It's amazing how fast media spreads the message about people today and how a global sensation can be created in an instant. It's incredible and downright scary. For us marketers, it's clear that a digital presence strategy beats a paid media strategy any day. All thanks to the technology of media. It's incredible.
A friend of mine from Sweden reminded me last week of Sarah Palin's meteoric rise. She became a global star instantaneously, even though no one knew who she was, and many still don't. But no matter, everyone knows her name and her image.
Human curiosity is endless. Digital media makes it easy to soothe this profound desire to know about something when you want to know about something. And if you can spread your version of it in the process using digital tools and social media to your friends, all the better.
Curiosity is a tremendous media channel.
Stoking curiosity is a cool way to launch a movie. Sacha Baron Cohen (the creator of Ali G and Borat) did this yesterday by crashing a Milanese fashion show and putting the vids on youtube and sending them to all the media. He was marketing his new character, Bruno, a self-obsessed Austrian fashion model. In character as snooty Austrian fashion maven Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen has been terrorizing Milan fashion week. The youtube vid below shows him jumping onto the catwalk during a show. He's reportedly also been busting into dressing rooms and causing all sorts of mayhem. And he got arrested for it.
This is an inventive way to market his upcoming movie "Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Male."
One observation, it's easier to execute this kind of stunt in Europe than in the US, and the good news is you still generate marketing effectiveness in the US towards US consumers. It's bordering on impossible to execute these kind of clever marketing stunts in New York and other metropolitan US centers post 9/11. Sacha Baron Cohen's example teaches us that you can do a stunt outside the US but get huge billing back in the US.
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