Consider how common this scenario is starting to sound.
Kleenex launches a promotional tour where a couch is set up in a crowded downtown area, then pedestrians are invited to sit and "let it all out" to a sensitive sweater guy. He offers tissues when people start blubbering, creating both a tender moment for bystanders and nice footage for the company’s advertising campaign.
But one sunny morning in Times Square, the gathering crowd includes Greenpeace activists. They’re don’t like Kleenex. They get through the screeners pretending to be regular people eager to share their sniffle-inspiring stories. When one of them gets seated, the others – with their own cameras rolling -- suddenly hijack the event. They unfold a big "Kleercut.com" banner. And they chide the sensitive sweater guy for his company’s environmental destruction.
Within hours, the video ambush begins spreading across the Internet and newsfeeds, becoming effective propaganda to rally the faithful, shock the uninformed consumer and drive the suits nuts.
Anti-corporate forces have opened a new front in the ScrewedTube insurgency. This time the victims aren’t just politicians making stupid comments to a country club luncheon, but perky junior account executives handing out product samples at the mall and TV celebrities signing autographs at the stock show.
The escalation isn’t surprising. It’s inevitable. Amateur video sites and linkages are just the latest social media platform that are making it almost impossible for any company to have exclusive ownership of a public audience. And that makes street-level marketing publicity stunts like the Kleenex couch increasingly attractive as targets of viral opportunities.
Activists know that most people don’t take these things real seriously, so a serious message suddenly waylaid into the carefully choreographed event gets noticed. At the very least, the disruption makes for good theater.
In addition, street promos don’t typically have the layers of security that keep activists out of shareholder meetings and other corporate functions. Even if they do, trying to hustle protestors away from a public venue can be made to look like corporate bullying on the video.
So is the public square becoming too big a risk for the common brand? It’s something that companies will increasingly take into serious consideration.
Especially if people keep showing up at their exclusive, expensive promotional events with camera crews and an axe to grind.
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YouTube | Kleenex gets punk’d
Shedwa | Greenpeace tries to make Kleenex cry
