The Big Mosquito Party

Background

Playground is a store in Stockholm that sells outdoor clothing and equipment. They have a loyal group of customers, who appreciate the knowledge and advice they get from Playground staff whenever they visit. Outside this core group of outdoors types, however, Playground is relatively unknown.

So the ambition was to widen Playground’s customer base from ‘outdoor professionals’ to a wider group of customers, without losing any of the store’s core fan-group.

Idea

Every summer, Sweden is invaded by nasty mosquitoes. They are indiscriminate about who they bite, both ‘outdoors professionals’ and anyone who spends any time outside.

So the idea was to create a mosquito colony in which visitors to the store could test all the various anti-mozzie products on sale.

A room was built inside the store and filled with breeding mosquitoes. When there were about 50,000 of the little monsters, customers were invited in to test the repellants on offer. If they were bitten, they qualified for a 1% discount per mosquito bite.

Results

PR drove visitors to the shop to see the mosquito farm for themselves. In fact, store traffic rose 220%. 6 out of 10 were first-time visitors and sales of insect repellants increased by 750%.

Our Thoughts

This idea is wonderfully bonkers. But it also shows the rise and rise of PR as a medium for driving traffic, increasing sales and growing brands. A full-page ad inviting Swedes to visit the mosquito farm would not (and did not) have the same impact as a televised interview with the store manager among the 50,000 buzzing little critters.

I am amazed that many ad agencies still do not have in-house PR teams. Akestam Holst is not one of them. They have a knack for having ideas that don’t just spread news but make news.