Alyssa Leung’s blog post “Now Accept Cash, Credit, and… Squats?” comments on an article from AdFreak that showed guerrilla marketing that the Moscow Olympic Committee launched that would allow people to do a certain number of squats in exchange for a subway ticket, promoting healthy lifestyle and proactivity to increase publicity for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Alyssa points out how it was very clever that they had integrated multiple aspects of social media, which two thirds of the world currently in some way or form take part in using, to make convenient ways of marketing the olympics. It appears that the Russians have taken a book out of their Western rivals in North America by creative such a campaign that is quite rare and untraditional.
Although this is such beneficial idea to society and helped established a more positive branding of Russia to prospective foreigners, many of which still possess very stereotypical war-like assumptions, I question to what extent this is actually legitimate. It is one thing to admire a great idea and a creative campaign, but how effective was this project? The concentration of people who use the subway in Moscow is quite high in density, it would be a very costly project in a time when they are hoping to bring in higher profit margins by marketing the hometown advantage of the olympics. The fact that they went with this initiative means that they must have a positive result when analyzing the cost-benefit and ultimately realizing that most people will likely continue with their busy days rather than spending the time to stop and do 30 squats to receive 30 rubles worth of value. Realistically I am assuming this is one of those things people will stop and stare, smile, and continue with their lives rather than actually taking the time to stop and take part.