Bloody bad time

Often times I feel the need to blog, but I'm at a loss of what to blog about, that's when I do a little bit of surfing and I come across something that's just pretty darn silly.  Namely when Guerrilla marketing somehow manages to repeat itself...

Guerrilla is one of those fancy 'new age' type advertising methods that's become all the rage (for good reason).  Guerrilla marketing/ advertising essentially means throwing up unusual advertisements in unexpected places to draw attention to a service or product.  It's pretty much the real world equivalent to 'viral' marketing on the web (dear lord that word has been beaten and abused to a point beyond recognition these days).

So it comes as a shock to me when you see the same guerrilla marketing campaign twice.  And by a shock, I mean alarmed and worried.  The campaigns in question are the 2007 Dexter blood fountains, and more recently 2011's True Blood... blood fountain (as in the singular).

While I personally think it's a much better ploy for True Blood, I have to question someone devising the exact same stunt for a rival show on a rival network. I'm having a hard time deciding if it was just a lazy 4 year late rip-off, or if the advertising agency/ department really just didn't do their research.  Either outcome is equally depressing and I sincerely hope that this isn't a rising trend in the advertising industry.  If you want to imitate an idea, that's ok (up to a certain extent), but at least try not to do the same thinga direct competitor of yours did a few short years prior to and on a grander scale.

It's not like the whole blood fountain hasn't ever been done before or since Dextar (like Leo Burnett Shanghai's 2008 Greenpeace anti-whaling fountain for instance). Heck it's practically a cliche, but I mean just come on... this one was for two competing TV shows on two different networks.  That's just silly.

What is it with people and fountain dye anyway?

Posted in: advertising, guerrilla, marketing