Spa chain Bliss has unleashed a new guerrilla marketing campaign that incorporates social media, online video and gorillas.
The new campaign is called “Gorilla Marketing” — a pun on guerrilla marketing — and is aimed at promoting Bliss’ hair removal services and products. The campaign is centered around street teams in New York, who will go out and promote the new products and services in locations throughout the city on August 5 and 6 by having gorillas in bikinis hand out free samples and coupons. The event will be videoed, and those videos distributed to Bliss fans online via the company’s Facebook page, e-mails and Twitter account.
“Doing unexpected grassroots marketing has always been a way in which Bliss has promoted its brand and really engaged with consumers,” said Kerry O’Day, marketing director at Bliss. “The campaign fully integrates a grass roots marketing campaign, online and offline.”
The tag line for the creative is, “We’re wild for hair removals,” thus the gorillas. “We are hoping to have some fun and engage with people,” added O’Day.
The target audience is urban women age 25 to 45. The effort is to build loyalty among existing customers and to build brand awareness to acquire new customers.
“We are generating awareness in places where we feel existing or new customers will be,” added O’Day. “But it also gives us content which we can distribute out to a broader audience that we will be funny and viral.”
To get customers ready for this push, Bliss is sending out an e-mail to everyone on its list, promoting the hair removal services and products and offering a 20% off coupon on these nationwide. The e-mail’s subject line, “So Hairy It’s Scary, We’ll Make Summer More Bearable,” will let customers know to look out for the gorillas in New York.
Bliss is also bringing in partners for a co-branding effort. Sephora will feature the gorillas and sample products in select New York stores. Crunch Gym will be featuring the gorillas in select aerobics classes to help promote the effort.
