prudential artisan market

Archive for March, 2009

How to Market Yourself in Your Underwear

“Ayieeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaa!!!!”

I thought the two startled businessmen were going to leave a surprise in their shorts. They were bushwhacked from behind the bush by bushwacky. The street crowd held their collective sides as they split with laughter.

One of the two best places in America to watch street performers is at Fisherman’s Wharf. The two San Franciscans fell victim to the diminutive little man who had set up his small bush office on the sidewalk of the Embarcadero near Pier 39. Squatting behind it he would spy unsuspecting tourists walking towards him and prepare for the pounce. After surviving your own scare, you’d move several strides down the walkway so as to not draw attention to him and watch and wait with glee for his next unwitting cast member to take center stage. Beside him his donation cup was overflowing with tips from his formerly terrified but now amused audience.

I’m a student of marketing. And bushwhacking is a marvelous technique in the appropriate environment: well-known street performing area, tourists, people having fun. It was the unexpected technique in the expected environment that surprised you. A technique you’d never forget. Ever. Something you’d tell others about for a lifetime. We can all learn from marketing geniuses like the bushwacky.

Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads, says the focus of your marketing is to “surprise Broca”. French surgeon and anthropologist Paul Broca, in 1861, was the first to identify the left hemisphere of the brain as involved with speech production, in particular assessing the order of the words as they’re used. Williams refers to Broca as “the theater critic of the imagination; the part of the human mind that anticipates and ignores the predictable.” Williams says your goal in marketing is to surprise Broca with the unexpected so your message won’t be ignored.

“The common, the mundane, the average, the predictable are ignored,” says Williams, while “the unusual, the intriguing, the fascinating are immediately spied and examined.” If you want to stand out from the sales and marketing predictables make every contact a Broca surprise.

Returning to Fisherman’s Wharf the following year for another marketing lesson, a street performer was gracing the public with his guitar. His donations cup runneth over. In haste he had taken a magic marker to a scrap of cardboard found behind a restaurant and scribbled his message to position nearby: “Yes, it’s for beer.” Truth in advertising surprises.

The other best place in America to see street marketers is at Times Square in Manhattan, the island’s tourist magnet. Returning to our hotel from Penn Station we saw a crowd gathered at the corner across from the kiosk’s neon sign proclaiming “New York Police”. We heard the laughter. Crowd? Laughter? People having fun? Times Square? July? This must be something special.

We inched our way to the front of the gawkers. Playing his guitar and wearing his hat and boots was the Singing Cowboy of Times Square. His opened guitar case was producing money faster than the U.S. Mint. A marketing genius. His singing abilities sucked, and I don’t think he really knew how to play that guitar. So how did he surprise Broca? Did I mention that he was wearing his hat and cowboy boots? I did? And did I also mention that the only other thing he had on was his jockey underwear? A minimalist who knows how to market. I guess he goes undercover when the snow falls.

What do you do to get remembered in your predictable business world? Does your marketing scream “Look at me! I’m just like everyone else.” (Do you recall the actual car promoted in that last slick television ad?) Do you numb with rote presentations? Are you ignored with your uninspired voicemail leave behinds? Or do you do stand out by doing the unusual, the intriguing, and the fascinating?

New York City. Population nine million. I remember one.

What are you doing to surprise Broca so you’ll be the one?

One of the most vital aspects of this recent marketing concept which every business owner should be aware of is that it’s completely free. With the right idea, intuition and planning; viral marketing on social networking websites can return thousands of client prospects to any business website.

Social networking website, as the name suggests, are networks of people and friends who use the Internet to communicate, socialise and share, all through one website. Common websites of this nature are Myspace, Facebook, Bebo and many others.

These websites can be utilized through viral marketing methods; that is the concept of providing marketing material which propagates itself to many other people by giving an incentive for this to occur. For today’s Internet audience this incentive is usually interesting, entertaining and more commonly, not related to the business involved.

