True story: A school bus passed by our building in Midtown Manhattan the other day, and scrawled across its windows – running the length of the big yellow machine – were phrases like “10,000 Winners? That’s Not Right!”
Curiosity piqued, we ran to our office to visit the Web site that accompanied the enigmatic advertising: www.GiftItForFree.com.
Initially, we felt duped; we weren’t interested in entering Staples’ holiday sweepstakes. But after careful review of the site’s content, we realized that this wasn’t just any old contest. It is, in fact – and we’re not being at all melodramatic here – Web marketing at its pinnacle: the concept is clever, the copy is creative, and overly competitive Coach Tom is a comic genius!
See for yourself.
We highly recommend the YouTube videos that Staples has integrated into this campaign. If you don’t laugh out loud to the annoyance of your work neighbor, there’s something wrong. With you. Yeah, we said it.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWkc87zjZk0&hl=en&fs=1]
The site also features a personalized “e-trophy” you can send to friends, a cheeky section called “Ask Coach Tom a Question,” and links to become a fan of Coach Tom on Facebook and follow him on Twitter.
We would give props to Staples for such an inspired effort, but they’ll just give their requisite response: “That was easy.”
We suspect otherwise.
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Ebbis
Funny stuff. Check out the TaiChi video especially funny. Thansk Staples for doing something new!
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Offline Marketing « Hiring The Internet
[...] We discovered the campaign while standing in front of our building in Manhattan as a school bus drove by with only the sweepstakes’ Web address – http://www.GiftItForFree.com – scrawled across the windows. Such enigmatic advertising was enough to pique our interest, eventually driving us to check out the site. The rest is history: we loved it so much that we immortalized it on our blog. [...]