I recently chanced upon this interesting marketing ad “Elevator Murder Experiment” on AdFreak to promote an upcoming movie called Dead Man Down. I’ve never seen anything like this before and it was quite stunning but shocking at the same time. It’s hard to imagine what I’m talking about so I shall start with the marketing video:

The first thing that I thought of from watching the video is the danger(s) that are associated with this one-of-a-kind marketing campaign. Even though the video creators (Viral Marketing Agency Thinkmodo) claimed that “every precaution was taken to ensure the safety of all parties involved”, it’s hard to believe considering that the bystanders/strangers in the video were using fire extinguishers, flowers and bags to attack the actors.

With that said, the marketing campaign was obviously a success with over 4 million views on youtube alone. This form of marketing – which involves strangers and bystanders is relatively new and we can see more and more companies trying this form of bolder marketing campaigns despite the risks associated with it. To viral marketing agencies like Thinkmodo, perhaps the fastest way to get the word out there is through the use of effective social media (like youtube) because of the hundreds of millions of users browsing it daily.

In terms of costs, I also think that it is much cheaper than conventional/traditional forms of advertisements. A budget is used to produce the simple video which involves bystanders in a contained environment and it’s then uploaded to youtube which is completely free. This budget is tiny compared to the millions of dollars needed to air commercials on TV, physical advertisements on public transportation and walkways and door-to-door advertisements.

Here is another video by Thinkmodo to keep you on your feet: