You can find marketing innovation in the oddest places: A construction site along a main road in the western suburbs of Chicago.  And in oddest forms: a giant inflatable cat squeezing a hard-hatted worker in its fist. I had to stop and get out of the car and take this picture.

It made me forget about innovations like social media, segmented direct marketing and search engine optimization for a while, and give some thought to one of the dinosaurs (literally, in some cases) of marketing: the giant inflatable display.

They get attention by blowing up (excuse the pun please) a brand message, like the giant Firehawk inflatable does for Firestone tire stores. But I’ve always wondered what auto dealers were thinking, when they blew up those giant inflatable gorillas, Godzillas and so forth. The only message they deliver is “big.” Kind of redundant, in an auto dealership half a block long, with row upon row of shiny new cars, bright lights, string of colorful pennants and big, big signs. Local visibility and awareness is not a problem. Passers-by do not suddenly see a giant blue gorilla and say “Gosh! I was going to buy some paint at the hardware store. But that big gorilla makes me think I’ll stop and buy a Buick instead!”

The giant inflatable gorillas and Godzillas are an aberration; auto dealers’ usual attitude is that if it doesn’t work, it’s gone. But the giant inflatable cat is an innovation. It doesn’t support a brand (like the Firehawk inflatable), but it does deliver a very specific message. The fat cat inflatable is designed and built to support unions’ picketing of employers at job sites.

A marketing menagerie
It turns out that the fat cat is not alone.  A little Googling revealed there’s a wide selection of giant inflatables manufactured specifically to support labor vs. management messages: A rat, a pig, a cockroach, even a skunk.

They’ve been used in management vs. labor disputes all over the U.S., including baristas vs. Starbucks corporate at the annual meeting, and for striking movie and TV writers. There’s even a flickr photo posting site for fans of the giant inflatable rat.

Leave aside labor vs. management preferences and opinions about negative advertising for a minute.  Imagine the giant (inflatable?) light bulb appearing over the head of the innovative marketer at Big Sky Balloons or Inflatable Images, when he or she first thought “How can I expand my customer base beyond the business segment? What if…I created a product to satisfy the needs of the ‘other side’”?