When faced with a last minute challenge of coming up with an idea to engage consumers, you can’t go wrong with balloons. Yes balloons (the G rated party kind).
At some stage in our lives, most of us would have had an experience with balls or loons, or maybe just balloons. Whether it is a tactile or visual experience – decorations at a birthday party, water bombs in the schoolyard, puffing it up and letting it fly around the room, whoopie cushion effects or playing balloon tennis – balloons bring colour and excitement to our lives, not to mention deep relaxing breaths trying to fill them up.
An invention from the 1820’s (thanks Wikipedia), balloons have been providing endless uses from entertainment, decoration, medicine & flight. What Wikipedia won’t tell you is that they were used recently at our client xmas party to create an experience, where we filmed people losing their minds & inhibitions (reconnecting with their inner child) in a pit of balloons.
From a marketing & engagement point of view seeing the behaviour that a simple idea generated was really interesting, an “oooh that’s cool” moment. On a personal level, the experience evoked nostalgic memories of childhood. It reminded me that no matter how serious, shy or just plain boring people can sometimes be, when put in a room filled with coloured balloons & a video camera they loose their minds, and the layers of inhibition quickly peel away to reveal a playful juvenile side. Sort of like going back in time and seeing grownups as children acting out their natural uninhibited behaviour.
It’s an interesting thing, that the older we get (& the more serious we become) the less we laugh at life the way we did when we were kids. The truth is, we don’t always have to get caught up in the seriousness of life and over-think ideas that are wrapped up in layer upon layer of strategy. Sometimes all it takes to create a ‘balloon moment’ is a simple idea that embraces our inner child & reminds us to enjoy life a little more.
