Earlier this week, I came upon a demonstration in the heart of downtown Cincinnati.
It turned out to be a guerilla marketing tactic for Smirnoff Vodka entitled Save the Mistletoe.
The perturbed gentlemen to the right is supposed to be dressed as mistletoe. He may be perturbed because he looks like he's headed to a Halloween party dressed as the swamp thing.
When some kids stopped ice skating to heckle him from across the square, I decided to tip off Adrants to Smirnoff's campaign.
Within a few hours of the Adrants post, I received an email from a representative with DIAGEO North America, Smirnoff's manufacturer:
Was this a joke, or did this actually happen?Any time we hear about anything connected with our brand and children, we take it extremely seriously. We've taken great pains to ensure that as few people under the legal drinking age as humanly possible are exposed to the campaign.
If something has occurred outside our control in which kids were inadvertently exposed to it, I would very much like to know about it
To their credit, this was an immediate and impressive response. I assured DIAGEO that no children were involved in the mistletoe march. I doubt highly any of the ice skaters knew it was a Smirnoff event or who/what Smirnoff is for that matter.
But this shows how thorough Smirnoff is in their execution of Save the Mistletoe events. From planning and execution to tracking and responding to buzz, Smirnoff seems to have all of the right steps well-thought out.
tags | public relations | PR | guerilla marketing | save the mistletoe | advertising | marketing | Smirnoff | branding | brand
Oh how I laughed. Thanks for sharing, Kevin =)
Posted by: Angela Natividad | 12/21/2006 at 01:34 PM
when i finished my A Level iwent to South Africa for a vacation with my aunt who lives there,it was there that i first tasted the rich taste of smirnoff ice, i was shocked that people made such pure pleasure being used to the largers common in my zimbabwe,i also learnt about the smirnoff parties but was hugely disappointed that no such events happened in zim.
i wolud like to be a part of such parties.but if it were in this country the organisation and guest list arrangement i think would have to differ from the norm,here those who really know how to have fun without posing are the underpriviliged students mostly who know how to get it down but its unfortunate that when such occasion sarise they do not have the money to attend such events what are you as the markrting department of smirnoff doing to promoye your uniquely distilled liqour to the masses of tertiary of age students who will be the big spenders of tommorrow?
Posted by: constantine nyanzero | 03/11/2008 at 02:42 AM