Looking for a tagline

Quote from: Andy on April 09, 2007, 02:57:40 PM

What you are doing is called Gorilla marketing. Ideally you should crash the car into the town hall and get tons of press photos in the papers or something along those lines.

I think the term you are trying to use is Guerilla, though I do like the use of the term Gorilla specific to my style as it suggests brutish and overpowering. Grin

Although I would not have normally looked at car signs as guerilla marketing, it certianly fits, as the idea is the make the most impact with limited resources; and your idea about crashing the car into city hall certainly would make an impact. Cheesy

Years ago (early 90s) I was running a convention and having to deal with marketing it. I could not afford the TV and radio advertising and full page ads like the big conventioners, but I could be effective with creative approaches, many of which just entailed the cost of a piece of paper.

I ran my legs off, but it garnered such compliments (I'll take them as that) as 'you can't even sit down to take a dump without seeing an ad for your convention'. That was a little extreme, but not far off base as, though I never effected it, I did start the idea, locally, of bathroom advertising.

Somebody else had picked up on the idea (I can't say it came directly from my idea), but they were not very successful with it. One of the problems was that they were advertising goods and services and this was not going to provide effective returns: I don't want a lawyer or insurance agent whose name I got from a bathroom wall.

Where it could be effective is in event advertising. Event advertising is momentary and designed to make an impact in the shortest amount of time. Television and radio work well for this type of advertising as the turn around (from copy to output) is within days, even hours. Television and radio, though, can incur expenses of hundreds to thousands (for local advertising) and local papers are even more outrageous than that. Though television and radio advertising are effective for those who can afford it, and it does raise the level of reputation via the advertising source (find a lawyer on TV, not a bathroom wall), the returns per impression are not that high.

An effective supplemental or alternative advertising is visual recognition. The idea, though, is to try to target where people would look.

*Yes, call me a dog, but my concept for advertising a product to college age boys was to put the logo on t-shirts and give those t-shirts to attractive, and preferably busty, young ladies to wear at games and around campus. The boys would be looking there.

People look at things which excite them, make them curious, or provide an alternative to boredom.

The idea of the bathroom advertising was to provide an alternative to boredom. Of course, it opened itself to appropriate jokes such as advertising to a truly captive audience and catching the customer with their pants down, but then, that was the point, the advertise to someone when they had no other option but to look.

An event has the advantage of not being reputation associated by its advertising source, within reason. A potential customer may not care for a lawyer whose name they picked up from a bathroom wall, but someone may be excited that the circus is coming to town and does not care that they learned that from a bathroom wall.

Effectively that is guerilla marketing; using a minimalist of resources for optimum returns.

Nah, I really got off-topic (who...me? Grin

).

It is really a silly reason why I am getting car signs. Though there may be some marketing falloff from it, that is not the primary purpose.

Almost two years ago, suddenly, my mother passed away due to an undiagnosed heart condition (at least that's the official story). Having taken care of her for several years, and being less able to work due to her worsening Parkinson's, I was left with some substantial bills in her passing and ended up losing my home to pay for them.

Blah...blah...blah....blah; and time passes.

Pretty much, what I have left is an old car I bought and got repaired, a storage unit with most of my stuff in it, and a place to work on the computer and sleep at night.

The Jones's and Smiths have their homes and boats and cars they show off. I don't have much, but I do have a website that I created.

Told you it was silly.