Stupid GPS Marketing Tricks
So the potential for GPS tracking as a marketing tool seem immense. A couple of years ago, Heineken affixed beer trucks with GPS tracking devices, and another clever agency created a kinda cow/bull gambling game where you could login into your PC anywhere in the world and try to determine which quadrant in a field a cow in Ireland would be in at any point in time, thanks to the connected GPS device around its neck.
Well the NY Times Magazine had an article on yet another instance. A marketing firm doing work for design studio and furniure maker client Blue Dot, decided to attach GPS devices to a bunch of Blue Dot’s Real Good Chair’s and then leave them out on the curbs throughout the NYC area. I am not sure how it is in other areas of the world, but in New York City its not uncommon for folks to simply discard of unwanted items by leaving them on the curb with their trash for pickup… and its equally commmon that one mans trash is another mans treasure, and good items will never be around long enough on the street to see the back of a garbage truck… being carted away by random passers by.
So long story short, the new chairs were quickly whisked away, and the dumpster diving street shoppers were tracked down to give their story. The marketing firm and chair manufacturer probably got some good cheap buzz and word of mouth out of it, and got 12 people with a single dining room chair in their home, probably in need of at least three more to match.
Maybe this will be the start of a new marketing strategy, so long “buy one get one free”, how about “(dumpster) dive one free… pay for three”. Catchy?
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