Ah yes.
The good old event marketing.
Conferences, events, and meetups.
One of the pioneers when it comes to enormous lead generation.
Also, one of the best places to try out guerrilla marketing strategies.
I have a personal bias for event marketing. I love it.
But there is a question that has been in the air for some time now.
Is it dead?
Talk about a transition, am I right?
So how did we go from all those nice words to wondering if it's dead?
Well, a short view back to the past…
Event marketing was one of the best channels in the old days of marketing.
I mean, duh, the more we progress with technology, the more we forget about physical things.
But event marketing was still there. It was being talked about, prioritized, up until, you guessed it...
COVID.
You remember the thing that shut down the world for a year or two? No biggie.
Anyway, here is why I think that once we exited COVID, people just kinda… forgot about event marketing?
Maybe that’s not the best way to put it, but I feel like the creativity that we had at conferences before COVID was waaayy better than what we have now.
But that is good!
Huh?!
But Luka, you just presented it as if that were a bad thing that happened to event marketing.
Yes, and no.
Hear me out.
Before the virus we shall not name, people were more creative and invested in that field. It was the norm. Human interaction was everywhere. People got used to it.
But once you take something away from people for 2 YEARS, people want it back.
They crave it.
That's why I believe that, if you focus on great event marketing now, you'll strike gold. I mean, really tap into your creativity to attract people to your booth.
So how do we do it?
Here are some interesting tactics I found. You can try them at your next event, conference, or trade show.
#1 - Go all out, guns blazing.
Here is a cool story I heard somewhere.
There was this company that had a really tight marketing budget or event marketing budget (not sure) and they were gearing up to go to a conference.
They were like: If we are going, we have to use it to generate leads and money.
So what did they decide to do?
Dress up as astronauts. Full astronaut suits.
The best thing is that their company has no link to space or astronauts.
So there is a lesson here.
This tactic is basically a non-contextual hook.
It serves to attract attention and to entertain long enough for you to communicate the real value of your company.
Needless to say, it worked, they had amazing results.
#2 - Tiered merch system.
We are all familiar with companies giving out free merch. I bet everyone that is reading this has at one time in their life gone to every booth and picked up what they can :)
You are guilty!
Anyways,
This system is cool, but usually the merch or stuff they give out sucks.
So here is a cool example I heard about.
A company was giving out tiered-level hoodies.
Basically, you go to their booth and you get a free hoodie or a T-shirt that is level 1.
To unlock a better version of the merch, you must wear Level 1 at the conference all day.
Once you come back the 2nd day, you get a level-up piece of merch. The tiers go on as long as there are conference days.
People being people, wanting the rewards, half the conference wore tier 2 merch from that one company. It gave them a buuuunch of free marketing.
3D chess.
#3 - Malfunctioning QR codes.
QR codes on merch, products, or whatever are a gold standard even today.
In fact, they are such a standard that people don’t give a shit anymore.
But here is a quick little spin you can do.
Make them broken.
This was a cool example I picked up.
Basically, the company was having its QR codes on a T-shirt, but they did not work.
So people were going up to them and telling them:
"Hey, your QR code is not working. :O”
Free leads. ;)
#4 - Comedy / Wordplay
You already know that I am a serious supporter of funny copy and wordplay.
Read more about it here.
Anyway, a cool way one company did their merch at a conference was by making a wordplay on their copy.
They are making something with Google Sheets, and the copy on their T-shirt was:
“Get Sheet done”
Hilarious.
I mean, for the right crowd (their users), it will do wonders.
#5 - Personal Experience.
For the last one, this is a personal experience.
In the early days of Inloodis, we were developing software to train basketball with AR holograms. It's on hold, not discontinued.
We attended the tech fair in Shenzhen, China.
And here is what we did to attract attention.
We dressed up our CEO in a basketball jersey, put our glasses on him, and made him dribble a basketball in a place for 3 days.
Now, if you know a thing or two about China, they are mad about basketball and tall people.
Lucky for us, our CEO checks both of those things very well.
He dribbled the ball in place for 3 days. He was cosplaying a robot that pointed a finger at our software.
In short, we had the most visited booth at the fair. We became guests on Chinese National Television. We also secured partnerships with the Chinese Basketball Association and other stakeholders.
Awesome.
The Ad of the Week
Alright, you know what the time is.
To proclaim the ad that caught my attention this week.
The award goes to…
McDonalds!
And, I am not gonna lie, this is a really good ad/way to think about ads in the future.
Basically, they made the world’s first (I think) smell ad.
What? Smell ad? What’s that?
Well, they made some sort of a device/billboard that radiated the smell of McDonald's french fries.
Genius.
We are all aware of McDonald's iconic french fries smell. Yes, even us health junkies.
Brilliant brand awareness.
Now here is what got me thinking.
How much money did this cost to make? I assume a lot. I mean, the thing is big af. Probably hard to make as well.
Also, how did they make the smell constantly produce itself? Is someone cooking and eating fries in that thing?!
On the other side,
Is this scalable?
I mean, think about it. What if there were a way to create iconic smells for your favorite product?
For example, what would a brand new Porsche 911 GT3 RS fully blacked out with leather seats smell like?
:)
Definitely a topic to explore more.
Maybe we can do some sort of research in future editions.
Do let me know.
Anyway, kudos to McDonald's, they nailed it out of the park with this one.
Check it out below 👇
Le Conclusion
My God, this was the longest one yet (I won’t throw in the joke, but I could've).
I really enjoyed this one.
I am a big fan of guerrilla and alternative marketing strategies.
So, that being said,
Hopefully, this issue gets your creative juices flowing about potential ad breakthroughs and event marketing.
Until further notice,
The Unfiltrd Writer
✌️
For more content, you can also follow me on my social media:
