Looks like a Winner
Today I saw an example of great spontaneous marketing (that I can say was unplanned with 95% certainty).
Three months ago, Timothée Chalamet released the official teaser of his latest movie, A Complete Unknown, on Instagram to over a million likes.
As a Hollywood A-lister, he’s also producing the movie based on music legend Bob Dylan, and set to hit theatres this Christmas. While he’s checking all the right promotional boxes (like sharing sneak previews of hit songs), it’s what’s not in the marketing playbook that’s fetching him maximum eyeballs and engagement.
A young YouTuber by the name of Anthony Po coincidentally came up with the idea of a Timothée Chalamet lookalike competition (held earlier this week), with a trophy, prize money and Halloween candy to boot. The event had all the markings of potential virality, what with widespread local and global coverage, thousands of mentions and retweets, literal crowd-sourcing of angular jawlines, and rumoured GoFundMe campaigns pledging charity if the real slim Timmy would please stand up.
And stand up he did, a move that’s been a crackerjack internet winner, with fans gushing over his appearance and sporting spirit and commiserating with his loss to ‘Best Tim’.
The appeal of this brilliant if unpredictable marketing move is the creativity and authenticity with which it has been executed. You cannot metricise your way into people’s hearts (unless you are writing poetry). People are intelligent and have an underserved appetite for art done right. An ongoing Tesco billboard campaign, confident in its blue chevrons, challenges the conventional need for logo visibility and instead has hidden clues in plain sight to tease customers and stimulate both tummy and mind.
Latest Tesco OOH Campaign in the UK does away with the brand logo
Sometimes all you need is to spark a novel, lively idea (instead of the tried and tested ones) and watch it take a life of its own while fitting snugly into your conversion funnel. Or if you are a matinee idol, simply jump on the festive bandwagon imagined in your honour, leverage your star power to surprise and thrill your audience, and get clicked with doppelgängers as they vie for you to call them by your name.
