Hotcow @Hotcow write …When done right, guerrilla marketing can really get you noticed at trade shows.
Picture the scene: A scruffy, middle-aged man is dressed as a baby angel, with a lyre in one hand and a cigar in the other. As you pass by him, he yells, waves and invites you to join him on his bed of clouds…
As surreal and wacky as it sounds, this was the concept behind one of the most memorable guerrilla marketing trade show campaigns to date.
The ‘man-angel’ was actually a member of staff from collaboration software company ‘Central Desktop’ – a company that enables businesses to centralize their work in the cloud. Get it? Angels, clouds?
By adhering to the following guerrilla marketing precepts, Central Desktop’s scruffy angel not only grabbed the attention of the show’s 8,900 attendees, he also conveyed the company’s unique value prop in a playful, eye-catching way.
This blog will examine why the stunt worked so well and what you can take away from it to spice up your next trade show appearance.
1. Use Humour: The saying goes that “a customer who laughs is one who lasts” and this can be particularly true of trade show marketing, where a little humour can differentiate you from the crowd.
Central Desktop’s angel was amusing and engaging, and the actor’s lines were evocative – from “hey, come over here; I wanna share all my information with you in the cloud,” to “if you tweet an angel good, I tweet you good, too”. These lines were memorialized by exhibition attendees in a number of Facebook posts and Tweets.
2. Stay on Message: When devising guerrilla marketing campaigns, some marketers become enamoured with their own cheekiness and create attention-grabbing stunts that do not support the company’s marketing messages.
In the case of Central Desktop however, the middle-aged, street-wise angel was an effective spokesperson because, through his humour, the actor communicated the company’s fundamental positioning: i.e., “Central Desktop turns email hell into heaven by bringing people and information together in the cloud,” while conveying the image of a company that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
3. Be Authentic: Every company has a personality, a history and is founded on a set of values. These are unique to each company and can’t be manufactured, and more importantly, shouldn’t be.
Your guerrilla marketing should be congruent with your company’s culture. Your goal is not only to capture people’s attention, but to also communicate who you are and why people should invest in you. The bearded angel worked because it was consistent with Central Desktop’s irreverent and light-hearted approach to solving serious collaboration challenges.
Hotcow @Hotcow is a non-traditional creative agency that specialises in experiential marketing that goes viral. Our campaigns generate buzz through crowd participation, PR and content sharing. Contact us on 0207 5030442