Diesel goes stupid

I am sure a lot of people have noticed the new diesel advertisements. The picture beneath is the one you see in lots of magazines in the Netherlands right now:

I was a bit confused the first time I saw this. Just glazing at this page I did not recognized the brand Diesel in it, until the logo appeared in front of my eye. Surely, the advertisement suprised me and got my attention. Just the goal of the advertisement, I think?

Later, I found out this 'Stupid' advertisement was a part of a 'Stupid' campaign. Diesel has created a new philosophy: Be stupid. They looked for 100 Diesel Lovers. These persons were selected from an enormous amount of posted ideas of being stupid. From pictures to videos and just ordinary drawings. These 100 people had the chance to dance and act in the Diesel social fashion tagged music video. In this video they act stupid while wearing Diesel clothes. The funny thing about the video, is that you can pause it whenever you want and click on the clothes to see more details. You can call it a video-catalogue. A very innovative idea if you asked me. Here is the link where you can experience for yourself: http://www.diesel.com/ahundredlovers/

This is a quote from a interview with the Diesel company: "the global jeans manufacturer is assuring that there is nothing dumb about being stupid.
it is sure that the brightest ideas appear in the heads of those who are not afraid to express
themselves. at first, these ideas may seem stupid, but over decades they start to rule the world."
It is a suprising philosophy for a jeans brand, but in a way very appropriate for Diesel and the feeling customers have with the brand. I always saw Diesel as a crazy, innovative and very outstanding with a lot of colours.

Dancing for H&M

Although I think most of you guys are familiar with flashmobs, I will give a short explanation. A flashmob is an event where a large group of people suddenly appear in a public place to perform or do something. This event is mostly arranged with the use of internet. I knew that flashmobbing was an hype, but I never heard of it as a publicity tool for organizations.

H&M, the well-known clothing company, got some great publicity due to this by them organized event. They arranged a group of kids from a dance school to perform in a flashmob, dressed in clothes from H&M Kids. The group suddenly appeared at the San Fransisco's Union Square. In the youtube video you can see the surprised faces of the people on the street.



After seeing this video I started googling for some more examples. It appeared that flashmobs are often used as publicity for a company or organization. H&M wasn't even the first one with this idea, T-Mobile organized a similar event a year ago, for the Life's for sharing campaign. Around 350 people broke into a choreographed dance routine in London's Liverpool Street Station.



In my opinion this kind of publicity is exactly what attracts people to a brand and creates a great brand image!