Viral Marketing Archives - Steve Sammartino

Radvertising – Harley Davidson

Posted on November 6, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

While driving I saw a billboard advertisment for Harley Davidson. I didn’t get a photo… but we don’t really need one. I can explain it instead.

It had a big picture of a Harley with this copy line underneath it:

331 screws included

Now that is radvertising simply because these three words say so much.

Craftsmanship, Detail, Big, Hand made, Care, Tailored, Complete, Traditional, Customised... I’m sure you can add a few superlatives as well.

It’s a pretty damn good follow up to a recent campaign they ran which I do have the visuals of below.

Steve – founder rentoid.com

Love & brands

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

In order to be in love we need to feel loved. Often we mistake love for other intense emotions such as lust, obsession and even fear.

So if we were to translate this to business parlance it might read like this:

If we want people to love our brand or company, we simply have to make our audience ‘feel loved’.

So then the next questions we should be asking are:

– Will they love this product?

– Will they love our value equation?

– Will they love our guarantee?

– Will they love our designs?

– Will love our ‘contact us’ policy or phone staff?

In fact, let’s just start every audience related question with the words ‘Will they love….”

If we do this and focus on being more than good, more than liked and only accept moving towards stuff people will love. Then one day, they may just love our brand.

Frequency vs Depth

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

In advertising parlance we talk about depth and frequency. Depth being how many people we reach on each occasion. Frequency being how often we reach them.

It’s great to let zillions of people know about our start up as quickly as we can. We may even be lucky enough to get some kind of viral campaign working for our startup, we may be featured in the newspaper, on techcrunch or we might even be lucky enough get a TV spot.

After the event here’s what happens: People cook dinner, pick up the kids from school, pay the bills, kick the dog and get on with life. They have a life to live and they get on with it. Our start up doesn’t really matter to them… straight away.

Consumer awareness goes something like this:

Exposure 1: “That’s a cool idea / product / concept”

Exposure 2: “Oh, yeh, I must remember to check that out”

Exposure 3: “There it is again, might be worth having a look”

Exposure 4: “hmm, Ok – I’ll look when I’m shopping next / on line next”

Exposure 5: ….They finally act, and go look at, investigate, touch, feel, try….”

After many exposures we have “a chance’ of selling to them.

Sure some people check it out first time, some buy straight away, but the large majority need reminded, over and over again. It doesn’t mean – go out and spam them or do terrible interruption marketing. It means this; “have frequent and relevant marketing communications to the people who might care”.

It’s a lot like never noticing a car advertisement until we are in the market to buy one. They’re always there, we just have selective perception.

This is why Advertising frequency is king. No point having a big launch campaign if our prospective new customers aren’t looking on that occasion. For entrepreneurs, the big launch concept is a hoax – It’s unsustainable. Like an exercise regime- it’s far better to do an hour workout everyday, than to do a 5 hour gym session on a Saturday.

The good news is we don’t need the superbowl budget of a large conglomerate to have the frequency we need. We just need to start a conversation which continues indefinitely.

More visual feasts – retail

Posted on October 24, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Here’s some more retail ‘theatre at transaction ‘ – The first is of the Grocery Bar Cafe in Richmond, the second of Haus Frau Cafe in Yarraville. I simply want to eat my food and drink my coffee there. So I do.

Actually – I don’t need to say anything – the pitcures do that for me.

The questions for startup entrepreneurs is this: What visual feasts are we providing our prospective new customers? Are we giving them a visual they just ‘have to’ talk about?

Quote for Entrepreneurs

Posted on October 22, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

“It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?”

Zach de la Rocha

Brand hijack – chupa chups

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

So we’ve all heard about UGC and the virtues of having your brand hijacked by passionate users. The truth is most brands ‘just got lucky’ when it happens to them. The real trick is knowing what to do when it does happen. How to leverage it without destroying the organic evolution which allowed it in the first place.

Chupa chups is a recent example in Australia of a Brand Hijack. It’s been a bit of a darling within various youth culture subsets – including the rave and hip hop scenes. The cool thing here is that Chupa chups (which incidently is licensed to Cadbury in Australia) hasn’t stuffed it up. Instead they’ve had the wisdom to embrace it – create a canvas for the brand to further ensconce itself in ‘their world’. The brand has ‘got involved with’ the laneway art scene in Melbourne – by creating an event for ‘them’.

The event is being held AC DC lane (apropos) where all street artists can display their talents – free. The lane will have bands, drinks and food open for all and free Chupa chups! They’ve even minimised the awareness campaign one which requires a certain level of self discovery only using street posters and limited street press to communicate the event. They’ve kept it all relatively ‘low key’. In fact, even the art commissioned by Chupa Chups to start the festival doesn’t have any branding. Wow – a brand that gets it.

The visual has already hit the wall as seen below…

You’ll notice the lollipop parachutes and the small chupa chups logo (sans branding) – which incidently was orginally designed by Salvadore Dali . Nice.

If you’re in Melbourne this weekend it’d be worth checking out – I’ll be there.

Start up lesson – Cool brands do cool stuff.

Pre-empt reality – success requires it

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Steve Sammartino

Entrepreneurship and startups are a lot like starting out in your career. People want you to have experience before they will hire you. It’s that ironic circular reference in which it is impossible to get the job, to get the experience required until we’ve got the experience – right? hmmm.

Often startup businesses need a lot of people before the idea, concept or thing simply works. Kind of like email or fax machines. They only become useful when everyone has one…. or at least some form of critical mass in which we can exchange things of value. Aside from the fact this proves that the most powerful element in any business mix is distribution, it also indicates we all have a chasm to cross before success can become a reality.

So how do we cross the chasm? How do we make success a reality?

We must preempt it.

We must preempt our future reality. As though it already exists. We must talk and act as if it has already happened. Not just internally, not just convincing ourselves, but to all of those whose paths we cross day to day in startup land. We have to sell the future, before it arrives, as if it’s already happened.

Sometimes we might have to use ‘creative language’ which somewhat stretches the truth (our current reality). We ought not feel bad – every successful entrepreneur in history has done this. Every successful entrepreneur in the future will do this. It’s just a necessary element in creating the future. It’s not lying, it’s part of the creation process. Screw it – sell the sizzle and make it real. By the time the people catch up to the today’s reality – you’ve already created the future version.

Bill Gates sold MS DOS before he even built it. He said to IBM – “we have what you need.” Despite the fact it was metaphysical at that stage.

Generating media and interest in your start up is one of the areas where this must happen. Whether it’s in traditional media, the blogosphere, or other means, people don’t want to cover us until we’ve had success. What they fail to realise is that their coverage is the thing which often starts the success. Then people who read about our brand, website or widget say, “Wow, I better check that out”. They believe in ‘the people’. If other people are embracing it, it justifies them checking it out. it’s the wisdom of crowds, as far as people are concerned, we only count when other people care.

When people ask about your startup and want the obligitory progress report – paint the most positive picture possible. Use creative language that makes it sound bigger, better and closer. No – use language that says it has already arrived. Make the future your present reality.