Just when I start to think that there are no more possible ways to uniquely market something to consumers, I become proven wrong. Yesterday I was thumbing through my new copy of ESPN the magazine. I don’t know about you, but anytime I’m going through a new mag for the first time, I make the rounds and rip out all those annoying cardboard inserts; that’s when I stumbled upon a small 13 page booklet by the name of “Backseat Driver’s Manual”. As a clever marketing strategy by Volkswagen, this humorous Backseat Driver’s Manual clearly defines your roles and responsibilities which include important topics such as “parallel parking and the backseat driver”, “merging”, “blind spots” and “monitoring fluid intake”.
Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in a Volkswagen Jetta, but I know clever marketing when I see it. This attention-getting tactic went beyond the usual catchy phrases or eye-popping pictures. There was no way I could miss it, and not just in the sense of unavoidable visibility, it was the sense of touch, of ripping out this thick little booklet out of a magazine that makes the “Backseat Driver’s Manual” virtually impossible to ignore. Ingenious!
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