Friday 10 February 2012

In the Spirit of Valentine’s Day & The Movie Hall Pass


Moosejaw Mountaineering an American mountaineering retailer has launched a very different type of Valentine’s Day campaign. No it’s not about making you’re significant other aware of how much you love them, it’s about convincing them to let you fool around with someone else. Please see permission form below:




This form is offered through Moosejaw's facebook page and is meant to increase brand awareness with the end goal of increasing sales. ( I assuming, cause the answer is always make money). This is something ridiculous in a long line of ridiculous things. Moosejaw Mountaineering once offered a breakup service to their first 100 customers (see the service in action) and an App that uses Augmented Reality to show people naked ie. it acted as an X-RAY App. They called it X-ray Spec App.



 Having never heard of these other crazy marketing campaigns, until I read Adweek’s most recent article, I travelled to their website and tried to learn more about who Moosejaw Mountaineering was. I learned the founder started the store in 1992, the same year his girl friend cheated on him with a “super handsome guy” so the founder of the store “couldn’t really blame her”.  The corporate timeline also will tell you that 1995 was the year his little brother lost his virginity. For those of you who have never read a corporate timeline, though I’m sure you can guess, all these facts are a little bit  extremely unusual. Most corporate timelines talk about launching new brands/products or discuss mergers and acquisitions. Here we learn a lot about the founder and his family’s relationships. Especially his mother, which is tad off.

Overall I think this is a good campaign, it’s consistent with their previous branding and the ridiculous flippant laid back brand personality they are trying to create. (I refuse to use the adjective funny cause their is a D-bag edge to their brand personality which cancels out the humour for me). 

Something like this will create a lot of buzz and get the company word-of-mouth promotion. So I’ll do my part and pass on the word and the permission slip. (What Who you and your significant other do is your business). Check out Moosejaw Mountaineering for yourself.

2 comments:

  1. This is so random coming from an outdoors company? I find it kind of amusing although I'm not really sure what it has to actually do with the merchandise they are selling :P

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  2. As far as I can tell it has nothing to do with the merchandise they are selling except the reason the founder got into Mountaineering is his mom dated a Mountaineer (according to the timeline). It’s about creating a personality for the store. The most distinct brand personality I can think of is Apple, they are supposed to be creative, innovative, fresh, young and effective. The Mac vs. PC ads tries to embody the brand personalities of PCs (as Mac hopes they are perceived) and Macs. The personalities like spokespeople can either be personalities you relate to which makes you prefer the product or personalities you aspire to have which is why you buy the product. But all and all its pretty random. Most mountaineering stores try to create an eco-friendly one with nature element to their brand personality. I guess this means the store is differentiated. The problem is the message can be lost in all the ridiculous.

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