing to do, while buzz assures marketers that the kids won't ignore the sampling experience.

About a month ago, sneaker maker Puma got a huge boost in buzz.

Hipsters, fashionistas and Internet junkies set the message boards ablaze and servers humming by distributing and downloading the greatest print ad Puma had ever conceived.

The purveyors of über-cool eagerly began to pump up Puma's street-cred by referencing the image as a groundbreaking and brilliant leap in display ad creative. It was provocative, daring, unambiguously sexual - even dirty. Certainly dirty.

Without inadvertently floating into the pornographic, I'll try to explain the ad obliquely: a woman in Puma sneakers is, um, servicing a guy in Puma sneakers. The picture is cut off at the woman's shoulders, for a smattering of ambiguity. Oh yeah, there's a Puma bag in there somewhere, corner logo placement and an unmentionable coup de grace too, but I won't go into it.

Soon after the release, Internet chatter on blogs (personal Internet logs) and word-of-mouth buzz in most urban circles of pop culture dilettantism were awash in Puma pandemonium.

Because the ad pushed the boundaries of mainstream thinking and broke social taboos - certainly exhibiting an ethos that is warmly embraced by the youth-dominated counter-culture and underground scenes - it was an instant success. Not surprisingly, the "alternative" crowd already marched in Puma sneakers. The resonance (and relevance) of the image - actually two separate images in exactly the same pose - was obvious.

But there was a problem: Puma never commissioned the ad. In fact, as soon as buzz reached critical mass, they declared the ads a fake and blitzed out cease-and-desist orders to various bloggers and sites, dangling legal action above anyone posting the "defamatory image."

The corporate's heavy-handed tactics started another round of blog buzz just as quickly as the ads themselves. This time, however, the buzz was less than favourable.

But what if you subscribe to the notion that even bad press is good press? Many cyber-pundits like gawker.com, memefirst.com and ad-rag.com began to insinuate that Puma had sneaked in a buzz marketing double-dip through a remarkable online viral strategy: surreptitiously releasing the ad itself, then vehemently denying it had done so.

(Puma's counsel said in a statement: "Please be advised that such offensive image was created without our knowledge or consent.")

Welcome to the wacky world of "sub-viral marketing."

Sub-viral marketing hinges on subversive parody of well-known brands that is distributed as either picture or video e-mail - usually with a "fwd:" tag in your Inbox - and is based on the theory that satirizing a brand effectively triggers its mnemonic recognition in the consumer's subconscious.

Sub-viral content has to look amateurish, feel subversive, usually display risqué content and be totally deniable as corporate intrusion. Since sub-viral marketing won't really work if the companies fess up to releasing the parodies, the best sub-viral campaigns are indistinguishable from genuinely amateur Internet parodies.

According to London's Guardian newspaper, sub-viral marketing is the latest trend increasingly being employed by brand behemoths such as Budweiser, Levi's and MasterCard.

I should admit that 20% of my daily e-mail output involves forwarding off Internet detritus to peers across the world. Of course, I need to first filter out all the mundane, moronic and puerile gaga that inexorably finds its way into the Inbox - about 99.99% of all bit packets coursing through the pipelines.

But a good and engaging fwd: will get my attention, and subsequently the attention of my peers, perhaps enough so to spark a potential tipping point.

Sub-viral marketing hopes to capitalize on that creative spark, and whereas a buzz-worthy amateur parody comes across once in a blue moon, a brand parody developed in top creative shops around the world has immediate impact in cyberspace.

And therein lies the temptation for major mass marketers to embrace self-mocking machinations.

Since the Puma photo hit the scene, dozens of Internet brand parodies have been put under the microscope by cyber-pundits.

There's the Nokia short video that shows a ceiling fan flinging a cat across the room.

There's a Levi's spoof called "Rub Yourself" which reveals an onanistic teenager doing exactly what the title purports.

There's the infamous MasterCard "Priceless" parody about a drunken teen couple and the guy's less-than-successful attempts for a happy ending on the girl's front porch.

And who can forget Budweiser's "Wassup" parodies that inundated Western society's Outlook a few years ago?

These are now suspected of being prototypical sub-viral campaigns that tipped over into mass phenomena, with wide debate as to whether the clips are amateur subversive genius or ad agency brilliance.

