Great Marketing is Self Propelled

A few of us at the office are participating in the Movember fund raiser to benefit mens health -- specifically Livestrong and the Prostate Cancer Foundation.  Clearly worthy causes, and also just plain fun to participate in.

I am making pretty good progress half way through the month, moreso on the not shaving than on the fund raising:  so if you want to make a contribution, click here!

Participating in this effort has been so fun and easy that it has made me think about the greatest self propelled marketing campaigns of all time.  

Ad Age has a list of the top 100 Advertising Campaigns of all time.  The top 5 are the ones you would expect:

• Volkswagen
• Coca Cola
• Marlboro
• Nike
• McDonalds

Those are great, but hardly self propelled.  Maybe "Just Do It" but even that has some serious investment behind it.

I am reading the Steve Jobs biography now so I can't go without mentioning the "Think Different" campaign he created with Chiat/Day when he came back to the company in 1997.  That has to be on the list.

For me though, there has never been a campaign quite as effective as washing your hands after using the restroom.  Sure it is not as exciting as the 1984 superbowl ad, but think of the beauty of the thing.  

I am no biologist, but of the germs we want to kill when washing our hands I bet only a fraction of them origniate in the restroom.  What makes the campaign so elegant is that everyone has to go multiple times per day, and the sink is right there.  It would be a tall order to launch a campaign to convince people to wash their hands after shaking hands or after coughing or sneezing or touching a door knob.

Anyway, Movember.  Check it out.  It is propelling itself into a great movement -- now with over 800,000 people participating.