Hitting the streets

This Kaleidoscope comes from South East Asia where we’re currently on holidays; to be precise it’s from my observations of Bangkok and I’m currently writing this in Luang Prabang, Laos’ second largest city.

Bangkok is a bit of a creative advertising hub, so wasn’t at all surprised by the great creatives and fantastic production values especially of TVCs and Billboards – in stark contrast to Luang Prabang, which is more of your sleepy country tourist town.

But I was also struck by the level of street market. Walking down Silom Road, Bangkok, we were caught in the middle of a street campaign for Nokia’s Ovi Maps. It was a simple idea, while Nokia is Thailand’s number one mobile brand this was about launching a new concept, the ‘ovi maps’ service.

Everyone got a pink balloon to take home as a reminder of ‘Ovi’. The entire busy street was turned into a sea of pink Ovi balloons.

In 1993 I happened to land in Vietnam the day Pepsi officially returned to the country. You couldn’t leave the airport, walk the streets without being given a can of Pepsi. Everyone seemed to love a free sample. Unilever used street marketing and sampling to great effect when it launched Sunsilk by giving out samples outside major supermarkets.

In Australia, Lebara mobiles, Loud Multicultural for their client, Western Union are two brands that have successfully used street marketing as an integral part of their multicultural campaign.

And it makes sense because many communities are geographically concentrated as my earlier blog, Think Multicultural, Act Local argues.

It’s a direct and personal way of getting your brands out there and if it’s accompanied with a sample, will be happily accepted.

With street marketing, you know that the touch point with your brand has been a personal one.