Meteor goes big on guerrilla marketing

Meteor’s new “Secret HQ” campaign continues its recent fondness for guerrilla (experimental) marketing, with fake planning permission notices and a taxidermied fox among its plans to surprise consumers.

"When we're designing our marketing campaigns, we have to acknowledge that our customers are consuming non-traditional media," explains Meteor director Maeve O'Malley.

The Eir-owned mobile network erected its first fake planning permission notice for its “Secret HQ” in Howth, Killiney, Dún Laoghaire and Sandymount, garnering 11,000 shares on Snapchat, O’Malley says. “We’re going to use it again,” she adds.

The application, signed by Mr E Moji, suggested permission had been sought to build “a large-scale storage facility, hundreds of thousands of square feet in size with millions of floors, countless sections and multitudinous divisions”.

The proposed “Secret HQ” would also store “every book that has ever been published since the very beginning of time (even that self-published stuff that should really never see the light of day); all human knowledge collected since we stopped dragging our knuckles on the ground; and cats, so, so many cats”.

Internet culture

Meteor’s new 40-second television ad, made by its creative agency Rothco, goes inside the “HQ”, skewering internet culture by featuring hamsters eating crisp sandwiches, a horse that plays the recorder through its nose (offscreen-only), fantasy role-play gamers and selfie-takers.

O’Malley says Meteor wanted the ad to avoid “generic” advertising messages and instead offer “a light-hearted glimpse into the mobile consumption habits of customers”. Some of the concepts from the ad will be “placed in the real world” as part of the campaign, with a taxidermied fox character by the name of Séamus – Meteor’s version of an existing internet meme – popping up in well-known locations during the next phase.

The overall campaign, which includes an emoji-heavy out-of-home element as well as digital, press, cinema and retail ads, has a media spend of about €1 million.