Organizer of NYC Fashion Show Uses Hashtag Instead of URL in Ad

While reading a recent issue of Time Out New York, we noticed a full page back cover ad for the “Rock the Sidewalk: EXPRESS RUNWAY” event on August 3 in NYC’s Times Square.

While staging an event in one of the world’s busiest pedestrian intersections, which attracts over a third of a million people each day, is certainly worth an article in and of itself, that is not the focus of this piece.

What caught our attention about this marketing event for fashion retailer, EXPRESS, which featured a runway fashion show that was streamed live on Times Square’s huge outdoor digital billboards, was that the ad did not have a web site URL. The only call-to-action (CTA) was a hashtag: #EXPRunway.

This type of tactic is not for every event but if you understand the objective of this event, the target set EXPRESS is going after and the image they are trying to convey, the tactic makes sense.

The key takeaway here is to think beyond just URLs and really understand the full CTA menu available to you i.e. click, tweet, text, scan, tap, like, follow, email, call, etc., and match your CTAs to your audience, media platform and objectives.

Posted on August 28, 2013