Play with your food ... and customers ... and brand

Tell me if this sounds familiar. The creatives and account team are kicking around ideas when—due to lack of coffee, lack of sleep, or a combination of both—the thinking gets a little … bawdy. It starts with a joke made at the product’s or brand’s expense. Then there are bad puns, worse innuendos, and finally one creative says, “You know what we should do? [Insert lewd-ish idea here], because you know we can’t be the only ones thinking that.”

Silence.

Except for the crickets. There are always crickets chirping after “bad” ideas.

Then I … er I mean that one crazy creative scans the room trying to identify a supporter. The usual suspects avert their eyes. The next few minutes are filled with backtracking, with some devil advocate play tossed in here and there. Because in my … I mean his or her heart, that creative knows they’ve hit on an attention getting idea.

“Ha ha, just kidding everyone. This would be soooooo inappropriate. I mean, it would really only work with millennials. They’d find it hysterical and that is who we are targeting. But yeah it’s too much. It’s ballsy. But we don’t want to be ballsy, right?”

Yeah, happens a lot.

So that’s why I have to applaud Groupon’s marketing team for taking THAT* crazy creative’s idea seriously and recognizing a little raunch now and again isn’t a bad idea. In fact, it could lead to the company’s most successful Facebook post to date with more than 12,000 comments, 18,00

0 Likes and 43,000 shares.

Behold, the disruptive post!

Yes, the Banana Bunker. Protecting your favorite banana from any environment. And based on the responses, they mean ANY environment. Really.

The best part was (as I eluded to) this wasn’t an unfortunate albeit hilarious client-driven post, as many a webcrawler thought, but was actually a well thought out and executed strategy. Groupon’s martketing team was all in from the get go, and had equally snazy responses for every tounge-in-cheek question or comment:

Groupon fed the trolls, leading them right into the sales trap. According to Bill Roberts, head of global communications, they sold out of the 600 Banana Bunkers they had available before the post actually went viral. Which leads me to the point:

DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE BALLSY!

If it is strategic of course.

I mean being brash for the sake of it garners attention, but doesn’t necessarily convert to sales (Hardee’s anyone?). Campagins that take calculated risks, such as those by Spirit Airlines and PETA, are hugely successful. And thanks to social media, these kinds of camaigns are almost guaranteed to get more exposure for the dollar. Groupon availed themselves of this “free” marketing masterfully and the rest, as they say, is viral history.

So, I will conclude with two bits of advice. First to the people like me who recognize sometimes their warpped thinking can be used for good (of the client) and not evil: Keep speaking up. Your instincts are valid. Just make sure your idea aligins with the business and strategy goals set out for your client and isn’t just crazy way to get attention. Then to the people working with those twisted thinkers: don’t be so quick to dismis these ideas. Sure they are going to be out of your comfort zone but sometimes that’s exactly what the market is looking for.

*It really wasn’t me in this instance, but whoever it was I’d like to consider them a kindred spirit.