• by Aaron Baar , December 11, 2013

Despite lingering fears that our technology will one day become sentient and rise up against us Terminator-style, these devices apparently still need our protection now.

Speck, a maker of protective cases for electronic devices, has launched a guerrilla marketing campaign encouraging, “Long Live the Machines.” Framed as a popular movement, the wild postings in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles are meant to celebrate the liberation of fear from everyday drops and falls.

“This ‘movement’ is about championing our relationship with machines,” company representative Lindsay Anne Aamodt, tells Marketing Daily. “Our job is protecting them, not imprisoning them.”

The company has predominantly used web video and testimonials to tout the “military-grade” protection of its cases thus far. One video depicted the story of a paraglider who dropped his phone from a height of 2,000-feet into snow; when he found it, it was working fine. 

Despite the videos, Speck was getting more credit from consumers for its candy-colored styles, rather than its protection, Aamodt says. The “Long Live the Machines” effort is a direct attempt at refocusing that attention. 

“We are known for being colorful and stylish, but we weren’t getting credit for our protection,” Aamodt says. “Nobody understood how our protection worked. They just liked the colors and styles of our cases.”

Through the wild postings, digital media projections over two December weekends in Brooklyn and lower Manhattan, social media and a presence at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, the company is looking to reach consumers who may not have considered the brand, but for whom the language of a popular movement might appeal.

“We’re targeting people that are not already Speck users or fans,” Aamodt says. “We’re attempting to speak the language of the people we’re trying to attract.”