Category: Marketing Insight

How to – Consumer promotion

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Occassionally a consumer promotion does what it’s intended to do.

This is one such promotion.

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Summary:

Surfers compete in a surfboard paddle race.  The first four to the Red Bull buoy in each race will be the only surfers winched from sea to sky by the Red Bull helicopter, and whisked away to spend a weekend surf trip in a top secret location hosted by Ross Clark Jones & current World Champion Surfer Mick Fanning at an awesome beach house retreat.  Winners will get to mingle with Mick, demo some awesome new boards and order their very own free custom surfboard!

  

Click the image above to check out the details.

 

Simple mechanics, enhances brand value, anyone can have a go, zero cost to enter, unobtainable prize which money can’t buy, worth talking about.

Sure, they’ve got the budget to do it, and I’m a self confused surf junky… but neither of these things are what makes it so impressive. It’s the idea, the execution and more so “The Experience” – even the losers will enjoy participating.

   

As life becomes more about experiences, rather than consumption smart startups will take notice.

  

What experience does your start up offer?

 

Kudos Redbull – again.

Presentation Props

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Ever the showman, Steve Jobs showed us how it’s done – again.

     

He didin’t need large flat screens

He didn’t need to buy the rights to a Beatles or Rolling Stones song

He didn’t need a montage of extreme sports

      

With the launch of the new Macbook Air. Jobs did something so simple, yet so powerfull

     

His prop: the humble manila evenlope.

  

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At the Macworld conference in San Francisco jobs wondered on stage unwound the string on a standard manila envelope and slid from it the new ultra thin MacBook Air. The crowed oohed and aahed in disbelief, some even laughing incredulously.

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It could have been any of us. The prop probably cost less than $1.00. This is great news for start ups because we’re only limited to the effort we put into thinking about it.

So the next time we present something to a customer, VC or employee, let’s think like Jobs and make it memorable.

Just one customer

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

If we had just one customer how would we treat her?

If we had just one customer what would our business relationship be?

If we had just one customer at what lengths would we help her?

If we had just one customer we’d hope she told others good things about us.

If we had 1 million customers it would be different. We’d be too busy to do any of that stuff. We’d have projects and financials and meetings and someone answering our phone and daily issues to resolve….right?

As far as she is concerned, we only have one customer.

So it must be true, we only have one customer. We ought treat her that way.

Simple permission marketing – in action

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

You may recall a blog entry I did on Simple permission marketing. The basic premise being, if we have a startup which is ‘interesting’, it’s not difficult to get some good media coverage which is ‘content’ – not advertising.

In the spirit on practicing what one preaches, here’s a little summary of how we’ve achieved this for rentoid.com

* You can see the article for each by click on each listed below:

–          The Leader Newspaper (metro ciculation)

–          The Herald Sun Newspaper (biggest circulation in Australia)

–          The Age Newspaper (most respected broadsheet in Australia)

–          The Age – Livewire (web weekly of above)

–          The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney’s broadsheet)

–          ABC radio – National Public radio – interview

–          The Australian Financial Review (Wall Street Journal of Aust)

–          The Pod Cast Network – G’day world interview

–          Multiple targeted magazines & blogs

Net cost of all this was zero. No PR firm, no dodgy deals. Just honest conversation with people about rentoid.com and what we are doing.

It works, but it takes 2 things: effort and a lot of follow up.

Try it for your start up, and let start up blog know how you go!

15.4%

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Only 15.4% of the worlds population have ever accessed the internet.

If we think the internet is ‘world changing’, then let’s imagine what would be possible if ‘the world’ actually had access to it? The idea sharing, the education, the cultural understandings….

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Maybe start ups should be thinking of how to give the remaining 84.6% of the world access to the net rather than working out a new social paradigm to leverage.

Top 10 viral marketing campaigns ever

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The factors we’ve considered:

There needs to be an actual business or brand behind it

Not just something funny

The idea or product was primarily spread by others.

Not ‘driven’ by paid media.

Based on effectiveness only, (ignores insensitivities / political / religious views)

A little explanation is next to each

 In order. 

  1. The story of Jesus Christ (before digital technology or even the printing press, this ‘story’ crossed borders and oceans)
  2. 911 ‘Al Queda’ launch (3 weeks free media coverage on every media channel in every country)
  3. Polaroid Instamatic Cameras (product usage = product demonstration)
  4. Hotmail (the first viral product of the internet age)
  5. In Rainbows album by Radiohead. (true brand handover to passionate users, fan chooses price – even free, resulting in massive free media & blogosphere coverage, then goes to number 1 on US charts on physical album release)
  6. Google (usability & effectiveness which led to absolute domination)
  7. Youtube (was the ultimate user experience and so won the game. There were 240 other video sharing sites when it launched!)
  8. OK Go – Ok Here it goes film clip. (first to leverage youtube commercially. 27 million views and counting. No 2 on the charts to boot)
  9. Blair Witch Project (set a new paradigm for movie promotion & brand hijacking)
  10. Mini Cooper S Campaign (first ‘real’ personalized campaign message)

Add to, agree, disagree, complain and disdain in comments below!