This may sound confusing but it’s the system of these networking websites which allows this technique to become effective. For example if a business finds a video which could become popular. If this video is interesting, entertaining or both, it will entice viewers to pass it onto their friends to share it. By adding your website link or marketing message into that video as a footer, or maybe adding your URL to the video description, your business details are being passed wherever the video is sent. This is what makes viral marketing on social networking websites so powerful for businesses of any size.

One important factor must always be taken into account for successful viral marketing and that’s to not flood the media with your material. Journalists, the media and members of the public will value your contributions much more if every one of them has a sense of strong content and a good angle. Distributing viral releases or PR as much as you can will result in people devaluing your presence if the content isn’t worthwhile.

Some websites such as Myspace also offer profiles which can be used to the same effect. Making a profile for your business allows you to add people all over the world as friends, who can see your profile and therefore any marketing message you choose to present. However an interesting, unique angle is often required to make the most effective use of this method. For example using an interesting, make-believe character as the profile owner or offering another, more attention-grabbing incentive for visiting your website.

Should you get professional assistance with social networking campaigns? That’s the question many businesses will ask. Managing director of SCD Marketing Scott Chapman explains:

“One of the great benefits of viral marketing on social networks and anywhere else is that it’s 100% free and can provide fantastic results. Good marketing agencies do have the Public Relations and marketing knowledge to get the right angle for your material, which will result in the most publicity. Whether a person chooses management for their viral campaigns depends on the situation they are in but if the budget is there then I’d certainly recommend looking into it.”

Who doesn’t love a farmers market? In fact, not to savor the moments spent in one seems downright, well –unnatural. Yet, how many cities can you name where the farmers market is amongst the things to do, and not because there is a shortage of event options, but because the farmers market is an actual event. Sure, other cities might go to the trouble to set aside some prime parking lot real estate and throw together a produce market cum swap meet featuring more five-dollar sunglasses, velvet dolphin art, and lead paint-laden toys from Taiwan than anything edible–except perhaps that Indian fry bread which might have been more souvenir than snack since it won’t let you forget you ate it.

But since 1992, Portland’s been doing things just a tad differently. Here are the stats. You be the judge. The Portland Farmers Market features over a hundred different vendors selling all manner of in-season, fresh produce as well as fresh meat, cut flowers, honey, nuts, eggs, cheese, bread, and much more to over 14,000 people on any given Saturday. You could say this event is on drugs–but then it couldn’t be certified organic. This reverie of all things natural takes place between 8:30 and 2:00 every Saturday, April through December, on the portion of the Portland’s South Park Blocks that comprise the campus of Portland State University.

To paint the picture even more vividly, let’s just say that, in this context, the word, “market” in the title of the event is crass and not applicable. The Portland Farmers Market is so much more than a formal commercial interaction. Granted, combined with two smaller markets held in downtown, the Portland Farmers Market vendors pull down 5 million in weekly sales. Demand is so high, in fact, that they had to add a fourth market held on the eastside of the city. Yet, to be sure, the reaping of this immense financial bounty is in large part due to the fact that this market is nothing less than a citywide celebration, with the dance held dramatically under stately poplar and elm trees born in 1877.

Of course, the Portland Farmers Market would be nothing without the unique tone and talents of the vendors themselves. These men and women are not the nameless, faceless hands of mere exchange. Each one is passion expressed. And each one is a story.

There is the man who, after a youth spent hard living and doing hard time, found salvation in the beloved bread of his childhood. Inciting the Portland population to “just say no” to bread on drugs, Dave’s Killer Bread is all organic, using whole wheat and whole grains that actually live up to the bread’s killer name.

There is the woman whose parents named her after the first grape varietal they planted the year she was born, who returned to the beloved wine making of her childhood and is now providing Portland with “wine for the crazy in all of us.” Basket Case Wines are the Cabernet and Syrah end of the spectrum, and the companion label that she and her husband also own, Shy Chenin, covers Chenin Blanc and Pinot Noir Rose’.

The tales, of course, run much further, but the Hotel California nature of the narratives remains the same. You can take the boy out of the bakery. You can take the girl out of the wine country. And you yourself can visit the Portland Farmers Market and walk away when you’re done. But it will stay with you.