Sneak Attack Marketing

So my Vemma post made me start thinking about sneaky ways to market. I know that sounds pretty bad but I was also thinking about that ridiculous K-Mart commercial and wondering what kind of marketing suicide their agency or marketing department is trying to commit. It's not necessarily sneaky marketing, just more focused on getting attention as opposed to really caring about sending a message. Anyway, back to the point. For our consulting project we had to do some grassroots/guerrilla marketing; i.e. standing around and handing out fliers or talking to people or trying to get people to come check out our display. And really, students are trained, almost like Pavlov's Dog to look straight down and keep walking, don't make eye contact with the people with fliers and clip boards. They will make you attend things and fill things out. So we get ignored half the time. So why not do some sneaky stuff. Look at the people who come for the Brazos Valley Animal Shelter looking to raise money and awareness. They don't stand out there with clipboards...they bring animals! Cool animals like exotic lizards and cute puppies and one time even an African Spurred Tortoise. Of course, it makes sense for them to bring animals. But it could also be an interesting and less aggressive way to get people to come and talk to you about other things. I bring my dog to campus all the time and despite being almost 6 years old, his size and fluff-level make him look like a permanent puppy. Everyone wants to stop and talk to me about my dog and hold him and many try to "steal him". So if I'm running a campaign about something that is not very interesting (ahem natural gas) I could bring my dog, and other people could bring their pets. Suddenly people WANT to come over and talk to us. They can pet our animals while we bombard them with information about our events, get them to fill out response cards, etc. They are automatically in a better and more cooperative mood simply for having held a cute dog. I think it would be worth an experiment. Sneak marketing. With animals.