It seems silly to spend money to promote a promotion. What if it were possible for the promotion to promote itself?
Let's pretend a major snack food manufacturer wants to spend a million dollars promoting itself. The first thing most marketers do is figure out a "promotion" then figure out how to spend the money on radio, tv, print, internet, in-store signs and displays promotional products to promote it. This is how we generally promote a promotion.
It takes tons of planning, coordination and meetings. A good portion of your $1,000,000 will go to art directors, copywriters, designers and production crews just to produce your ads, collateral material and signs. Then, another big portion of your budget will get eaten up buying space for your radio, tv and print ads and 15% of that money goes to paying the media buyer.
Now consider for a moment, how much promotional power you could harness, if you put that $1,000,000 to work directly from you to the consumer. Instead of spending $1million to promote the promotion, you simply put that money directly to work.
Imagine what would happen if the company secretly and randomly put cello-wrapped $1, $5, $10, $20 and occasionally $50 and $100 dollar bills right into the snacks, sorta like Willy Wonka did with the Golden Tickets. But while Willy Wonka let the world know that he did it, in this scenario, no one says anything to anyone.
The company doesn't tell anyone what its doing. The only people that know up front are those putting the money in the bags.
This strategy would end up capturing more free media and publicity than the company ever could purchase with its $1 million. Here's a likely scenario:
1) After distribution has begun, word is leaked "accidentally" around the factory and soon after the word leaves the factory because there's always someone, thankfully, that can't keep a secret.
2) People start finding money in their potato chips and corn chips. They tell others. Word spreads person to person and on internet chat rooms and forwarded e-mails, across the country and around the world.
3) The media gets wind of it and contacts the company.
4) The company says, "Yeah, we secretly and randomly placed $1,000,000 in the form of $1's $5's, $10's, $20's, $50's and $100's in our snacks and have shipped them nationwide. We have no idea where the bills are, it's totally random."
6) The media reports it to the public.
7) Feeding frenzy on the company's snacks and tip of tongue/top of mind placement and news stories for weeks and write ups in magazines.
By-pass conventional wisdom. Cut out the middle man. Put your promotional dollars directly to work promoting your company. Again, why spend money promoting the promotion?
What's that? You don't have a million dollars to promote your company? And even if you did, you don't sell a packaged good that would allow you to distribute money like that. No problem.
The point is, nearly every company can employ some aspect of what I call "Stealth Marketing" to promote itself, generate word of mouth and perhaps publicity.
Maybe it's gift cards hidden in random products. If they're never found you're only out the cost of producing the card. Perhaps it's scratch-off, lottery-style tickets randomly placed in a shoppers' bag or in a customer's delivery box. Every card is a winner of something. Why? Because you can control what's printed on the cards and how many are given away each week, or month.
Imagine the surprise of a home-owner if three months after they took delivery of a new dining room table set they found a scratch-off card, a gift card or perhaps a $20 taped to the underside of the table or one of the chairs?
What if a coffee shop imprinted sayings at the bottom of the inside of its to-go cups. Every so often, someone would get one that read, "Bring this cup in and receive $10 cash." Hey, if they throw the cup away, you're out nothing! If they read it, and get the $10 they're going to tell everyone they run into for a week. You can't buy that much word of mouth for $10.
Think about it. Who wouldn't be delighted to find a $5 bill crammed into the toe of their new shoes?
The concept is to give your advertising and promotion budget, or a portion of it in one form or another, to those who buy your product or service They will promote your product or service for you.
What Stealth Marketing ideas can you generate for your business? Be mindful that it's done without fanfare. And the end result is effective word of mouth and in a best case scenario, earned media. Bottom line, you don't want to spend a lot of money promoting the promotion. Let the promotion promote itself and get more promotional marketing mileage for your money.
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