Laundry Marketing

The other day, a magical thing happened. I did laundry at the laundromat.

NO! That is not the magical thing!

I did laundry and when I got home, I found that instead of losing a sock, I had gained a promotional t-shirt for some musical called "Lost In Hollywoodland." It has a cartoon drawing of a devil on it... kind of a rockabilly vibe. I inspected it and read it very carefully, trying to remember if it was mine... maybe I just forgot about going to a rockabilly musical about the devil. I paid some serious attention to this t-shirt. I don't think I have ever inspected a piece of clothing so well.

You should know that I consider laundromats to be part of the seventh level of hell, hot, poorly lit, depressing, full of crazy people, hot, bad soft rock, and for some reason, dirty. But, finding this shirt got me to thinking about this idea.

I started thinking about how effective slipping promotional t-shirts or towels into people's laundry could be, especially for certain thing like movies, bands, restaurants, and possibly detergents. Half the battle in advertising is to get someone to pay attention to what you are saying, whether they believe you or remember your message is secondary to getting people to pay attention, and finding that shirt in my laundry had definitely gotten my attention.



Imagine if Fox Searchlight had sent street teams out to laundromats to slip a couple of thousand "Vote For Pedro" t-shirts into people's laundry before the movie came out. The movie was huge, but what if they had been able to plant that buzz out there in people's wardrobes long before it's release?

The key is making really cool shirts. This might be a perfect arena to implement hidden agenda hypercolor shirts. These hypercolors would come out of the dryer looking like plain white t-shirts, but when they cool down, a slogan or message is revealed.

Pairing this idea with the right product is just as important as putting the right socks together, and there are infinite possibilities, so I can't go into all of them. Obviously there is a certain demographic that goes to laundromats, and certain products you would never want to associate with laundry even if only millionaire super models washed clothes at laundromats.

Take this idea and build your guerrilla marketing company around it. Make tons of money. Maybe you can hire me, and give me some of that money.

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Pavlov's Porn Plan

This is another one of those sneaky marketing ideas that I have, and yes, once again it has to do with pornography, a field virgin only to the probing fingers of mainstream advertising and marketing. It might be wrong, but I just see so much potential. It is like Alaska for oil companies, but with no chance of killing off any ailing species.

Here is the idea: Give adult entertainment production companies such as Evil Angel and Vivid Entertainment limited rights to music from upcoming video games for use in their adult films, six months to a year ahead of release.

The soundtracks for most adult films are fairly pathetic, and I am sure that many companies would welcome free, quality music for their films.

Final Fantasy XIII would be ripe for this, because like all the other Final Fantasy games, it is sure to have a new and unique scored soundtrack (not existing pop songs). Plus, the sexuality of the main character Yuna is one of the attractions for many of the franchise's fans. Moreover, "Final Fantasy" could be easily already be a porn title.

Some of you are probably scratching your heads, or something else, and asking why. Why?

This would strengthen the association of sex with the video game for its existing fans who have seen the adult films before the game even comes out, and make TV and viral commercials for the game more effective in reaching potential buyers/players that have seen one or more of the adult films utilizing the music in the soundtrack. Classic conditioning.

Of course, you would want to keep this pretty hush. No need for anyone to put one and one together anywhere other than their subconscious.

If you are in the marketing department of one of the major video game companies (Acclaim, EA, Capcom, Sony, Square Enix, Konami, or Nintendo get on this! You should probably think about this even if you work for Adventure Soft, and if you work for the Climax Group, you should not even think twice (real companies).

Some other game franchises that this would definitely work for are Tomb Raider, Dead or Alive, Silent Hill, Zelda, Resident Evil and even Super Mario. Thats'a one'a sexy plumber!

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Pizza Scissors

My friend recently presented me with a "Pizza Challenge." She challenged me to come up with some new way to make, eat, or market pizza, because it seems like pizza is where the eating innovation happens. We have seen everything from pizza rolls to pizza on bagels, tasted everything from cheese in the middle to cheese in the crust, heard everything from "avoid the Noid," to "better ingredients, better pizza." What could I come up with.

Something popped into my head. Two words. Pizza Scissors.

I started thinking about pizza scissors. Would they be a serving utensil built into a pair of scissors and how? What would the advantages be? Why would people want that? I thought about it, and eventually decided that it wasn't the best idea, but I liked the sound of pizza scissors so much.

Try saying it out loud.

Pizza scissors.

Louder.

PIZZA SCISSORS.

It is so much fun to say. People would love to say it. People would remember it. Why not push this idea into the marketing realm.

Then, I looked up "pizza scissors" on Google. Wow. Someone actually made pizza scissors, actually a couple of different companies, with different designs.

