Extreme Marketing – you can deliberately go out of your way to do something dramatic that gets you into the media and the news reports. Extreme examples include jumping off a cliff holding a large banner with your website address on, or leaping stark naked into the lion enclosure at the zoo shouting your brand name through a megaphone.
Do something dramatic, but do it safely.
Promotional Marketing Plan 1
Ideas include:
- Barry is lowered down a cliff upside down. When he gets to the bottom, we film him talking about the Fatman’s Guide whilst wearing a toga.
- Barry stands on the Runcorn bridge and gives a last piece to camera before throwing himself into the River Mersey for being too fat.
- Barry sits in front of a large pile of kebabs and beer cans and introduces himself as a fat man whilst flatulating and belching uncontrollably.
- Barry extracts himself from a fight in the street where he is being beaten up by thin people offended by his fatness and then introduces himself to the camera.
- Barry sits outside his house and has to listen to people walking past insulting him for being so fat. He gives an interview to camera about the revolutionary new system available online.
Here is our Extreme Marketing Example – a lesson for all small businesses on how to get noticed and quickly.
Promotional Video Stunt Script
Interviewer to hide behind a hedge and say something derogatory to passing ramblers.
Sample derogatory comment: Oi, are you a walker or a banker with a w?
Passers by: spontaneous insults directed at Barry (will be using real walkers).
(start filming)
Barry: Yeah that’s right – you insult a fat man. I understand. I offend you. You thin people make me sick with your posturing and dieting fads. I am happy being fat and me. (Shouts) Remember, there’s no me in fat!
Interviewer: Hello, can you introduce yourself for the camera?
Barry: My name is Barry, and I am morbidly obese. I have been offered a chance in a lifetime to lose weight the Fatman way. I am going to become a ‘Happy Fatty’.
Interviewer: What does the Fatman technique involve? Does it hurt?
Barry: No. It’s just a few simple steps and in 6 weeks I will lose 12 stone.
Interviewer: 12 stone? That isn’t possible is it?
Barry: It is. The author, Keith David, is a genius and should have been awarded the Nobel prize. This book is only £19.99, but it should be selling for £1000’s for all the good it will do in the world. Think of the medical advantages of all the fat people losing weight. No health problems, more food for starving people in the Third World. You can follow my progress on my blog, www.thefatmansguidetonotbeingfat.com.
Interviewer: Well the best of luck Barry – we will come back and film you on your revolutionary path to a more fulfilling life as a fat person over the next six weeks.
Keith David is a businessman from a small village in North Wales. He is the author of “The Fat Man’s Guide to Not Being Fat”, “How to Get Rich” and a couple of other self-help books. Best known for his dramatic rise to fame after inventing a dietary plan to lose 7 stone in a week, he is similarly fairly well known for his subsequent fall back into penury. His wife, Anwen David regularly hacks his blog entries and adds factual corrections. You can read Keith’s book on How To Get Rich by visiting Amazon here
Record of actual incident (taken from You Tube recording before it was removed):
Barry: Bugger me, I think I’ve drunk too much – I can’t see straight.
(group of walkers approach)
Camera Man (hiding behind a hedge): Oi you tossers. Are you walkers or bankers with a w?
Passers By: Are you talking to us?
Barry (reading from the script): What – are you calling me fat? Yeah that’s right – you insult a fat man. I understand. I offend you. You thin people make me sick with your posturing and dieting fads. I am happy being fat and me.
Passers By: Eh – what did you say?
Barry (going off script): Remember, there’s no me in fat you dickheads.
Passers by: Come here and say that.
Barry (staying off script and ad libbing): You come here and I’ll have you, your mates, and your mothers – oops, sorry forgot I had your mothers last week.
Passers by (local Territorial Army Unit on a Training Exercise): Come on then.
Barry: Arrghh. Urrggh (involuntary screams following steel toecap kicking to the testicles).
(Slight pause whilst Barry comes round after being the victim of a deserved beating by a bunch of angry squaddies).
Camera Man: Hello, can you introduce yourself for the camera?
Barry: Arrghh. I can’t see – call an ambulance.
Camera Man: Is that better – I’ve wiped the blood out of your eyes now – shall I remove that tooth for you? It looks a little unsightly.
