Gazzetta Dello Sport

In Milan there is a newspaper called the Gazzetta dello Sport. Faced with needing to increase circulation throughout Milan they set about considering marketing plans and campaigns. It soon became clear that they would need to think beyond normal campaigns and so came into contact with Guerrilla Marketing. The newspaper itself was printed on pink paper – maybe this could be incorporated into some form of marketing ploy. Some bright spark thought of turning Milan pink. Not literally but via pink confetti or paper dropped from the sky and carpeting Milan. The Milanese first did not understand what was happening and did not link the pink confetti with the newspaper. This is the unacceptable face of Guerrilla Marketing because of the after effects. The whole place had to be cleaned up at some cost. The circulation did not increase significantly. The target audience was mainly male because of the sporting connection, and all the males with a sporting interest already bought the paper anyway. In short, the marketing ploy failed and at the same time polluted the centre of Milan for a few days. Certainly there are better ways to win friends and influence people. So OK, that is my view, what do you guys out there think? Did it succeed in a raw marketing way? Was the pollution and clean up effort worth the marketing advantage? I think not.