This wedding has been brought to you by Smirnoff

• Jul 9th, 2010
• Posted by Andy W.
• Posted in Uncategorized

A couple of weekends ago, my big sister got married to her boyfriend of eight years. The ceremony was beautiful, on the patio of the Chicago History Museum with an elegant reception to follow inside in two adjoining ballrooms. There’s really no moment tenderer than seeing a loved one get married to the person with whom they’re meant to be. Needless to say, I was elated. Soon after the ceremony, the photographer asked me to come back outside to take a couple more photos. The bridesmaids were waiting with their hands conspicuously behind their backs. Oh dear! I knew what was coming next. Yes, my sister’s classy wedding took a swift kick to the ovaries as a bridesmaid handed me a Smirnoff Ice. The day before during the men’s golf outing and the rehearsal dinner I was iced six times—so I was not surprised when those artful shrews iced all the groomsmen. Here’s basically how the night played out: we iced them back, we iced the photographers for being in cahoots, the first man iced my sister and her husband during his toast, my mom iced herself to “find out what it tasted like”, etc. Frankly, I still have no idea where all this damn alcoholic syrup came from because they sure as sugar weren’t serving it at the bar.

There are two reasons that I wanted to talk about this dying internet meme. First of all, I’m out. No more icing. It’s official. I no longer want to play the game. Second, I had numerous conversations with my dad about whether or not Smirnoff was behind this icing craze that nearly ruined his daughter’s wedding. Though I thought the notion of Smirnoff masterminding this meme was interesting, I just can’t bring myself to believe they would risk associating themselves with binge drinking. They obviously haven’t made any great efforts to distance themselves from it or denounce it; but to come up with a SMM campaign like that, which slowly unravels and then explodes with precision and accuracy, would make the earned media team at Smirnoff easily the best in the game. I’ve talked about hoax SMM campaigns before and continue to be fascinated by the possibilities. We’ll leave aside the fact that they are deceptive for now and just focus on how fun they can be. Let’s take a look at a couple of hoax ad campaigns:

Ivar’s Submarine Billboards: Seattleites may remember hearing about the discovery of underwater billboards in the Puget Sound dating back to the 1950s. Apparently, Ivar Haglund the eccentric owner and promoter of the popular seafood chain put them there in the 50s because he thought that submarines would eventually be a popular mode of travel in the Sound. Allegedly the current CEO and a local historian discover documents on these billboards and set out on a media-driven quest to find them. A couple of months later, the food chain and the local historian admitted to the hoax, but what was really interesting were the numbers that went with it. They spent $250,000 on the campaign and successfully quadrupled their sales of clam chowder, going from 19,000 cups to 83,000 cups. Furthermore, customer counts in their restaurants went up 5-10%. Granted, sales would go up no matter what if you injected $250k into your marketing budget, but rather than just throwing up TV spots and whatnot, they create a fantastical story that captured people’s imaginations.

Cellphone Jiffy-Pop: In 2008, four videos of cellphones popping popcorn kernels went viral on YouTube. The idea was that if you put a couple of cellphones all together and make them all ring at the same time, the kernels would pop. Which had to make viewers wonder, “If these deathboxes are popping popcorn then WTH are they doing to my brainbox?!” It turned out the a Parisian guerrilla marketing company called Last Fools came up with the ad campaign for Cardo Systems, a maker of Bluetooth headsets. I can’t find any specific numbers on the campaign, but once Cardo came clean, their brand recognition skyrocketed. Several news outlets interviewed company representatives to talk about how they made the popcorn pop and the ethics behind the ad.

Many brands have had hoax campaigns. Some embrace the ruse like Cardo Systems while others distance themselves. And then there’s the spinning cat by Nokia, ‘nuff said about that one. All in all, these guerrilla marketing tactics seem to work pretty well, at least the ones that are visible. I’m sure that there have been countless unseen failures. This blog post is already too long, and if you are still reading it then I commend your tolerance for poor grammar and your obvious lack of ADD/your obvious aderol consumption. Researching for this post has left me with some questions about this kind of advertising. The thing about hoaxes is that they spread by word of mouth and word of mouth is what we do as social media marketers. So where does the fun stop and where do the ethical questions start? Does admitting to the hoax, like Ivar’s and Cardo did, make everything copasetic with their customer base? How do campaigns like this affect the customer’s trust in the company? And finally, was icing born in a board room?