Surviving the turbulence....

SHIRAZ LATIFF Chartered Marketer

What better way to create customer following than to create a community of your own customers who will spread your Gospel? Today, the social networks are a major tool that marketers can use to go beyond the conventional approaches.

Guerilla Marketing

Jay Conrad Levinson, author, trainer and expert on Guerilla Marketing speaks of “achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money.”

Guerilla Marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than big marketing budgets. Through these unexpected and unconventional methods, consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea that is being marketed memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.

Eric P. Strauss, founder of Crazy Carrot Juice Bar Inc., (which was later sold to industry giant Jamba Juice) used a life-size carrot costume for popularizing the brand.

He used the costume to promote the company at big Halloween parties and special events. The ‘Carrot’ became very popular. People stopped to be photographed with the Carrot. It generated a lot of attention to the juice bar concept.

The St. Paul, Minnesota based company, which started with two employees in 1998, reached five locations and 65 employees within a few years.

Another brilliant Guerilla Marketing tactic was used by eBay Belgium. The company placed stickers saying ‘Moved to eBay’ on empty shop windows around Brussels. Though the company may have had to reimburse the landlords for using their space, it was a great move.

Guerilla Marketing involves unusual approaches such as intercept encounters in public places, street giveaways of products, PR stunts and any unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results from minimal resources. Jay Levinson, in his book, ‘The Guerilla Marketing Handbook’, states:

“In order to sell a product or service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer. It must build trust and support. It must understand the customer’s needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits.”

In other words, the objectives of the organizations do not change regardless of the method of marketing that they use. The unconventional methods give more opportunities to interact with the consumer and to draw the product or service closer to them.

Experiential marketing

Experiential Marketing (EM) is a hybrid of Field Marketing (FM) shop floor product promotion techniques, e.g., sampling, merchandising and point of sale offers. Only, the objective of experiential marketing is not to just sell more products or services, but to engage a target audience with the ‘personality’ of the brand through experiencing it.

Experiential Marketing gives customers an opportunity to engage and interact with brands, products, and services in sensory ways that produce the icing on the cake of providing information. Personal experiences help people connect to a brand and make intelligent and informed purchasing decisions.

The term “Experiential Marketing” refers to actual customer experiences with the brand/product/service that drive sales and increase brand image and awareness. It’s the difference between telling people about features of a product or service and letting them experience the benefits for themselves. When done right, it’s one of the most powerful tools out there to win brand loyalty.

Appealing to a variety of senses, experiential marketing seeks to tap into that special place within consumers that has to do with inspiring thoughts about comfort and pleasure, as well as inspiring a sense of practicality. This means that the marketer needs to have a firm grasp on the mindset of the target audience he or she wishes to attract.

By understanding what the consumer is likely to think and feel, it is possible to get an idea of how to steer the customer in a direction that will relate with the product, and entice individuals to act on that impulse to purchase.

An example of this is what Dove body products has in its long running campaign for real beauty - challenging the stereotypical model of female beauty. This has included building an online sharing community, emotive photography, brand space road show, in store sampling and using real women in its advertising.

Brief synopsis

What was discussed above was a brief synopsis of some of the unconventional approaches marketers can take, either when the conventional approaches have reached the optimal levels or when a recessionary economy has called for trimming down the marketing budgets.

In times like these, organizations are cutting down budgets without any rationale to survive the ‘winter’. However, hibernation is not going to keep them alive until the world has recovered from the bruises of the economic recession. Those who dare to take the bold step towards trying the unconventional will survive the unprecedented times like these.

It is about time that organizations in general and marketers in particular, began to think outside the box not only to survive these trying times but to succeed in their marketing endeavours.

With this approach in mind, the Ninth CIM Annual Conference envisages to explore the unconventional marketing strategies and their practicality in a Sri Lankan context with some leading overseas and local speakers sharing their thoughts and experiences.