Is Marketing Stunt A Smart Move?

Marketing Stunts

It is a planned but unannounced activity of a brand to create surprises and public awareness. Stunts are provocative efforts to differentiate your brand from the competitors. In most situations, the objectives are clearly to engage their target audience and probably lead to business conversion. However, it could also be a bold double-edged sword that might either boost your brand with a positive impact or risk its image if the campaign is not done tastefully well.

Wrong Move, Bad Name

In view of the recent incident that happened, over the news a couple of days back, the Academy could have brought itself into a challenging situation now, especially in salvaging its brand reputation. The effect of their “clown” marketing stunt activated, definitely made a larger negative viral effect, instead of expanding their business awareness.

Clown Marketing Stunt
Picture courtesy of The Straits Times

The report said that the Academy had clown-dressed personnel loitering outside some Primary Schools, trying to interact with the kids after school. And that triggered the panic button of the public! Will you consider this as a good publicity effort? To me, it may have somehow alarmed the fellow countrymen of their name, but surely not in a good way.

The clown could be an optimistic and cheering icon in general, but with the inappropriate application, the character may become something scary or eerie (like the Joker in Batman). Not to mention the way their crew dressed in front of the school compounds, which looked more like a kidnapper than a fun-loving character. Is that how the Academy wanted to position its brand?

Appearance played a major part in the cause factor to the issue. This wrong move may eventually burn their credibility away. I believe it is going to take a long journey for the Academy to recuperate the image in the eyes of their audience.

Same Strategy, Different Approach

On the other hand, imagine if that was a “cartoony” mascots, probably with loveable features, bouncing around with big round mascot headdresses, wearing huge oversized flappy boots, holding banners identifying who they are and what are they do (such as giving out free ice-cream), etc. Wouldn’t that be much approachable for the children and less skeptical to the parents?

“…demographics is a must, psychographics is the plus…”

As mentioned, Marketing Stunt, also known as Event Activation, has two sides to its coin. If you designed it carefully with deeper consideration into the idea, the stunt may turn out a success. Remember, knowing where your audience is never enough, you must understand how to engage them. And most importantly, your audience needs to feel comfortable and enticed with your approach.

 

Quick Notes To An Effective Marketing Stunt

Imagine that you need to pull off a Marketing Stunt for your brand, below are some of the few pointers that you may want to take into consideration;

  1. AUDIENCE THE KING
    Make them understand your message in order to capture their attention. 
  2. BE ORIGINAL
    Only the original and authentic idea strikes a memory of the brand.
  3. INCREASE VISIBILITY
    Make it visual, and integrate it with a PR plan, social media, etc, to get it viral.
  4. RIGHT ON TARGET
    It should also have a clear objective to achieve.
  5. MANAGING RISK
    Careful management is the most important, else, the result could be the opposite.

 

Get Your Brand Spotted

As an integrated marketing consultancy, activation stunt is one of our specialized deployments for our client’s marketing activities. We had experience in creating effective stunts for companies including renowned international brands and SMEs to generate market awareness locally and even during events overseas. These efforts had brought them the right kind of attention and ROI to their expectation.

We always look into the interest of our client’s consumers as the priority, before thinking out of the box on the right creative for their brand messages. Like our founder always highlights, “demographics is a must, psychographics is the plus”. Thus, understanding the personas and behaviours of the target market is the key to our marketing stunt success, as that will be the only access to grab their mind in a positive manner.

To make it happen, besides focusing on the thoughts of our creative ideation, we never fail to put on our Black Hats and see the campaign concept and deliverables from the point of view of the end consumers. Our culture in re-evaluating our work, assures our client’s trust to onboard our strategies without further doubt.

With Dalmatian, we get your brand spotted!