Wienermobile at Work

It’s hard to find an American that isn’t familiar with the concept of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. This iconic vehicle was created in 1936 and has seen a number of iterations over the years. Among the newest is a Mini Wienermobile, shown here by former New York Giant (cringe) Michael Strahan: 

I’ve been thinking about the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile for a couple of weeks now, because we’ve been in discussions with a new client about how to use a limited budget to expand awareness of and generate interest in their product. It’s tough these days with a fragmented, yet congested media landscape.

My take is that it is no longer about the frequency of interactions with a brand, but the shift is being made toward an emphasis on the quality of brand interactions. You’re seeing it more now with Twitter, where you can interact directly with brand representatives from organizations like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Comcast, Ford, JetBlue and even local brands like Towson University.  David Armano, a marketing expert that I respect greatly summed it up on his blog post about the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile recently:

Had Carl G. Mayer, nephew of Oscar Mayer and creator of the Wienermobile put his concept in front of a bunch of marketing executives, I’m not certain it would have ever gotten the green light to move forward. Think about it — if you never saw the Wienermobile in action, how would you estimate return on investment? I mean it’s not actually selling hot dogs and it is dependent on fuel and maintenance. Aside from giving out coupons in front of grocery chains, how do you measure the ROI of something like the Wienermobile? How do you measure smiles? What do those get you? 

The answer to his question, I believe, is brand loyalty. I think these quality interactions with brands are going to be something that people look for even more so than expensive, elaborate advertising campaigns. And I think clients are going to have to have the guts to make strong, out-of-the-box decisions like creating these new ways for their brand to foster these interactions.

Garret Ohm
http://www.orange-element.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 18th, 2008 at 11:56 am. It is filed under Blog Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.