Carnival Cruise Lines has a cool new interactive street/mobile campaign called the sidewalk aquarium as reported today on adage.com. Click on the link to see the 3 minute video. Carnival market’s itself as the ”fun” ship so it only makes sense that it would offer a “fun” marketing campaign.
Carnival is setting up these sidewalk aquariums initially in six markets. A person can create their own fish using their mobile device. After they create it they can feed, play, and interact with the digital fish on the aquarium video screen. It’s like a big video game on the street. Carnival plans to move this to their website also. This way you can take care of your fish from your home or office.
I like this type of marketing campaign. It is not a hard sell yet gives the brand good exposure and an interactive experience for the potential customer. Anytime you can create a “hands on” experience you have better brand retention. Also, I am sure they are capturing the data from the mobile phones. Now they can add mobile marketing to their advertising campaign to potential customers. Look for more interactive street type marketing in the next year. This is all part of the new “out of the box” non-traditional thinking.
Live entertainment co-marketing
The Harlem Globetrotters are teaming up with Blue Man Group at one up-coming performance in Boston. The Monday, March 30th performance of the Globetrotters at the TD Banknorth Garden is promoting special guests Blue Man Group. This is a very interesting marketing approach. A Monday evening performance is a tough sell especially when you are doing a Sunday afternoon performance. BMG’s Boston franchise is feeling the effects of the recession and could use a marketing “pick-me-up”. I look forward to see how this co-promotional opportunity sells for both of them.
Question of the day
Is SXSW still the right forum for promoting new music and acts or has it become more of an event for new media?
Tags: Blue Man Group, Carnival Cruise Lines, digital fish, Harlem Globetrotters, interactive street marketing, mobile marketing, mobile street marketing, out of the box thinking, sidewalk aquarium, South By Southwest, street marketing, SXSW, TD Banknorth Garden
