Okay, so this Coke/Mentos internet phenomenon is old news but our hard drives are full of ideas and inspiration so sometimes it takes us awhile to translate it into something more than entertainment.
For those of you who might not be familiar with what happens after placing Mentos inside of a bottle of Coke, it shoots an explosive stream of foamy liquid chemicals high into the sky. Whoo-hoo!
This was discovered by a few guys who then filmed their experiments and posted them on the internet. Several copycats followed, including 1,500 Belgium students attempting to break a world record. It might just be the most successful viral marketing campaign Coke and Mentos never did.
This particular story has come back on our radar for a few reasons. One, we're in a recession right now (shhhh) and advertisers are typically the first to feel the squeeze. Two, small businesses and non-profits rarely have big budgets to begin with.
Recession (shhhh) or not, successful marketing/advertising/PR is not about big budgets. It's about big ideas. After all, David took down Goliath with a single stone he found on the ground. Granted, coming up with great, buzzworthy ideas can be worth a lot of money–whether they cost $1 or $4 million to produce, but this attention-getting stunt could have been as easily created by Coke and/or Mentos as it was two random guys with a video camera.
While they're not the most eco-friendly examples, we've seen non-profit logos stenciled on maple leaves and scattered on sidewalks, bike company logos stickered on existing bicycle lane signs, sandwich flags in dog shit advertising youth hostels, and several other innovative communication strategies that cost next to nothing. A few hundred or thousand potential consumers might have witnesses these ads first hand–big deal. But an even bigger deal was the amount of international press coverage generated by someone simply documenting it and informing the media.
Of course, just because you think something is newsworthy doesn't mean someone else does. That's why you hire the experts who live and breath these kinds of innovative thinking. Then again, what's a few bucks to experiment on your own. You could gather some leaves from the backyard, print some stickers from your computer, steal some sandwich flags from the local deli, or you could do something else only your brand could do. Just make sure you bring a camera and tell someone about it, preferably someone with connections.
For more inspirational, low-budget, newsworthy ideas, check out Improperganda. (Art of the Publicity Stunt)
Feel free to suggest other low-budget ideas, examples, and/or books below.
  
|
  
|
