Comedian and filmmaker, Mark Malkoff, is no stranger to promotional hijinks.

In 2007, he made a purchase from each of the 171 Starbucks in Manhattan — in a single day.

In 2008, while his apartment was being fumigated, he spent a week living in an IKEA. 

This past June, Malkoff, in order to get over his fear of flying, logged 135 flights on AirTran and set a Guinness World Record. 

Now, the comedian is driving around the country in a Ford Fusion Hybrid, convincing mayors to hand over the keys to their cities.

The project, called Keys to the City, started when Malkoff realized that “in New York City, Mother Theresa has a key and so does Dolly Parton.” This got him wondering: What are the criteria for earning a key? And, what would he have to do to earn himself 100 keys?  

Soon, he developed a treatment for the project and pitched it to Ford. “I really, really liked what Ford was doing with social media,” said Malkoff. “They think out of the box.”

According to Ford Car Experiential Marketing manager, Jeffrey Eggen, the project fit “in well with our strategy to raise awareness of our new Ford vehicles by getting real customers behind the wheel and letting them tell their own story.”  

So far, on day 15 of the quest, Malkoff is halfway to his 100-key goal. Many of the cities he’s visiting have never given away a key, but Malkoff tells mayors he’s working on a video project that will feature their city in a positive light. For each key, he also does community service.

In Lancaster, PA, he cleaned up after police horses. In Clifton, VA, he served firefighters ice cream while dressed as an ice cream cone. In Fairfax, VA, he donned a wetsuit to retrieve the coins from the town fountain.

His adventures are being chronicled through posts on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook. In addition, he and his five-person film crew are shooting videos of every mayoral challenge. (See video of Fairfax, VA challenge below).

The project is mutually beneficial for Malkoff and Ford. The comedian gains the resources to pursue a project he’s passionate about, and Ford promotes the fuel-efficient Fusion through several social media platforms.

Malkoff’s initiative ends November 1st. Follow his progress on www.markmalkoff.com/keystothecity.

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There are 159  Hard Rock Cafes  in places as widespread as Bahrain, Fiji, and Ho Chi Ming City. Each location displays rock relics from the company’s 70,000-piece collection (the most prized relic being the Hard Rock’s first  – Eric Clapton’s red Fender guitar).

So, what do you do if you want to see an artifact from their collection, but you’re not near the location housing it? The Hard Rock has solved that problem (in Las Vegas, at least) through digital signage.

In the Hard Rock Cafe Vegas Strip, there’s an eighteen-foot-long HD touch screen called the Rock Wall. The Rock Wall allows visitors to tour the restaurant’s locations and explore the memorabilia collection virtually. A deep zoom feature can give you a close enough look at the relics to see the tears in Jimi Hendrix’s coat or where the paint’s chipping on Slow Hand’s Fender.

(Thanks John. Thanks Kristen).

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People don’t want blanket messaging. They want information that pertains directly to them. To provide this, marketers are using more “invasive” approaches.

For example, a new billboard for Castrol Oil in London offers motor oil recommendations, whether you asked for them or not.  

Here’s how it works.

As you’re driving, a high speed camera snaps a photo of your car’s license plate. The plate is matched to your particular vehicle through a database maintained by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). Two seconds later, the roadside digital billboard broadcasts your license plate number and the proper Castrol motor oil for your vehicle.

The sign will help people protect the health of their cars while saving them time choosing the right (Castrol) product in the automotive aisle. According to dailydooh.com, the personalized message is only broadcasted for 7.5 seconds and no plate information is recorded. Still, the tradeoff of privacy for personalization could be unsettling for some.

The definition of privacy is changing. Will people be willing to sacrifice a degree of privacy for more helpful, customized messaging?

"Thanks for the recommendation, billboard. Now when should I rotate these tires?"

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There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but a free breakfast? That’s another story.

During its first-ever Super Bowl commercial, Denny’s advertised that it would give America breakfast for free. Offering free food to nearly a hundred million viewers? Wow! You’ve got our attention.

On Tuesday, February 3rd, the chain kept its promise and offered guests a free Grand Slam. The signature breakfast consists of two eggs, two pancakes, two sausage links, and two pieces of bacon. Over the course of the eight-hour giveaway, the restaurant, which has 1,541 locations, claims to have served over 2 million customers.

According to an article in Advertising Age, the promotion was successful “despite the inconvenience associated with sit-down breakfast at Denny’s compared to other [faster] breakfast options,” such as the McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts drive-thru.

The article went on to say: “Two-million plus breakfasts easily exceeds the 1% benchmark of giveaway success. . . [considering that] the game had 98 million viewers.”

While giving people breakfast for free might seem radical, it’s a smart practice from an experiential marketing point of view. After all, if you have faith in the experience your business provides, what better sales tool do you have than letting potential customers sample it without risk?

