RAC Berth: Lipton Ice Tea Cool Down Bus Stop Poster: Creative Guerrilla Marketing the Lipton Ice Tea Cool Down Stop : Summer is such an opportunity filled time for brands, and Lipton Ice Tea is the latest one to get on the happy summer train to bring us here at Creative Guerrilla Marketing the Lipton Ice Tea Cool Down Stop. Launched in the middle of a summer heatwave in Athens is it genius marketing, or just not cool enough? The Campaign The video starts with some people watching shots, showing just how hot it is in Athens on the day the campaign ran. We’re getting a very staged vibe of these, but that’s ok. It isn’t unheard of for brands to pad their promotional videos out with a few staged shots to really set the scene. Let’s move on to the action. In the campaign a bus station splashed with Lipton Ice Tea advertising is also outfitted with a sidewalk facing panel featuring a button and the words “Press to Cool Down”. When they do press the button, nozzles at the top of the panel spray out cold water micro-droplets for instant summer relief. Ah, refreshing. Lipton’s Marketing Past Let’s be honest, although the Cool Down Stop is a cute idea, it is a little lacking in comparison to Lipton’s Stairs or Slide guerrilla marketing campaign that ran back in May of this year. That being said, not all campaigns need to top their predecessors, and it is always smart to continue to reinforce your brand image with your customer base by putting out little stunt campaigns like this one. However, if you want people to keep talking about you, your brand needs to have an outpouring of publicity, not just a mist. Does It Work? The Lipton Ice Tea Cool Down Stop does work. It’s smart, it’s locationally matched, it’s well branded and serves the brands image and motto to a tee (pun intended). Lipton’s ‘Taste The Brightside’ slogan is embedded here, and works with the campaign to show that even the hottest days of summer have silver linings. Technology-wise, the mister is a clever addition to an existing advertising space that allows the brand to give back to their customers in a unique way. This means that although they’re not giving away free product, the image association is all there, and likely quite effective. But, we still think there’s something missing. Grand Notions Guerrilla marketing, in our humble opinion, is all about taking something that people are accustomed to (like a product) and making it grand and exciting. Now, although Lipton Ice Tea have certainly made their product a little exciting, it’s far from grand. Looking at the Cool Down Stop campaign we can just see so many ways that they could have worked to make it more exciting, and appealing to a street audience now even more accustomed to this kind of advertising. Maybe more jets could have been used, or more mediums implemented, such as a use of music. The campaign certainly delivers on the ground, but the production of the video tells us that they’re looking for a viral component that, we’re sorry to say, just isn’t there. Still, the Cool Down Stop remains a good idea, and we hope to see Lipton Ice Tea, or another contender, make it into the grand guerrilla marketing spectacle we think it could be.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 05:27:33 +0000