Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

I attended a startup event the other day. As a part of an event, there was a talk by a successful entrepreneur about PR and Marketing. This entrepreneur had recently launched his new startup and had received great buzz in the media within a short span of time. So his talk was mainly focused on – how he launched that startup with such a great buzz in such a short amount of time.

I was interested in this topic, but was disappointed at the end of the talk.

The thing is – this guy talked about how he launched a bare minimum application with some controversial idea and got the press members and tech bloggers to talk about it within few weeks. This controversial introduction apparently helped him to get more buzz from other press members and bloggers, and also from social media community. He showed more than 2 dozens press members and bloggers talked about his idea and new startup – and that helped them to get many users in early days because people were curious to see what it is. He also managed to let influential startup people talk about his startup (because they are his friends).

I’m not against of this approach. If it worked for him, great! As they say, any kind of publicity is a good publicity. But I’m against of advising this approach as a technique to first-time entrepreneurs to launch their startups to get more traction early on.

Using your brand to promote something is not a technique, it’s a leverage. So my request to such successful entrepreneurs is – please do not advice any techniques which were possible because of your successful brand. Not everyone who is just starting has that kind of brand. PR or tech bloggers won’t even entertain the first-time entrepreneurs, and especially if the idea is so controversial or early stage (without any traction). So please, don’t advice it as a technique – it’s not going to work for everyone.

I received a clever pamphlet in the mail today as shown in a picture below. I hope you can read it clearly.

What’s clever about this marketing mail?

1. It has a physical object in it, which you can feel by hand. So you are most likely not going to throw it away without opening it.

Marketer’s first objective is achieved – you opened a junk mail!

2. Then it has above campaign -

“Tech CU has sent one member the winning key. It may be you! If the key in this invitation turns the ignition of the lock box at the car sale, the vehicle is yours.”

Now tell me – will you throw away that key now? Aren’t you thinking – what if that key is really the lucky one? You might think – “I really didn’t have to do anything to receive this lucky key. Now all I have to do is to go there once and confirm if this key is really the lucky one or not.”

Marketer’s second objective is achieved – you are thinking about that offer.

3. Even if I know that I’m not lucky enough to receive the lucky key and even if I know that I will not have time to go to that car sale to check if that key is really lucky one or not, I will be reluctant to throw that key away. I’m thinking – what if I may have time and I may go to that area? Why throw key now? Why not throw afterward when we really can’t go?

Marketer’s third objective is achieved – you got hooked to that offer.

Now marketer’s fourth objective is – you show up at that car sale place. I’m not sure if that objective will be achieved or not. Irrespective of that, I think this was a clever marketing campaign.

What do you think? Do you treat this clever marketing or spam? Or do you think this was a clever spam?