This might be a terrible idea, and it might be something the FTC would really, really frown upon. It struck me when I was watching one of those ridiculous Axe Body Spray commercials where some guy was being attacked by a horde of women who simply could not control their desire for him on account of his delicious scent1.
So what if you went to some major metro’s mass transit system with two actors. One of them gets on the train and just acts like a regular commuter. A few stops later, a guy gets on the train and after a minute or two, the woman looks up from her newspaper/magazine/book/iPod/whatever and strikes up a conversation with him loud enough for plenty of people nearby to hear, they (obviously) hit it off and eventually get off the train together or exchange numbers or something.
Oh, sure, it would probably be really expensive, and the reach would be limited, and you run the risk of the same person seeing the same scenario multiple times and ruining it, but it seems like it would be interesting if nothing else and if you did it big enough, it might make some noise in the news.
Note: Axe Body Spray actually smells like crap.
Tags: Advertising, Bright Ideas
Heh. They’re already paying street musicians to sing about the stuff, so it sounds like they’re up for just about anything.
As far as the FTC, I’m not exactly sure what the regulations are. I do know advertisers use actors all the time for guerilla marketing. Hell, we once did a entire fake political campaign with rallies and petitions for a tourism client.
I actually had this discussion with some friends a couple of years ago. Our premise was that people could observe groups of people, find out who was influential within a group and then pay them to subtly drop references to their product.
Person 1: “Hey, did you see the World Series last night, Cliff Lee pitched an awesome game.”
Paid Advertiser Friend: “You know what else is awesome…Tide, with bleach.”
Axe body spray is easily one of the the worst parts about teaching high school.