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Spotted out: clever marketing ideas

Being new to the marketing world, I’m still finding it fascinating how many of the encounters we have in public places have actually been orchestrated to either convince us we need a product or service, or perhaps more cleverly, convince us to willingly promote someone else’s product or service.

A family meal out to a popular Italian restaurant chain employed the latter, convincing my 8 year old to do the marketing on their behalf – but they made it fun.

Kids menus often have puzzles, spot-the-difference games and colouring in to keep children from climbing the walls as they wait for their pasta, so it was nice to see something a little more unusual. It certainly provided better-than-average engagement (and distracted from the long wait time for food, but that’s another story).

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Two cartoon characters could be torn out from the menu, coloured in and then fixed to fingers (not adult fingers by the way, we nearly disfigured one of them when Daddy tried to join the game) to bring the characters to life.

The competition was to then photograph the characters somewhere unusual, post to the restaurant’s social media and be in with a chance to win a family meal out.

Jasmine certainly enjoyed the incentive of winning something for the family, and it meant that for half an hour at least, we didn’t have to contiune to reassure her that yes, food is coming, and no, it’s not time for ice cream just yet.

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It’s good to get inspiration from all sorts of companies outside of your own industry for marketing ideas. We may just employ something similar for our delegates – perhaps with larger holes though!

Seen a clever marketing campaign? Tell us about it on twitter!

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