The Analogue Flyer Isn’t Dead, It Just Needs a Digital Network.
Never have I wished more that I lived in New York and smoked as I did last November. I am a non-smoker residing in Australia.
On a freezing Friday in New York, November 2025, a well-dressed 75-year-old bloke with a pack of ciggies handed out one of the most effective pieces of marketing I’ve seen all year (although I still have a soft spot for Howatson + Company’s recent Selley's Campaign in Melbourne).
Bob Terry, a 75-year-old actor with a 60-year smoking habit, already known online as “Breaking Bob”, used a low-tech flyer to trigger a high-tech flash mob. The flyer was (radically) constrained, a QR code to RSVP, a map, a picture of Bob and an invitation that read:
Smoke a cigarette with me - Friday Nov 21 - 2:00 - 2:05 pm
And because the universe has the most wonderful way of giving us what we need right when we need it, 2,500 people showed up. Uni students, skaters, suits, and the generally curious crowded a corner in Washington Square Park, yelling “Bob! Bob! Bob!” at a man most had never even met.
And just like that, Bob built a community on presence. He walked the park, looked people in the eye (can you imagine?), handed them a flyer and, occasionally, a cigarette, and he asked people to show up.
And then, of course, the internet did what the internet does: amplified it and turned it into a cultural moment.
Which brings me to my point.
We keep burying analogue tools because they don’t perform on digital timelines. But they still work if you plug them into the right network. We humans love our binaries. On / Off. Hot / Cold. Digital / Traditional. Performance / Brand. But Ciggies in the park (and the Selleys campaign in Melbourne) proves that the best ideas are the hybrids sitting in the hazy shade of grey.
Bob’s flyer worked because it created a network effect around a paper artefact: Analogue input: the flyer, the ciggies, the face-to-face pitch + Digital amplification: TikTok clips, posts, reposts, shares, comments + Structural credibility: a QR code and an RSVP page with 2,500 names + A clear constraint: five minutes, a teeny tiny micro-ritual you could actually commit to.
And oh, the Joy of the masses!
Google “New York Cigarette Man” and fall down the rabbit hole. I promise you it's fun.
Social psychologists will tell you that scarcity + specificity + social proof is a potent mix. Bob delivered all three without ever muttering “funnel optimisation”, and he couldn’t give a shit about his CPM.
Yet he pulled numbers most brands would burn half a mil to achieve.
Why did it work? Because it was human, I mean, maybe the new Mayor’s glow (he's just been announced) also added to citywide goodwill? But for five minutes (which turned into thirty), New York looked like it would have felt like old New York: chaotic, left of centre and stunningly communal.
Consumer behaviour research consistently shows that trust increases when something feels honest, unmediated, and anchored in (dare I say it) lived experience. I reckon Bob’s lived in charm and self-deprecation became a magnet for young New Yorkers craving a low-stakes sense of community.
People didn’t show up for the ciggie. They were there for the story. The ciggie was just a prop, the flyer was the device, and the product was a moment of human connection.
Brands spend millions engineering what Bob built with a printer and a walk in the park. Marketers chase scale, automation, and efficiency (as we must…), but culture moves on social cues.
Bob did three things that most brands don’t:
He broke the pattern. We scroll past thousands of beautifully designed posts every week. An old school flyer with direct eye contact? Way harder to ignore. He used constraint as creativity. Five minutes is ridiculous, which is why it worked: the in-joke you had to be part of, and he trusted people to share the story for him; he looked us in the eye and invited us in.
Analogue tools still hold power because they’re physical; they interrupt. They demand acknowledgment, dare I say, respect, and crucially, they translate beautifully into digital language.
A flyer becomes a screenshot, a conversation becomes a caption, and the moment becomes a meme.
So… what does this mean for the rest of us?
For the love of god… and Bob… let’s stop over-engineering everything. People don’t want our perfectly optimised, five-phase, six-channel campaign. They’re waiting for something that feels like a real human connection.
If we want to cut through, we might choose to: Start small, be specific, give people a story worth telling, build the analogue moment, and let the digital world take it where it wants to go.
The “moments” scale because people decide they’re worth sharing, not because we tell them to.
https://substack.com/@colettegallagher
