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/buzz marketing keyword tool]

I’ve been holding onto this website for a while, not because I didn’t want to share it, but because I wanted to make sure when I did, it made sense in the context of what we do… experiential marketing.

The tool I uncovered is called Wordle.com.

One mistake many people make in writing their ad copy or website material is not enough thorough keyword density research. Sure you need to know are they looking for what you think they are looking for, but you also need to know have you used the word(s) consistently enough to even make a difference.

Wordle makes your work a whole lot easier. For example, in our February 18th post, I grabbed one of the paragraphs:

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.

I then head out to Wordle, paste that paragraph into the box for text on the site and presto! up comes a cloud tag clearly showing me the strongest to weakest words within that text.

You can also use this directly with a feed, print the results, randomize your results, open it in a new window and, if you create an account, save it to their gallery.

Keywords are so important, online and offline, when it comes to effectively marketing. Creating buzz about your program or service means weighing, analyzing, evaluating, and adding useful terms. This tool will also help you weed out the useless, space-hogging keywords that do little to further your marketing efforts.

Give Wordle a go for yourself and then be sure to drop me feedback on the tool. I’d love to know what you think.

Let’s get creative!

[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!

[continuation of yesterday's experiential marketing discussion]

As promised yesterday, here is the rest of my discussion regarding guerilla marketing versus traditional marketing methods:

… Traditional advertising methods have been proven conclusively to actually drive consumers away now.

Modern advances in technology have opened up new realms for shopping to all people and they have become very unappreciative of time-consuming techniques that attempt to make them feel responsible to make certain purchases. Instead, they will act far sooner with the proper mental buttons pushed – and they will look back on the experience with pleasure and happiness associated.

Back in the 80’s when guerrilla (i.e., experiential) marketing was officially introduced, it was thought to be best geared towards small businesses on smaller budgets. The emphasis was on money-saving, creative approaches to shock buyers into purchasing. Through the direct evolution of the brand marketing art, today it is utilized more and more commonly by major advertisers like Nokia, General Motors, Harley-Davidson, Levi’s, Volkswagen and many others.

Guerrilla marketing has been accepted by the advertising world as a super-effective, aggressive and entertaining promotional system.

You can learn so much more about the exciting realm of guerrilla marketing today by visiting our main web site, Street Sampling. There you will find psychological tactics that will act to ensure the lucrative success of your future advertising campaigns – and they will be far more cost effective than the outdated techniques that traditional marketing firms continue to drive into the ground.

Imagination, creativity, emotional stirring and unbound avenues to tap into the minds of your targeted audience all act in seamless conjunction. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, experiential marketing works to drive your sales through the roof and get you branded faster than you ever thought possible.