Guerrilla Marketing In Budapest

The big junction where Andrassy meets Bajcsy, Jozsef Attila is often the source for my posts seeing as that's where the diplomats fly by, the cars are crashed, roads dug up, cycle lanes installed etc. It's doing it's thing for me again.

Walking to work the other day in the rain I noticed what may be a new form of advertising in Budapest. I've seen similar things before elsewhere but not in Hungary. I noticed 3 men at the traffic lights on Andrassy wearing bright jackets and holding big boards. When the lights for the cars turned red, they marched out into the road and displayed their message to the captive driving audience. Just before the lights turn green, they scurried back to the side of the road, out of the way until the next phase of lights.

Read moreNow I'm thinking of several things here.

1) Well done to the guerilla advertisers. I'm all up for a bit of creativity. You've basically created advertising space from nothing. Used to think up these schemes all the time but never put them into action.

2) Sorry for the drivers that thought they only had to listen to the ads on the radio and not have them thrust into their faces at the traffic lights. Never mind. Perhaps you can console yourselves by accelerating hard when the lights go green and try to catch one of them. Oh wait, maybe you do that already.

3) Bright, yellow, reflective jackets? Good lord, has health and safety come to protect the lowly street workers? To be honest, this was the most surprising point. Soon they'll be putting barriers around men working down holes in the street so that people don't fall down them. Maybe.

4) Hurrah for the advertiser (who is probably the one who thought it up in the first place anyway). The company paying for the ads was a strip-joint round the corner on Nador utca. Oops, I might be wrong on that point. Could be something else. Nothing against those nightclubs, in fact I'm all for The Places and look forward to seeing The Candy Shop one day.









Note - Perhaps this method of advertising may already be patented. Just take a look here.

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