Someone lose their keys?

Nissan in an attempt to start a viral, word of mouth campaign, purposely "lost" 200,000 keyrings consisting of three keys and two tags. The keys were meant to look like a car and house keys and the tags were meant to look like speedpass gas tagsdirected finders to websites, one being nissanusa.com and the other to redeem prizes from the keys. The campaign was to promote the new Altima's push-button ignition system. Suprisingly the campaign only cost the True Agency in Los Angeles a sum of $100,000. But was it worth it?



I researched other people blogs and checked to see what the New York Times had to say about it. The keys that were left in bars, concert halls, and other public facilities had different responses. The New York Times writer Daniel Gilbert saw it as imoral playing off of peoples unconsious behavior towards kindness. Saying it was similar to people on the street pretending to be poor for money and driving off in a sports car, or a bank releasing 1,000's of puppies with tags that say "Thanks for checking. And speaking of checking, our bank charges no monthly fees!" He may be a professor of psychology at Harvard but I think his image of the campaign is a little extreme.

Another negative point of view came from a fellow blogger. This Post that Andy Webber posted supports the idea that wouldnt this just be considered littering? I mean I guess I can see where he is coming from if no one picks the keys up. But based on Gilbers proposal, people are compelled to do nice things. There are many ways to look at this campaign but from a marketing perspective I think its a neat idea!

The writers at Winding Road News Forum
saw it as a great concept, despite it was advertising a keyless ignition they were not fans of. I would have to tend to agree with them, this cheap campaign definetly got people talking. However, I dont see how this would lead people to buy the car. I dont see how they could accurately target their market with this campaign, and I would think they would loose money on it. Even though it only cost them $100,000 to lose the keys the keys involved prices like $15 gasoline cards and magazine subscription. But what does this have to do with buying a Nissan?

I mean I get the whole idea, but we'll just have to see if their sales do in fact go up!