Picture this: You’re sitting on a patio and see a delivery guy pull up on a Vespa scooter. He leaves the Vespa to do his thing and 10 minutes later, a pretty girl comes by and asks, ‘Is that your Vespa?’ You shake your head no and she says, ‘That’s too bad. I’d really like a ride on it.’ The girl asks everyone on the patio about the scooter in question. Finally, the delivery guy comes back and the girl asks him for a ride. He agrees and the pair rides off into the sunset.
Kinda makes you want one, huh? If so, you’ve just been sold.
That’s the thinking behind Vespa street theatre. Masterminded by Dentsu’s creative catalyst Glen Hunt, the street theatre generates buzz and takes advertising to the streets – literally. Hunt says 80% of the time, the actors ride off to the patio crowd’s applause. Talk about buzz.
‘We’ve had this going since May and we’ve been reluctant to talk about it with the media because we’d lose the crowd’s surprise element,’ he says. ‘We hit every patio in Toronto with this, all summer long and people just loved it.’
Hunt’s idea came from his view of Vespa as a ’60s icon. And in the sixties, Hunt says, street theatre was a popular form of entertainment. He then approached Canadian Scooter Corp.’s president Morey Chaplick with his idea for non-traditional advertising and Vespa’s street theatre was born.
And just in time for the Toronto International Film Festival comes ‘Vesparazzi,’ launched on Sept. 10.
‘This is our guy and about 40 women,’ says Hunt. ‘We launched this at the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel. We have a Vespa parked outside the lobby and he comes out and goes for a ride. The 40 women come screaming down Cumberland Street chasing after him. People are running out of stores with their cameras, wondering who that was.’
The Globe & Mail reported the rider as actor Orlando Bloom. Hunt can’t help but smirk.
The buzz has caught the attention of Vespa’s parent company, Piaggio. According to Hunt, talks have begun to bring street theatre to the U.S., though nothing is in ink yet.