Ultimately the debate is inconsequential because it's ephemeral, as most things on the Internet are. But from a marketer's perspective, lessons learned from sub-viral marketing are not inconsequential in the least.

As a report by New York-based marketing and branding firm Harvest Communications attests, "whether they are negative or positive, brand parodies offer companies invaluable consumer insight that is not forced out of a focus group, but homegrown and authentic. They offer us clues about what resonates with customers, what concerns them and [are] possible early indicators of public opinion."

Certainly Puma got a sneak-peek into the headspace of their target customers. For two weeks after the images were posted, thousands of message board posts relayed the rants, raves and opinions of the so-called mavens, connectors and influencers of pop culture.

But Puma got a headache from the entire episode as well: only a few days ago, the same pundits that squawked about Puma's brilliant strategy began to readily admit that the ads are indeed fake!

Guerrilla marketing methodology is nascent and therefore exciting. It's exportable to myriad sectors of the economy, and has the dynamism to breathe a little revolutionary spirit into an award-obsessed marketing industry. And when applied to the demographic that I mostly serve and market to - that ever-elusive 18-to-24 slice of the pie - guerrilla marketing campaigns elicit astounding resonance and relevancy.
The press is increasingly giving coverage to guerrilla campaigns conducted by both large multinationals and nimble boutique concerns.

Most recently, marketing watchdogs and the press had a field day with two street campaigns that were described as the latest hit-and-run street tactics of cutting-edge guerrilla marketers.

The first front-pager to make it above the fold in The Seattle Times, and to almost instantaneously get picked up by the AP, was a local campaign for Pizza Schmizza.

Get this: the pizza pusher paid homeless people in Seattle to hold up signs that read: "Pizza Schmizza paid me to hold this sign instead of asking for money." The AP quoted "advertising industry watchers" pronouncing the campaign as a "first of its kind," and citing the perennial mantra of "ad clutter" to explain the imperative need for alternative marketing channels.

To that effect, Pizza Schmizza has also handed out fake parking tickets with pizza coupons on them, and has blitzed neighbourhoods with election placards reading "Elect Schmizza for Dinner."

And then there's www.GoldenPalace.com. The online gambling house slathered its URL on a porn star and paid her to streak topless at the U.S. Open. "Guerrilla tactics" were in the press as sports hacks repeatedly wrote of tourney winner Jim Furyk's surprise at landing in the lascivious embrace of mammary marketing. Earlier this year, another branded streaker emblazoned with the casino's online co-ordinates bared his charms at the French Open and at the UEFA Cup soccer final in Spain.

Certainly, GoldenPalace.com knows its market - wealthy, fun-loving and high-living males. The multi-continent streaker attack indeed resulted in millions of visits to the site, and certainly established the casino as the progenitor of body billboards. And Pizza Schmizza got a sizable boost, I imagine, in publicity and awareness. The owner was actually quoted in The Seattle Times spinning the campaign as an altruistic endeavour and not a pure marketing ploy.

But neither of these campaigns is guerrilla marketing. To be sure, guerrilla marketing takes audacity to an art-form. Guerrilla methodologies are predicated on alertness, mobility and attack. But equally paramount to any successful guerrilla foray, whether in battle or marketing, is the absolute co-operation of the people and a perfect knowledge of the target market. Pizza Schmizza and GoldenPalace.com didn't show the world a guerrilla movement. Rather, they assaulted and shocked an already marketing-savvy (and weary) consumer with a terrorist blitz of senseless marketing.

Terrorist marketing seeks airtime. It is parasitic and base. It is indiscriminate, impersonal and ineffective. If there's a lack of audacity to terrorism, there's usually plenty of shock value.

Terrorist campaigns calcify the consumer into mistrust and provoke a negative reaction against creative marketing. Even handing out Pepsi cans on the corner can become a perilous mission.

Because a basic premise of a guerrilla movement rests with the support of the people, guerrilla marketing should be deployed when giving value to the consumer, and presenting a memorable experience. It's the only way that a guerrilla campaign will really work. It's not enough to surprise or to rile the consumer. There's more to it than that.

Guerrilla marketing methods use high-impact, dynamic and unconventional face-to-face interactions at times and places where the target market is most receptive to learning about and experiencing a brand. The creative strategy and selected targets will surely depend on product, messaging, desired effect and consumer psychographics - but the aesthetic to the campaigns must never reach lowest-common-denominator tactics.

