Brand-napping – a Winning Pitch

Dave Hirschkop, of Dave’s Gourmet must have been surprised when he began receiving grisly photos along with a hostage note with cut out letters saying “Do You KnoW wHERE YouR BranD iS?”

Along with the ransom letters was a photo of his sauce bottle with a gloved hand around the logo characters neck, photoshoped on the front cover of a newspaper. Further photos followed until Dave decided to call the number on the hostage note pretending to be an FBI agent.

To cut a long story short, the branding agency offered to to the rebranding for Dave for free. It was a much larger client than they would usually work for. They thought the project would be fun and raise their profile by working for a large client.

The full story is an artcle written by John Grossman which can be found at http://www.inc.com

Has anybody else tried an unsual way of marketing themselves that worked?