Creative and Unique Guerrilla Marketing Tactics
Posted by
Dave
We recently had the wonderful experience of having graphic designer Alyssa Love Pangan join us from Red River College for her three-week practicum experience. She fit into our company culture very easily and we enjoyed working with her and eating her tasty noodle dish at our monthly potluck. She has a great career ahead of her judging by the work she did for us and particularly the work she has done for herself at school.
As usual, we ask students to present their portfolios in the lounge and we gathered around for a presentation of some very excellent design and some exceptional promotional execution. I asked her to write an article for our website blog about the guerrilla marketing campaign that she had produced and implemented. She created the blog, "Wear it Like a Penguin", as a project to track website hits and, therefore, the success of her unique guerrilla promotions. She produced a beautiful and informative 32-page online book about the project that you can see on the first page of her blog. Click the "Guerrilla Marketing Book" icon. Quite amazing.
Here she is, writing incognito, in the vein of her incognito campaign...
Wear It Like A Penguin?
Like fashion icons, Penguins are always so neatly dressed. Wear It Like A Penguin is a recently launched fashion blog in Winnipeg that started out just as a college assignment for Campaign Strategy. The blog is known more for its guerrilla marketing techniques than anything else and was created to keep track of pageviews.
Here are some of the creative guerilla marketing techniques that the student used to spread the word.
BOOKMARKS: Bookmarks with the blog url were inserted into popular Fashion Magazines at grocery stores in Winnipeg.
SHOP-DROPPING: Price tags with the blog url were left in pockets of selected clothing in retail stores of popular shopping malls in Winnipeg.
LOST WALLETS: Wallets were left empty with an attached price tag with the blog url on benches and coffee tables at shopping malls and coffee shops in Winnipeg.
LOST HANDKERCHIEFS: Handkerchiefs were sewn with price tags attached and were left on benches and coffee tables at shopping malls and coffee shops in Winnipeg.
WASHROOM ICON OUTFITS: Men’s paper jeans and women’s paper dresses were cut out with an attached price tag and were applied onto men and women’s washroom icons at shopping malls and colleges in Winnipeg.
PURSES & TIES: Purses and ties with attached price tags were hung on jacket hooks in washroom stalls, elevator and staircase railings, and everywhere it was possible.
Within one week and a few days from distributing 175 marketing pieces she was able to reach 998 views online and three followers! This fun campaign definitely was one of the highlights of her year at Red River College. She says “Guerilla marketing is always fun… when you don’t get caught!”
– Isla Penguin
Ad Agencies Slow to Adapt to Online Marketing (except us, of course)
Posted by
Dave
Friends of friends of friends of friends. And such.
Ad agencies are not getting good grades in evolving and providing value in the age of social networks, online advertising and the awesome new capabilities in web development. This according to a post in Marketing Profs, which was quoting a study by the CMO Council.
They say that such firms will be challenged in their retention efforts: 48% of senior marketers said they are hiring specialized digital marketing providers to implement social, mobile and interactive strategies in 2012. 47% say they want to do it in-house.
Here's a chart.
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This study took me by surprise. I guess we live in a bit of a vacuum, never knowing what our competitors are doing and thinking they must be doing what we do.
We started into web development, social networking and online advertising just about as soon as was possible. We tested it out on ourselves and, later, on my own social networking company, and now are implementing programs for our clients and teaching them how to effectively manage their digital presence themselves.
I think we are ahead of the game. We are certainly ahead of the agencies that these senior managers are referring to. We were fortunate enough to have partnered with IBM in the United States to build elaborate websites for Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Elizabeth Arden, among others. Partnering with a company thay pays 600 PhD's to go deep on how people use computer interfaces and which ways are the best to build, helped put us on the bleeding edge in the early days of creating a brand's online presence.
Web design, architecture and content development, and online social management and execution are fast becoming the most sought after practices at Fusion. We have spent a great deal of time and effort, in many internal meetings, evolving our direction and setting course for what we see will be our future. The web, and Apple and Google, and Facebook, and LinkedIn and Twitter have changed the way the world works and have decimated entire industries. We don't want to be broadsided like the music industry, the movie industry, the publishing industry, the travel industry, the TV industry, and too many more industries to mention.
We want to, and must, stay ahead of the game.
2/3 of online adults use social networking sites
Posted by
Dave
People are loving social networking! After email and search engines, social networking is used more frequently than anything else on the web (Pew Research Center).
Social sites are most popular with women and young adults under 30. 18-29 women are the power users. Nine out of ten women! Seven out of ten use them every day. Older users are the fastest growing bunch. The younger were early adopters and are stable in their growth. 70% of 30-49 year olds use social networking sites. 51% of 50-64 year olds and 33% older than 65 use the sites. 30 to 64 year olds are picking it up fast and are the fastest growing segment.
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Interestingly, Pew Research found that there are no significant differences in use of social networking sites based on race and ethnicity, household income, education level, or whether they live in an urban, suburban, or rural environment.
The top word graphic shows what single word people said about social networking in this study (largest words mean more people said it).
Communicating on your Facebook Business Page
Posted by
Dave
Red Bull "Like" Page on Facebook
Your Facebook business page can be addictive and very time-consuming, and it can also be sadly neglected and left for dead. Of course, some where in the middle is where you need to be.
Posting updates more than once, or maybe twice per day is about the most we suggest you do. If you are always on your fans’ walls, and your message isn’t always titillating and timely, they’ll drop you quickly.
Being “liked” on Facebook, as a business, is a privilege. It is an offer from a customer or prospect to communicate and it must be taken seriously. While it can be a place for sales notices and company information, the more of that you do, the more you look like spam and the faster they’ll drop you.
Facebook is your opportunity to build a customer relationship that can become quite intimate, one-on-one. It is your chance to listen to your customers and to share information that they desire to make better buying decisions and to maintain loyalty.
As a person’s Facebook wall continues to scroll and messages fall out of sight, it is useful to find the most opportune posting times of the day. Look at posts that got the most comments and determine the time of day they were posted. You should also use Facebook Insights, which let’s you monitor interactions on your page over a set time period.
Two other quick tips, after ensuring that you have a Facebook “business page”, not a personal profile page, is to create a strong call-to-action for visitors to “like” you (the Red Bull example above is an excellent one with nothing but a call-to-action), thereby opening the door to communication, and include keywords as often as you can in your status updates, photo captions and anywhere else you can. Talk to your community, speak their language, thank them, reward them and listen to them.
At Fusion, we help our clients manage their Facebook, Twitter and other social networking accounts, ensuring that we create a strong and consumer-oriented brand voice and messaging strategy.
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