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As an experiential marketing firm, we’re always looking for companies that use experience to reinvigorate themselves. One such company is the Ritz-Carlton.

There was a time when the Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua, Maui, wasn’t much different than the Ritz-Carlton in Cleveland, or Tokyo, or anywhere else in the world. Today, though, the Kapalua location feels distinctly Hawaiian. That happened by design.

A few years ago, the Ritz-Carlton, working with the design firm IDEO, created a program called “sceneography,” which brings out the personality of each hotel property.

The program starts by developing a location’s theme – based on its geography and local culture. Once the theme is established, it’s fleshed out through organic detail.

For example:

The theme of the Kapalua location is “heart of aloha.” To bring that premise to life:

• The building’s interior design uses traditional Hawaiian materials, such as koa wood and lava stones.
• Guests at its spa receive Lomilomi massages from masseuses trained to speak the native language.
• Fridays at noon, employees perform a traditional Hui Mele (“group song”).
• Naturalists hired by the hotel prepare guests for rainforest hikes with a blessing chant.

The Ritz-Carlton’s Half Moon Bay location, near San Francisco, was the first of the chain to implement sceneography. There, the theme of “fire and wine on the coast,” is animated by outdoor fire pits, wine tastings, and a weekend hot chocolate bar.

The point, according to Jen Chiesa, Director of Public Relations for Half Moon Bay, is to offer guests something extra and make their experience a little more memorable.

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This mirror may not tell you who’s the fairest of them all, but it can tell shoppers if that cashmere sweater comes in seafoam or if those flat-front khakis are available in 38×32.

Modestly called the magicmirror, it’s a mirror that’s also an RFID reader. So when shoppers present an RFID-tagged item of clothing or other merchandise in front of the mirror, the device will display information about the product such as size and color availability and guides that suggest other items to accessorize it with.

If the system, made by Avery Dennison, is installed in a fitting room, a shopper can use the magicmirror to request a different size or color of a particular item without leaving the room. Store employees who have handheld devices tied in with the system will get the message and can respond to the customer’s request.

Portuguese apparel retailer Throttleman is considering using the mirror. Prada already is using something similar in its SoHo and Beverly Hills stores. Mirrors in the Prada dressing room also use RFID technology to offer detailed information about the clothing brought inside and allow shoppers to see various angles of themselves as well as simultaneous pictures of them dressed in different items to compare which they like best.

Another “magic mirror” was tested in 2007 in the Nanette Lepore section of Bloomingdale’s New York flagship store. It allowed shoppers to have certain clothing items superimposed on their image in the mirror and also have video and images of them sent to the internet so friends could weigh in on the item.

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ROBOTGALAXY sells robots – toy robots – whose parts customers themselves choose and assemble. Think, “Build-a-Bear in Space.”
The store’s experience begins cafeteria-style:

Children pick one of a dozen different robot bodies. Then they select its arms (possibilities include a claw that opens and closes, a drill that spins, a crossbow that fires a projectile, and a searchlight, among others) and legs (again, the options have different functions: one pair of legs walks, another rides a skateboard, and so forth).

Using a key, a ROBOTGALAXY employee locks the pieces together, presents the child with the key, and escorts them to the “Lab,” where the toy is programmed to repeat a few simple words, such as the child’s name and the nickname given to it by the child. (A ROBOTGALAXY staff member said older children anoint their creations with violent nicknames, like “Crusher” and Destroyer,” while younger children opt for softer names, like “Robbie,” “Robo,” and Skater Dude.”)

The robot is placed inside “The Seventh Ring of Saturn,” which is a twelve foot tall  tower with a motorized platform, LED lights, topped off with a replica of Saturn. The tower, whose job it is to power the robot by using energy from Saturn’s rings, doesn’t serve any practical function. But it’s an important emotional part of the experience.

Staff members get the attention of everyone in the store, place the robot on the platform, hit a button, and, amidst flashing lights and a character-specific theme song, narrate the toy’s journey up the tower to Saturn and back.

Once the robot is fully powered, a staff member uses a USB cable, and helps the child connect the toy to the Internet and ROBOTGALAXY’s virtual environment. There, the child registers the robot, sees its avatar, and can play online games. Based on the number of points the child racks up, he or she can win downloads, such as a new sound effect or eye color for their robot.

Depending on the parts chosen, robots range from $27 to $75. Children can also switch out the toy’s limbs, combine robots, purchase accessories, and read about the robots in ROBOTGALAXY comic books. The stores have been profiled on Rachael Ray, Donny Deutsch, and The Today Show.
The retailer has three locations: Freehold, NJ, West Nyack NY, and the Toys R Us Mall in Times Square.

Those of you in Manhattan for the National Retail Federation’s Annual Convention & Expo, may want to hop over to the Toys ”R” Us Mall to see it. The mall is under a mile from the Javits Center.

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