Think baby food or diaper brands opening a lounge area, including diaper-changing facilities and microwaves, for parents and their offspring at a major airport or in malls. Or a bank installing secure, high-tech lockers next to the beach, so beachgoers can safely store their belongings when going for a swim or walk.
Now, we’re not branding gurus, and we’re not suggesting that brand butlers is the new “lovemark”, but if the following examples don’t inspire you to do something truly useful and new with at least a small part of your advertising budget in 2008, then we don’t know what will. At the Lowlands music festival in the Netherlands, jeans brand Wrangler offered festival-goers a much-needed service: laundry. At 18m wide and 9m high, the Wrangler Laundromat was hard to miss. People dropped off their mud-encrusted laundry and were sent a text message the moment it was ready. No change of clothes? Wrangler came up with a generous solution to that problem, too: they handed out black overalls to anyone who used the laundromat. Like most other pop-up ventures, Wrangler Laundromat is an exercise in experiential marketing, aimed at surprising and delighting consumers in a way that magazine ads or TV spots usually can’t.
Acknowledging that travelling with infants can be a strain on both parents and children, Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport opened the Schiphol Babycare Lounge by Nutricia. Located in the airport’s main departure terminal, the lounge is (as the name indicates) a co-branding effort by Schiphol and Nutricia, a Dutch baby food brand. The lounge is serenely stylish and geared to ensuring a baby’s well-being while en route. It features seven circular cabins, each of which can be closed off with sheer curtains to create a personal zone. The booths have comfortable circular seating curving around a crib. Lights in the lounge are dimmed for sleeping babies, with individual reading lights for parents. For infants that need a bit of distraction, each booth has a gadget that projects coloured lights onto the ceiling, just above the crib. Other facilities include a changing area, baby baths and a microwave for heating food. Although Nutricia hasn’t stocked a pantry with samples of their own baby food, the brand does offer tips on baby nutrition and travelling with children. The space is open daily from 6am to 10pm, accessible free of charge to parents and children under three.
Due to its success last year (close to 430,000 people made use of the service), Procter and Gamble Co.’s Charmin bathroom tissue brand has reopened its temporary 20-stall restroom in the heart of Times Square in New York. Open until 31 December, the facilities offer clean, deluxe bathrooms, baby changing stations, stroller parking, seating areas and of course lots of luxury toilet and bath tissue (including Charmin’s new product lineup, which includes a choice between ultra soft and ultra strong versions).