Some peopel in Brazil perhaps will be surprised by a stranger knocking on their doors with a free pocket video camera and invitation to a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun.
Unilever Omo has put a tracking divice in 50 of its Omo products that will allow its promotion angency Bullet to follow the shoppers to their front door.
Omo has already had 80% of consumers using its products in Brazil and accounts half of Brazil's detergent sales. This promotion, called Try Something New With Omo, is aimed to draw attention of Brazilian consumers to a new stain-fighting version of Omo. The president of Bullet, Fernando Figueiredo, said that the GPS will be activated as soon as the product is taken off the shelf in the supermarket, and 35 teams accross the nation are ready to leap into action when the box is activated. Each team is equiped with portable device which enables them to go floor by floor in apartment buildings until they find the consumer. The team can also remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so it starts beeping in order to prove their identity to the consumer.
What's more interesting is that the site experimentealgonovo.com.br will include a map showing roughly where the winners live, pictures of each winner and footage of the Bullet-Omo teams hunting down the box, knocking door and surprising consumers.
This idea is cool if it is executed in an appopriate way. It's kind of similar to a promotion that Coke did in 2004 called "Unexpected Summer". However, there can be some legal issues invovled such as privacy. How would the consumers react to this? If I were the consumer, sure it is nice to win some prize from the product I purchase, but I certainly will be shocked if I knew someone just stalked me home from the product I've just purchased. I think how Bullet is going to do to solve this problem is decisive on the success of this promotion.
But good or bad, one thing can be sure is that this promotion is likely to cause a lot of discussion, which somehow does increase awareness for its new product.
Source: AdvertisingAge
Very clever use of technology, but I wonder if they are taking things a little too far? I suspect they will upset some privacy activists out there!
ReplyDeleteI was just reading this report on the OMO campaign. There is certainly some concern out there about privacy!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, especially it's conducted in brazil, i heard that the crime rate is relatively high there, so people surely would be concerned about the safty and other related issues if they knew they've just been followed.
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ReplyDeleteLooks like the folks at Gruen Transfer read your blog ;)
ReplyDelete