I recently visited the Louvre, and after spending several hours wandering the halls in awe of the centuries of incredible works surrounding me, I stumbled across a room packed to the brim with hundreds of people. Jostling to get a glimpse of a small canvas, proudly hanging alone in the centre of an immense black wall. The most famous painting in the world, celebrated, sometimes even likened to the physical manifestation of ‘art’, the Mona Lisa! Well… she’s certainly something.
The Mona Lisa is a spectacular example of the impact of effective marketing. I would wager that if you asked any individual in that crowd about the painting, you’d be lucky to learn more than the artist’s name and MAYBE the date she was painted. In 2020 she was named ‘the most disappointing tourist attraction in the world’ by Britons. Yet every year, millions of people visit the Louvre specifically to see the Mona Lisa. Why?
HER INFAMOUS HISTORY
Originally painted in 1503 by Leonardo Da Vinci, she hung on French palace walls for 200 years as property of the French Republic, before eventually being moved to the Louvre in 1797. At this stage she was relatively unknown, until 1873 when Walter Pater, a celebrated essayist and art critic, wrote that “she is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times” in ‘Renaissance’. Pater’s vivid language capture the art world, and she grew in renown.
But it wasn’t until over 30 years later that she came into the public eye after she was stolen from the Louvre by Vincenzo Perugia in 1911 as a political act. For two years the empty hook captivated the public, with countless stories, media articles, intrigue, and myth surrounding the work until it was eventually reclaimed and returned to the Louvre.
The scandal of the theft left the public reeling and brought the painting into the forefront of the minds of people who would otherwise never have thought about it, let alone seen it. As a topic of conversation with global reach, the Mona Lisa became immortalised as the most famous painting in the world. While admittedly accidental, the Mona Lisa’s theft can certainly be put down as one of the greatest marketing events of all time.
In more recent years the Mona Lisa’s notoriety has been continually built upon with parodies, pastiche and satire from artists like Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Salvador Dali, but the lesson remains – scandal sells. While the most successful applications of this rule are often unintentional, thefts, parodies, accidents, an innovative marketer can succeed in manufacturing a form of scandal to produce excellent results.
SCANDAL SELLS
When delicately employed, scandal can be an excellent way to build brand awareness. It is never in a marketer’s best interests however, to truly deceive their audience, instead, one can create a captivating campaign by employing some creative tactics. For example an Australian bikini brand recently made a stunning debut with some interesting guerrilla marketing tactics. They took off around Bondi and planted bikini bottoms on the bonnets of cars, staged to look like they’d been left by a jilted lover. The unexpected garments evoked surprise, confusion, fear, then laughter, as the tag revealed the campaign.
A quick moment of shock often serves a better reminder of your brand than thousands of dollars spent on high traffic billboards. People love to share stories, and if you can build a unique story for them with an interesting campaign, then they’ll do the advertising for you. If you build an interesting enough story, you can even feed it to the media and watch as generates a wave of earned media, a very impactful form of marketing.
When manufacturing a moment of shock or scandal, it’s crucial to approach it in the right way, else risk tarnishing your brand perception. Carefully consider the social landscape before planning anything overly risqué and be conscious of the accessibility and morality of your material.
Some strong campaigns have also been born around toeing some legal lines, a bit of an ‘ask for forgiveness rather than permission’ sort of stance. If you’re putting something of that nature together, pay close attention to your legal liability, don’t endanger other people’s property, and above all else - pay close attention to health and safety (both of anyone who works on your campaign, and of the public).
Don’t underestimate the power of creativity in marketing your business. It’s always more worthwhile to launch one, utterly unique, memorable campaign, than it is to smash out 20 mediocre bits of collateral to add to the pile.
Want to make your brand unforgettable? Get in touch hello@annabelhs.com
For more free marketing tips resources, subscribe to join the Marketing Angels!