Fake it til you make it.

I was recently tagged in a post about a billboard campaign by Surreal, and I was legitimately blown away by the response in the comments.

The ads were funny, they kind of meandered around some typical marketing tropes and hit on shared experiences that made people laugh.

But what I was blown away by is the amount of people who seemingly assumed these ads were real.

Call me a sceptic, but I don’t trust anything I see on the Internet anymore.

This episode of supergoods is a breakdown on tactics you can use when you have no money, diving deep into the world of low or no cost growth tactics.

I’m calling it…

Within about 12 seconds and 2 clicks, I discovered the billboard ad campaign was fake. They used the exact same photo repeatedly throughout many fake billboard campaigns.

Spot the difference.

Does it actually matter if it’s real or not?

Some people might feel upset finding out these billboards are just viral internet stunts. Like it’s not the same level of “advertising genius”.

But what is a “real” ad and what isn’t?

The three “fake” billboards were probably seen by more people than the one “real” ad, leveraging the power of the Internet to capture attention and engagement.

And whether you like it or not, the views and engagement are certainly real.

Here’s some quick ‘back of the envelope’ maths to illustrate the impact of these ‘fake’ ads on Linkedin alone.

The ‘for marketing’ post clocked over 10,000 likes, comments or reshares.

A typical high-performing Linkedin post would get an engagement rate somewhere between 1%-2% - so we’re looking at probably 500K to a million views on that one post.

A couple more clicks

And patterns start to emerge.

It looks like the team at Surreal have been running loads of these ‘campaigns’, even ‘collaborating’ with other brands.

And honestly, no shade to them - I’m here for it.

So how can you do this?

The first step is to adjust your mindset.

It’s easy to sit around and think “well, we have no marketing budget, so we can’t do any marketing”.

It’s much harder to think out the box and capture attention in creative ways.

So here’s some inspiration.

Distressed digital is your friend

If you feel uneasy about ‘fake’ billboards to your social community, then check out low cost options like distressed digital out of home.

A few years back, we grabbed a last minute offer and threw together this ‘campaign’ around Father’s Day.

The real life billboards cost us next to nothing and we reached more people on social than we did IRL.

These ads were designed to spark a social media conversation. We were playing on the idea that Mum always gets chore-related gifts like kitchen tools for Mother’s Day, so why not gift Dad laundry liquid?

People got upset in the comments…

Products as ads

Cards Against Humanity sold $170K of literal ‘bullshit’ in a box.

A year later they sold over $70K of nothing - simply “give us $5”.

Not only do these ideas bring in loads of media attention but they deliver revenue as well.

It may sound like a mythical creature - the idea that you could create content and ads that actually generate revenue for you. But have you ever sat down and asked the question “what would it look like if we tried?”.

Founder & employee led content

Simply ‘being active on social’ is not enough anymore.

The brands that hit with audiences are those that show up with real people.

Dylan is a good reference for this approach - he’s a 23 year old founder, just a few months into building the vodka-based RTD brand “Cools”.

He’s sharing his story along the way - getting millions of free views and selling through his initial stock run.

Get out in the world

We’re coming full circle here, back to Surreal and closing the loop on "which ad is real”.

They supported their launch into Sainsbury’s with actual out of home ads, but still applied their own quirky flavour to it.

The two co-founders sat alongside the billboard to promote their product.

Probably just another Internet stunt, but again shows the value of talking to people and getting behind the camera as a real human.

Packaging as a billboard

Your product packaging is literally the only piece of media that 100% of your customers are guaranteed to see.

Use it to stand out, capture attention, hammer your brand name home and sell your product in-the-moment.

There are a thousand different ways to optimise your pack design for impact, the first step is to simply review it in the real-world context - on shelf!

Or reach out to me for a workshop on packaging optimisation - shameless plug!

The reality is that there is not a simple answer to growth, particularly for the broke.

What works for some, won’t work for others.

But one thing is for sure - persistence beats resistance so don’t give up and keep trying things until you find what works.

See ya next week✌️