Naked Protest Promotes Launch of Outdoor Juice Campaign

Naked Juice kicked off its major outdoor advertising campaign today in a bold non-traditional move by staging a protest in front of the Tribune building in downtown Chicago on Michigan Avenue.

According to on-scene Naked PR manager Rachel Kenney who was kind enough to let me interview her, the Naked employees and giant fruit people (hired talent) wielding picket signs, free drinks, chapstick and stickers were speaking out against the evils of preservatives, added sugar and inferior juices.

The signs bore slogans like "Say no to added sugar" and "Down with free radicals", while friendly giant fruit started breakdancing in the circle they had formed.

According to Rachel, the outdoor campaign launch this was kicking off is the company's first outdoor media campaign. It will feature billboards, urban panels (large signs in front of subway entrances), wild postings and cabvertising (ads on cabs) with 60 cabs total having ads on them and 30 being fully wrapped.

While she could not comment on the campaign's budget, she stated that it was very small, which is partly why it is being bolstered by these events. However Naked has a tradition of promoting itself through grassroots efforts and word of mouth campaigns. To quote Rachel in an earlier preview article from PROMO, "Naked Juice prefers to spend the majority of our marketing budget on grassroots efforts to really connect with our consumers, we're very interactive with our consumers."

Definitely a great surprise for me today as I walked (more like sprinted) out of work early today. I thought it was just going to be some little demonstration, but it was fully backed up with a selection of sample drinks in several flavors (I chose the delicious mango one), a Green Machine flavored chapstick, a sticker and a card directing me to enter the printed ID code on it at the Naked Juice survey site to participate and get free promo junk.

While I definitely appreciated the free swag, the best part of course was the cute girls helping with the promotion. I'm not quite sure who was a Naked employee or hired help, but they definitely made me wish their next promotion was a bit more true to their company name.

I took a few small video clips but unfortunately I cannot figure out how to successsfully convert the craptastic .3g video format into something that will upload to YouTube (please place howto's in comments if you know how!) so these pictures will have to suffice. I will update later if I can figure out how to get them to post.

Be sure to catch their next protest for some cute girls, free swag and strange giant fruit people at the Lincoln Park Zoo tomorrow (Sat. the 16th) from 10am-5pm.