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.

[guerilla/experiential marketing]

Today’s post is actually a recent article of mine on the subject of Guerilla (or guerrilla) marketing. I hope you find it informative and have fun reading it (I had fun writing it):

In 1984, Jay Conrad Levinson coined the term “Guerilla Marketing” to refer to a set of unconventional marketing techniques that are geared towards generating a solid buzz factor. His book, “Guerilla Marketing,” is now commonly referred to around the planet in many marketing instruction settings. Targeted audiences are approached in non-traditional locations and in atypical ways to create a memorable experience that is viewed with excitement and positivity. People appreciate the break that guerilla marketing gives them from the formalized approaches to advertising so common otherwise.
Read the rest of this entry »

[experiential marketing at work]

If you’ve been reading this blog, and visiting our website you are very familiar with the ideas, concepts, and implementation of word of mouth marketing… right?

So it came as no surprise to come across this post made January 8th in the New York Times:

[sic] Barack Obama has repeatedly said how much his BlackBerry means to him and how he is dreading the prospect of being forced to give it up, because of legal and security concerns, once he takes office.

“I’m still clinging to my BlackBerry,” Mr. Obama said Wednesday in an interview with CNBC and The New York Times. “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.”

What could the “BlackBerry president” charge for his plugs of the device if he were not a public servant? More than $25 million, marketing experts say, and maybe as much as $50 million.

“This would be almost the biggest endorsement deal in the history of endorsements,” said Doug Shabelman, the president of Burns Entertainment, which arranges deals between celebrities and companies. “He’s consistently seen using it and consistently in the news arguing – and arguing with issues of national security and global welfare – how he absolutely needs this to function on a daily basis.”

As the article goes on to state, if President Obama wasn’t in public office, yet a well-known figure like Michael Phelps or Jerry Seinfield, the now Mr. President would be making a bundle himself for his verbal delight with his Blackberry device.

My point?

Exactly what I’ve been talking about on this blog and at the Street Sampling website, word of mouth advertising works!

The New York Times goes on to say:

Mr. Shabelman put the value even higher, at $50 million or more, because the endorsement is worldwide.

“The worth to a company to have the president always talking about a BlackBerry and how it absolutely is a necessity to keep in touch with reality?” he said. “Think about how far the company has come if they’re able to say, ‘The president has to have this to keep in touch.’”

Never, ever under-estimate the power of experiential (word of mouth) marketing! Nor where you next great promoter may come from!

[Experiential Marketing Tactics Result in Instant Sales Surges and Lightning-Fast Branding]

Guerrilla marketing refers to a system of unconventional techniques for product or message promotion. It relies on unexpected tactics being utilized to strike the emotional centers of the brain that have to do with comfort and pleasure. Simultaneously meshing feelings of trust and the avoidance of discomfort, guerrilla marketers are able to drive surges in sales and greatly diminish branding time for advertisers. Also called brand marketing, these techniques create a buzz in the streets concerning a given product, brand or message and act to quickly establish relationships with potential consumers.

The guerrilla marketer must be in touch with his or her targeted audience. He or she needs to be aware of the target group’s feelings and thoughts concerning relevant issues that surround their propensity to purchase or act in the desired manner. Time is critical and the marketer has only seconds in which to tap into the mind of the prospect and lock their interest in. Unconventional marketing strategies like these utilize an array of visual, audible and other types of nerve-striking vehicles to forge a path to instant sales and brand acceptance.

Whereas traditional benefits-and-values advertising attempts to appeal directly to a consumer’s sense of practicality, guerrilla marketing techniques do the same in addition to creating an emotional need for the product. Impulse purchases are the desired goal – along with brand acceptance for the long run. When these types of unanticipated sales techniques are unleashed upon the public, they are received with humor, easiness and effectiveness.

[More about "traditional marketing" tomorrow, stay tuned!]