How better to test the ethical standards of a city than to set up an unmanned pop-up shop with bottles of tea at the ready and a secured cash box?

Set them up in 12 cities, then hook up the secret cameras (with Ustream – YouTube footage available as well!) and watch the fun. Add a flashy website (honestcities.com), and you’ve got a fairly comprehensive, “social” tea marketing campaign!

Check out this article on the stunt, where the event is pitched as a study in honesty rather than a multi-layered guerrilla marketing campaign (well done, HT) and the honestcities site as well, which features a survey link & tie into facebook

Honest Tea Facebook Welcome Shot
for a like=coupon offer. One downside – you have to download a coupon-printing application to get the coupon. Not too smooth.

The ultimate goal seems to be the popular quest for more Facebook “likes”. So far, I see 67,564 fans and 310 views on YouTube. Will have to check in a week or so to see how they fair. Also will be interesting to see what they do with their fan base after the coupons are gone.

It’s a fun campaign, and well thought out. I’ll admit I like it. I like probably it more than I should. Will really like it if fans aren’t left high and dry when the party’s over.

Hey! Why didn’t the honesty tour make it to Baltimore???