How do you message and expand your market-share when you have a beloved brand with 97% awareness? If you’re Sharpie, you “uncap” and embrace your brand with a wider, strategic campaign that highlights how consumers have reshaped and reinvented your product.
The pioneering permanent pen company has been a staple of every household, school, and autograph seeker for the last 45 years. And like Xerox, Q-tip, and Kleenex, Sharpie is a ubiquitous generic term for any indelible marker. Not too bad for a simple pen.
But instead of continuing to focus on its obvious uses, Sharpie has begun tapping into the inspiration of the pens’ fans. Taking the marker way beyond being a label pen, consumers have come up with amazing uses for their Sharpies. Want to trick out your car? Use a Sharpie. Want to decorate your basement for under $10? Use a Sharpie. Want to redesign a lampshade? Use a Sharpie.
Sharpie is embracing and covering these uses and many others in their “Uncap What’s Inside” campaign. From playful print campaigns (seen above) to TV spots to very active Twitter accounts to an active blog to a vibrant creative site and community, Sharpie is not only embracing their consumers’ shaping of the brand but they are also working on enabling and celebrating it. It’s great to see them wrap their brand around such creativity.
Sharpie’s “Uncap What’s Inside” — A forward-thinking marketing strategy worth highlighting.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I drew those
with a (few) Sharpie?