Guerrilla marketing is inexorably infiltrating into the general marketing mix to break through the white noise. Terrorist marketing, however, just makes noise, and should be relegated as another reckless contribution to the panoply of mixed messages that are directed at a flabbergasted consumer.

If we were to take a relativist global outlook, the marketing that we do essentially revolves around selling products and services in a hemispheric marketplace where it's fairly easy to motivate the typical consumer.

There is more than enough wealth to go around for thousands of brands to get snatched up by an enthusiastic consumer who has the deepest pockets in the world. We got it good here.

But what about the majority of the world, which is comprised of much poorer nations?

Marketing in the Third World is a tough job. But marketers there are coming up with unique, innovative and outright exemplary marketing strategies.

Why should I care about non-competing firms pursuing a consumer that can't afford my clients' products anyway? Because there is a large stratum of consumers in North America that is so resistant to mainstream brands and is so stingy toward major purchases that marketing to it may mean looking for examples from the Third World .

A growing number of consumers who don't (or can't) eagerly translate traditional marketing into purchases - for instance, a percentage of students and the low-income youth underground who are frequently un(der)employed and media-cynical - are many times more affluent than the average Nigerian or Chilean, but their lagging propensity to purchase imposes a need for some creative marketing.

In Brazil , buying a vehicle is extremely price-prohibitive. In response, Brazilians have come to rely on pooling money with other buyers to form a consórcio. A number of buyers pool small payments and at the end of each month a lucky winner is chosen by lottery to use the car for the month. If enough people chip in, two cars may be distributed, one by chance and the other going to the person who contributed the most that month.

What a great idea for a North American automaker when marketing to the student consumer (or first-time buyer). A car for this psychographic is a refuge from parents and pressure; it's new-found mobility and freedom, as well as the prime catalyst for entering consumer society and growing up.

But purchase, insurance and maintenance of a car are also huge financial strains. As bundled services and payment options have become a commodity among car suppliers, a fearless marketer can take these operations to the next level with a consórcio-type model, and the first to respond to them will be the youth demographic - because it's new, simple, peer-based and because it makes sense.

Major appliance companies in Mexico offer credit based on home or vehicle titles, not banking records or credit ratings. Cell phones in Latin America are stripped of all non-essential gadgetry to allow the handsets to retail at $25, and mobile customers pay only when they make a call instead of being charged for both receiving and dialing a number, which is standard billing in the U.S.

These types of purchasing incentives are almost ideal for a young consumer who has no financial or credit history but a title to a second-hand car, and for the mobile and connected young adult market that wants to eschew costly cell charges and fixed lines, not to mention their parents who are confounded by their monthly statements.

A mainstay in practically all Third World habitats is the street vendor, hawking individually packaged products: cigarettes, candy, toothpaste, lottery tickets, batteries, etc. Consequently, the Mexican producer of Mentos candies introduced packaging for 11 pieces instead of the 14 sold in the U.S., and display boxes that feature 12 boxes instead of 24, to sell more effectively to both peso-strapped consumers and wholesalers who sell predominantly to small street vendors and newspaper kiosks. In India, the world's largest market for shampoo, the leaders of the sector all sell single-usage sachets for a few rupees.

The smaller-is-better mentality is easily transmutable to youth and young adults who are constantly bumming smokes off of each other, not wanting to dish out on a whole pack, or their single-usage needs for No-Doz, aspirins, batteries or cleaning products. This already exists in thousands of bar bathrooms: Where else can you buy a single pack of French ticklers, cologne, feminine products and just one mint or antacid?

I recently returned from a trip to Argentina and Uruguay, where economic depression has led many of these unfortunate street beggars to master juggling in order to differentiate themselves and basically market themselves for a successful transaction in a sea of competition. How different this approach is to the typical North American panhandler, whose modus operandi is an outstretched hand and a look of shock when the hand-outs don't come.

I hope not to make an asinine comparison, but this difference can be analogous to marketing practices here and there, to the rich and to the poor. The poor there work harder, and so do the marketers trying to reach them.

The same applies to youth here in North America, many of whom are increasingly becoming brand atheists and purchase resisters. Every day it gets harder and harder to successfully influence them, while new and differentiating ideas and executions from marketers are slow in coming.

Interestingly, the exception to my beggar analogy comes from our squeegee kids and street buskers, who actually work for their pennies. Youth marketers should do the same.