Inman

‘Marathon Man’ and aerial banners offer branding you can’t ignore

Condopedia.com recently ensured that almost everyone at Vancouver’s Celebration of Light would leave the popular fireworks show knowing its name.

The new Wikipedia-style site, which is dedicated to aggregating data about buildings in a number of cities, promoted itself with an aerial banner ad. The lookie-here marketing stunt certainly paid off, according to Maggie Hawryluk, a spokesperson at Condopedia.com.

“The fly-over attracted a great deal of attention — as you’ll see from the overhead photos — and even crashed the site momentarily,” she said in an email.

Meanwhile, Realtor Samantha DeBianchi recently executed another eyeball-grabbing marketing tactic, this one back down on earth.

She paid a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., icon, the always-running “Marathon Man,” to supplement his bizarre athletic get-up, which usually involves a coat, with a placard proclaiming her the “Best Realtor in Town.”

Accused during #madREskillz of giving real estate a bad name with the advertising ploy, she tweeted an article to offer more context on “Marathon Man.” He is an endearingly eccentric community fixture, one who is helping to support his running habit, in part, with funds from DeBianchi, the Sun Sentinel reported.

“This type of #guerillamarketing hardly gives the industry a poor reputation! It’s the complete opposite!” She tweeted.

A variety of gift ideas and new media tools also surfaced in the latest #madREskillz. Scroll through the tweets below to learn about them. And don’t forget to vote for the #madREskillz winner on our Facebook page later today!