Three Clever Marketing Ideas: Short Lived but Potent

Three Clever Marketing Ideas: Short Lived but Potent

What do you do when winter gives you lemons? You make lemon snow cones, of course. We can all agree this winter was unusual for the lot of us. Fortunately Spring has sprung, and we’re looking forward to sunny days again. As we look back, Marketing Matters would like to pay homage to some very clever marketing ideas cooked up this winter.

1) Ithaca Tourism Bureau

ithica-key-west

Mid-February, the Ithaca (NY) Tourism Bureau changed the banner on their website to state: “That’s it. We surrender. Winter, you win. Key West anyone?” and a link to Key West Tourism Bureau’s website.

The message went on to say: “Due to this ridiculously stupid winter, Ithaca invites you to visit the Florida Keys this week. Please come back when things thaw out. Really, it’s for the birds here now.”

The banner was only up for about a day until it had to be removed, as the influx in traffic to the website was crashing the server. Still, this is one of the cleverest spontaneous marketing ideas I saw all year.

2) Subaru

subaru-shovelSubaru, in a spontaneous guerrilla marketing endeavor surprised approximately 500 non-Subaru car owners with free snow shovels in Montreal. The shovels had a small Subaru logo on it with a simple message: “while waiting for your all-wheel drive.”

3) SnowBlows.com

snowmanVisit St. Petersburg/Clearwater tourism bureau took a page out of Ithaca’s book, or perhaps vice versa, by creating a campaign focused on New York and Chicago’s hatred for the snow. Crews around the city built real snowmen in iconic places around New York, holding signs with cute phrases like “Even I’ve had enough,” and “Get me outta here,” tagged with the cryptic WinterBlows.com. The website launched in early Feb and the hashtag #WinterBlows has already reached 500,000 engagements on Twitter and Instagram.

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