• Adweek, Monday, March 22, 2010 10:56 AM

Cluck-U, a fried-chicken chain popular with the college crowd around Hoboken, N.J., doesn't depend on a Facebook fan page or Tweets to drive digitally savvy consumers to its storefront. About a quarter of its traffic can be directly attributed to two chickens who stroll down the sidewalk high-fiving passersby and handing out coupons, Cluck-U CEO J.P. Haddad tells Lauren Comiteau.

Low-tech marketing is, in fact, thriving because it "cuts through the fragmentation of today's media," says Mark Voysey, co-founder of the Cunning creative agency, which offers "nontraditional" marketing for clients such as Unilever to ZenithOptimedia.

Among some of the examples Comiteau offers: a 40-foot-tall inflatable rocket ship that housed a "moon walk" for kids; "voicevertising" -- a low-tech stunt reminiscent of the old carnie barkers; weather balloons and blimps that serve as high-altitude billboards.

What's new about all this, you say? Well, that's where Facebook and Twitter and the like come in. "If we can get people talking on Twitter or posting something on Facebook, I can get the message out through talking to one person," says Sam Ewen, founder of guerrilla marketing firm Interference.

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