Street Sampling Blog

[guerilla/buzz marketing Cricket Wireless campaign]

Street Sampling Inc. has announced that it is working with Cricket Wireless, one the ten largest wireless companies to launch service in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and Wilmington, DE.

In addition to the traditional media mix of TV, Billboards and radio, Cricket will be doing some unusual activities to create awareness around their new to market service. In preparation for launch week, Street Sampling is fielding a large street team. The brand ambassadors will utilize scratch & win tickets, perform random acts of consumer kindness and strategically place 50 four-color custom umbrellas on food carts within the footprint.

The umbrella idea came about from seeing the numerous food carts placed around the city in fantastic high traffic locations and noticing that most had a place for or were displaying an umbrella. By producing and placing these branded umbrellas, we are able to provide a constant stream of static messaging for our client, says Scott Thurston, President of Street Sampling. It is a win-win; the food cart vendor gets a terrific looking umbrella at no cost and out client gets high visibility on major street corners.

The project took three weeks to complete after production and really counted on the skills of our local manager. Most of these carts are owner-operated so we needed to quickly establish a partnership with each of them.

Total budget for production and placement of the umbrellas was $15,000.

[experiential word of mouth marketing]

On the 14th, you’ll note my post about holidays in general, and Valentine’s Day in particular. Each holiday is announced well in advance. The idea being to generating upcoming interest by merchants to make sure that during the lead up and the event customers show up at their doors.

Word-of-mouth communication tends to make people feel that they are being told the truth without any ulterior motives. Honesty is perceived and the receivers of messages are moved to perform the intended call to action at significantly higher rates than when approached by various other communication techniques. This is true because there is no perceived reward for the person that is speaking positively about the product, service or message at hand.

If you missed this video, it’s an excellent example of real one-on-one word of mouth marketing. Connecting directly with your intended audience. (Be sure to click “read the rest…” I’ve got more to say and the video to watch).

Read the rest of this entry »

[experiential holiday spirit Lord and Taylor]

The true spirit of the season has begun, the tree has been light, the holiday windows are fantastic and by teaming up with Lord & Taylor, our Street Sampling brand ambassador staff of 30 “holiday elves” will be delivering that special message along with $25.00 Lord & Taylor gift cards.

Yes, we are excited to partner with Lord & Taylor for this experiential marketing campaign. What better way to start someone’s day than by wishing them happy holidays with a gift from Lord & Taylor, America’s OLDEST DEPARTMENT store and one of America’s premier retailers.

More coming soon as this tremendous event unfolds!

[experiential marketing background highlights]

Strangely enough, I feel compelled today to backtrack a bit and give you some background on how and why I “got into” experiential marketing. It’s often life’s odd paths that help you branch out and form your own business. My paths have been no exception.

First, I am the President of Street Sampling, Inc., an experiential marketing agency (sounds a bit like the line from the movie “American President,” but it’s true).

I started my marketing career as a consultant in 2004. By 2006, I’d founded Street Sampling, Inc. This company has gone on to execute numerous experiential marketing programs on behalf of agencies and clients such as:

o  Chevy
o  Lacoste
o  Krispy Kreme
o  Dr. Pepper
o  Reynolds
o  Puma, and
o  The Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Prior to striking out on my own, I honed my marketing skills as a Field Marketing Manager for Princeton Partners (on behalf of PNC Bank). During this period of explosive growth for PNC, I lead the field outreach efforts for new branches. Ideas I incorporated were:

o Street teams (using brand ambassadors)
o Event activation
o Grand openings
o Major contests and VIP events.

While I didn’t invent these ideas, they were not being used well by the company. I made sure they worked.

In fact, at its peak, this group supported 40+ new branches. All the while, I played an integral role in the field marketing during the conversion of Mercantile Bank (Baltimore) and Yardville Bank (New Jersey) into the existing PNC footprint.

What I have done with Street Sampling, Inc., is conceptualize, create, execute, and/or fix broken programs for many of the Fortune 1000. From multi-city tours, special events, grand openings and live product sampling, I’ve has done it all – 12 years+ experience within the hospitality industry – from senior manager to director positions.

As with any business, having extensive operations experience lends itself well to the successful execution of each and every experiential marketing program event.

At Street Sampling, we take pride in exceeding client expectations.

So as I draw this post to a close, I also wanted to leave you with an important thought. Don’t forget as you contemplate starting or expanding your business that it’s also critical to become active within your physical community. With that said, I’m also a member of the:

o DC AdClub
o Latino Economic Development Corporation, and
o Potomac Executive Network.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading a bit of my background as much as I’ve enjoyed sharing it with you.

Feel free to make and take a moment and tell me something about yourself by commenting to this post.