Posted by Deb on Thursday, May 5th, 2011 , Posted in Brand Marketing, Clarity Posts, Entrepreneurial Marketing, Featured, Marketing Strategy, Product demos , No Comments »
Monday evening, I stopped into DRY Soda’s Pioneer Square headquarters for the official launch of the company’s new Savor the Flavor truck tour. I’ve known Founder and CEO Sharelle Klaus for years, love the concept behind the brand and product line and have introduced DRY Sodas. Sharelle’s a give-back kind of person, and she’s come to tell the DRY story to mine and other UW classes and shared a great deal of the backstory of creating the company, building the brand and expanding distribution. For years in my UW classroom, I have showcased DRY’s approach to thinking about the brand and characterizing its customers to make sure every new action and introduction fit the brand and the customer.
Despite having a lot of avid fans, DRY Soda’s still not that well known and that’s why the team came up with the Savor the Flavor truck idea. Kate Holmes, DRY’s marketing lead, told me the objective behind the truck is two-fold: 1) to boost brand recognition of the young Seattle brand and 2) introduce DRY’s innovative all natural, low sugar sodas to new audiences. After extensiv
e research into mobile marketing — not of the cell phone variety — and several months of of waiting once the truck was ordered, it’s here and its DRYvers are ready to roll.
The Savor the Flavor tasting truck officially begins its tour on Wednesday, May 4, and will visit DRY retailers throughout Seattle first and then Portland this summer. After that, rumors are the truck will be rolling a little further from home.
If you get a chance to taste a flight of DRY when the truck visits your Seattle neighborhood, do. Where else can you try flavors like Juniper Berry, Blood Orange, Lemongrass and Cucumber? And if you do, be sure to check DRY’s Facebook tab and tag yourself in a photo. For every person who does tag their photo on DRY Soda’s FB tab, the company will donate $1 to FareStart, a culinary job training and placement program for homeless and disadvantaged individuals and long-time DRY Gives Back partner.
To find out when DRY’s Save the Flavor truck will be in your neighborhood, check them out on Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter (hashtag: #DRYtour).
Posted by Deb on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 , Posted in Clarity Posts, creativity, Entrepreneurial Marketing, Environmental Marketing, Featured, Marketing Strategy, Product demos , No Comments »
Last week, I had a chance to attend the Speed Geek happy hour event held annually by Groundwire, a nonprofit tech consultancy that builds websites, databases, email and social media tools for environmental nonprofits. The evening is designed to help prospective clients get a taste of what this unique consultancy can do for them. Besides being fun, it was some of the best show-n-tell I’ve seen. And a tremendous demonstration of the power that comes from having your customers sell you. It’s like putting your case studies and website testimonials on steroids.
Groundwire had eight stations throughout their offices, six of which were customers talking about what Groundwire had done for them. Groundwire used the other two to show off a big sustainable municipalities project in development and to showcase a new product from Groundwire Labs, their R&D unit.
It was speed dating for groups. Each station had just five minutes to show their stuff and the presentations were tight. It’s one thing to drive your own staff to do demos like that, it’s another all together to ask clients to do it. But they did and they were great.
Not every organizations could use speed dating to showcase their capabilities, but most could find ways to make their demos more fun and feel more like show-n-tell. I kept picturing trade show and conference customer and prospect events where something like it would have been great.
In Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy Sernovitz writes that the medium for word of mouth marketing is real people. You just need to find the right people to carry your message. The obvious ones are happy customers. But they’re not the only ones.
There’s a great story I love relaying in classrooms and board rooms alike from Jay Conrad Levinson’s 1998 book Guerrilla Marketing about a new restauranteur who who tapped into an extremely well connected set of neighborhood talkers: hairdressers. Take a second to picture your last hair cut and you’ll immediately see the brilliance in this idea. Before the restaurant officially opened, the owner invited the local hairdressers to a big preview dinner party. He took no shortcuts, serving his top menu items and pouring his best wines and making sure his invited guests had a great time. Show-n-tell. You know those hairdressers talked for weeks about that party to every single client. If I’m remembering correctly, the hairdressers left the restaurant that evening with discount coupons to share with their clients. Good old fashioned tracking mechanism.
I always show one of the Will It Blend videos from BlendTec in class because a) I love them and b) they’re an excellent example of how to bring drama and humor to a product demo. It’s a great ROI case study for entrepreneurial marketing, too.
Got any new ideas to demonstrate your value to prospects?
e research into mobile marketing — not of the cell phone variety — and several months of of waiting once the truck was ordered, it’s here and its DRYvers are ready to roll.