medialifemagazine.com
Alternative media
Stripping down to the real message
By Toni Fitzgerald
Jan 21, 2011 - 1:10:13 AM
You're sitting on the subway, eyes on the floor, when you look up and notice a beautiful woman standing near one of the doors.She is dressed to the hilt: Black blazer, green blouse, tight black pants, sunglasses, expensive-looking purse and a jaunty men's dress hat sitting on her head.
She's the sort of woman who knows she looks good, and indeed the men in the subway car can't take their eyes off her. She smiles at you, and you smile back.
Then, out of the blue, she raises an eyebrow, holds up her purse and throws it to floor.
The men on the subway look at her quizzically. One of them picks up the bag and offers it back. She ignores him.
A few seconds later she removes her sunglasses and tosses them toward the back of the car. Another man picks them up but again she refuses to take them back.
The woman continues to remove her accessories.
She places the jaunty hat on a bald man's head. She shrugs her blazer onto the subway floor. She even unbuttons her blouse and drops it onto the seat next to you, revealing a tight white shirt below.
Still mesmerized by the stripping beauty, you pick up the discarded blouse and discover, much to your surprise, that there is a 2-inch by 3-inch white hangtag on it.
On the left side it reads, "Make your smile your best accessory." Next to the words are two tubes of toothpaste and another phrase on the right side: "One week, one shade whiter."
Now you get it. The woman shedding her accessories isn't mad after all. She is part of an alternative media campaign to promote a new toothpaste, Colgate MaxWhite One.
The aim of the campaign, developed by Y&R Paris for Colgate, was to get across the message that white teeth are a more powerful accessory than any bracelet, hat, necklace or other bauble.
Its target audience: young, fashion-minded Europeans.
Y&R launched the first part of the campaign in 20 different countries with print and TV elements. It chose Paris to execute the out-of-home element.
Three models were loaded with heaps of accessories one morning and sent to different pedestrian- and traffic-heavy locations across the city to perform their faux strip shows.
Everything they took off had the Colgate message attached in some fashion. So when people picked up the objects to hand them back, they saw the Colgate message.
The campaign was effective for two reasons, first because you can never go wrong when you employ a beautiful young woman in a campaign in Paris.
But also because the stunt was clever enough that it caught people's attention without being obvious.
Good alternative media campaigns always arouse people's curiosity. They are puzzles for the eyes; the reward comes as folks figure out the puzzle.
That's why this one worked so well.
© 2011 Media Life
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Now this is what I'd call a revealing media stunt. From Media Life. Stripping down to the real message
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