What does that tell you?

Right, even my bad ideas are good enough for someone to put a couple of hundred thousand of dollars into.

Here is the marketing idea that I came up with, that I think is far superior to the actual pizza scissor device. If you work for Pizza Hut, Dominos, Papa John's, or any other pizza chain hoping to make their mark on the pizza kingdom, you should listen up. Roll out a new super, deluxe, six cheese pizza, so covered in cheese that it is impossible to free slices from the pie without the use of...

Pizza Scissors, small plastic, possibly pizza shaped, scissors that you conveniently provide with each pizza to help people...wait for it...

...cut the cheese.

Maybe you do, maybe you don't ever say "cut the cheese," but people will think it, and people love to say it.

There you go. A marketing campaign, all be it "cheesy," chalked full of phrases that people love to hear and love to say, things people will remember, neatly wrapped up and delivered to you in less than 15 minutes.

PIZZA SCISSORS!

BRING ME THE PIZZA SCISSORS!

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The Advertising Code

It seems like everything I try to do on the internet these days requires me to type in a "captcha" - a code - a sequence of numbers or a word. These captcha are always changing and distorted in some way to prevent someone from writing a computer program to read them. They are meant to prevent spam. If you don't know what I am talking about, you don't have a computer, and someone has printed this out for you to read.


What I see when I see all those squiggly letters and numbers is a missed advertising opportunity.

Why not have the letters and numbers say things? The sayings would have to rotate and be changed up weekly, but with multiple advertisers, I don't think it would be a problem to maintain the purpose of this security measure while also throwing in a little brand awareness.

Will advertisers go for it? Do you think Coke doesn't want someone not only reading, "coke smile" but also having to type it. The public won't just see the message, they will have to read it and think about it. The more I think about this, the more I think I should get some sort of advertising award for this idea.

Does this idea stop there? No. Let's take it to the next level. Let's take it to the decoder-ring-treasure-hunt level. As an example I will use myspace.com and Fox. Fox owns myspace.com

I run into tons of the captcha on myspace.com. Most of the people I know now have this security measure enabled to stop them from getting spam emails and comments. Why not have an ongoing treasure hunt? Let's call it the Fox/myspace.com "Fox Hunt." That is a cute name isn't it?

The captcha codes would be real codes that players could take and enter into a decoder at, say foxhuntgame.com or just a page on myspace.com. The player would get a clue for every code entered. I am sure Fox has the money to pay people to figure a nice puzzle for people to have to solve. The prizes would, of course, all be passes to Fox movies, discounts on Fox DVDs, T-shirts with Fox characters on them, and so on.

Players will have to go to the website and see all kinds of great banner ads for Fox movies like "What Happens in Vegas" and "The A-Team." They also enter information about them self, if they want the prize. I would let people play anonymously until they win a prize. This will make people more likely to participate. Moreover, the game encourages people to post comments and email through myspace.com. This means they will spend more time on myspace.com finding out when they are going to die and wining Xbox video game systems by deciding who should be president.

This is a great idea. Go out there, and sell your boss Tom on it.

Hospital Ceiling Advertising

Shortly after I graduated from college a took a job building tents in Miami. I worked with a crew of Welshmen, Germans, Ice Backs (illegal Canadian workers), and a couple of dudes from Atlanta like me.

Things were going fine until I backed off the edge of a grandstand, and I fell twelve feet onto my head (it was shortly after this that I invented the flux capacitor). Luckily, two ambulances quickly arrived. People thought that it was a mistake that two ambulances arrived, but it turned out that a man on the 7th green of the golf course we were working on had a heart attack at the same time that I fell on my head.

What is this all leading up to?

I ended up in a hospital emergency room laying on my back and staring at the ceiling for several hours, with brief interruptions by Indian resident doctors probing my anus with unlubricated, latex covered fingers. It was at this time that I came up with this idea. Why not have advertisements on the ceilings of Hospitals?

Imagine you are in a hospital, on your back, on a gurney, staring at the ceiling, and contemplating your own mortality. Wouldn't you like to have an inspirational poem, painting, word game, a nice magic eye image, or picture hunt to look at and think about? And, wouldn't you be thankful to say, Coca Cola or Johnson&Johnson for putting it there?

This same concept could be employed in dentists' offices as well.

Think of the benefits. The extra revenue brought in by ad sales could lower hospital visit costs without effecting the quality of care, generating positive PR for the hospital and the advertisers, this on top of the brand awareness and good will created by the ads themselves. The general public benefits, hospitals benefit, and advertisers benefit.

Let's all have a group hug.