Interviewer: Hello, can you introduce yourself for the camera?
Barry: My name is Barry, and I am morbidly obese. I have been offered a chance in a lifetime to lose weight the Fatman way. I am going to become a ‘Happy Fatty’.
Interviewer: What does the diet involve? Does it hurt?
Barry: No. It’s just a few simple steps and in 6 weeks I will lose 12 stone.
Interviewer: 12 stone? That isn’t possible is it?
Barry: Bloody right it isn’t – I’m not losing 12 stone – I’ll die.
Camera Man: Read the script.
Barry: You read the sodding script. I’m hungry. I’m going to the kebab house.
Camera Man: You can’t – they’ve barred you.
Barry: What? I’ll starve.
Camera Man: That’s the idea I think.
Barry: You’ve got me barred. Come here….
Camera starts to shake.
(Blank screen with the noise of shouting, a couple of screams and the subsequent noise of a loud splash as Barry picks up the Camera Man and throws him into the village pond).
NB:
Barry’s beating was all in vain. The YouTube film of this, complete with subtitles extolling the virtues of The Fatman’s Guide to Not Being Fat, was seen by the grand total of 3 people before it was taken down. Sometimes cunning marketing plans are not really very cunning at all.
Keith was due to be the interviewer in this film, but sensing that there may be violence or conflict he made an excuse and headed over to the café to check the new menus had arrived. Keith hates conflict. He avoids it wherever possible by making sure he has big, tall friends whom he can hide behind.
The cameraman was Pete the Pisspants, Keith’s other close friend and squash buddy.
Pete swore never to help Keith again after Barry threw him into the village pond, which contains more diseases than a hospital spittoon.
Apart from being a retired actor and vegetarian butcher with a pretty unpleasant village name, Pete is the perfect assistant for Keith because he is a communist and believes all material goods are bad. Pete does not require payment for anything.
Pete the Pisspants is already both divorced and retired at the ripe old age of 39. A former professional actor, he trod the boards of many theatres, starring in numerous serious TV drama productions like Eastenders, The Bill and The Bobby Davro Christmas Show, as well as appearing in fairly minor parts in low budget British films such as The Full Monty, Billy Elliot and Calendar Girls.
He has met more celebrities in ten years than most of us do in a lifetime, although he is very non-plussed by the whole thing. Pete namedrops A List Hollywood actors at regular intervals in conversations, following this up with a dismissing raised hand and lowered eyebrows to demonstrate his humility.
Retirement from acting was swift and was followed similarly by a very quick divorce. His epiphany came one opening night of a long and fairly tedious Tom Stoppard play at the local theatre in Mold, the local market town.
As the play began, Pete later recounted that a flash of light shot through his head and a voice deep inside him asked “What is the point of all this? Can’t you see the audience are close to death, know nothing about English literature & the finer points of method acting and are concentrating on avoiding pissing in their pants because they drank an extra cup of caffeinated coffee before coming out tonight?”
As the voice asked Pete this rather searching question, he immediately forgot all his lines. Unfortunately he was the male lead in the Tom Stoppard play and this meant that about 35% of the lines in the show had just disappeared up the Swanney.
Pete decided it was time to fall on his sword and, turning to the audience, he announced that he had had quite enough of acting for the time being and it was time for him to retire to his humble abode and watch the world pass by. He thanked the audience for coming to see the play, did a 180 degree turn and marched off the stage.
The remaining actors and actresses stayed riveted to the stage, in character, before deciding after a few minutes that they were all too shocked to carry on and the audience were laughing at them. The curtain came down, the players from the company disappeared into the bowels of the building to seek out and murder the by now rapidly departing lead male actor. The following day Pete released a press statement from a secret location officially ending his acting career – and his marriage not long afterwards.
Pete the Pisspants was officially added to the Llandaffr DH Names Roster after this tale was later recalled in The Lump.
He is a born-again vegetarian and does one man protests at the local cattle market from time to time. He jumps into the auction ring yelling “meat is murder” much to the amusement of the local farmers who are also his customers at the butchers where he works.
Why do you need to know all of that in order to get rich? Well, later in the story Pete the Pisspants plays a rather important role in proceedings, so I thought that you, the reader, may like to know a little bit about him.