Marketing Through Events

I was at a great fundraiser last week put on by the Credit Valley Hospital Foundation's Young Ambassadors. At this hip event in an art gallery in Mississauga, guests were invited to an all you can eat, drink and dance party.

I could go on about all the wonderful components of this truly great event, but as a marketer the Barefoot Wine table caught my eye. Staffed by two energetic young people I was introduced to a great Pinot Grigio (there were many other wines but this was my choice)that sells in the LCBO for only $10 and a great new marketing concept!

They explained that Barefoot Wine spends its money on making their wine rather than its marketing. Thus the tagline, Great wine without the attitude. Their foremost way of getting the word out about their products is through charity events were people can come and taste their wine.

I tried to find a Canadian website and only found a sparse Facebook group and an U.S. website that is designed as a community with an emphasis on people committed to beach clean up.

I wish them luck with their grassroots marketing initiative and look forward to seeing them at more charity events.

Jesus Christ: A marketing mentor

Being Jewish, I never really gave much thought to Jesus Christ other than in an historical sense. Reading Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church: Growth Without Compromising Your Message & Mission, I am now of the belief that we can add Jesus as one of history's first marketing specialists (or marketing evangelists!).

Warren's book, which talks about how to grow a church through marketing and grassroots programs, is applicable to any organization looking to develop their identity (purpose) and expand within a defined community.

Warren uses examples from the New Testament throughout the book to make many of his points. While Warren alludes to Jesus as a great marketer, it is not the main focus of his book but one which is of great appeal. Here are just a few points to consider on Jesus' techniques:

- Mass marketing to targeted groups: Jesus attracted large crowds by sharing good news (the Gospel) and using it as an attractive power. The original version of a press conference or town hall meeting?

- Message development: His messaging was brought down to the level of the common people making sure he was understood. He did not "dumb down" his message, he respected his audience's intelligence taking time to understand the group and speak to them accordingly.

- Spokesperson training: Jesus was careful to stay on message even in crowds. Staying on point is important in safeguarding the truth.

- Clear & measurable objectives: The New Testament is full of references about Jesus' uncompromising request for 'fruitfulness' and examples of judgement for being 'unfruitful'. Growth equals fruitfulness. Failure to grow through complacency or self-absorption was no excuse and came with consequence.

- Employee engagement: How far will employees go beyond their job description is a very general way to measure employee engagement. Jesus got this. Matthew was just one example of a "good faithful servant". Faithful servants take on risk for the cause and usually are successful as a result. This was recognized and referred to as "faithful" versus "lazy" as passive, fearful, non-fruit baring servants were called.


These are just a few examples but they give food for thought and perhaps a good idea for a research paper for a marketing student looking for a juicy topic.....

Statistics Businesses Should Consider Before they Plan their PR Strategy

Thank you Adam Singer from The Future Buzz for this information. Note: the original post, Architecting a Social Web Marketing and PR Strategy, includes much more information, helpful case studies as well all the sources for the statistics below.


The social areas of the web are growing fast. Consider just a few stats:

- 400 million active Facebook users
- 50 million Tweets per day
- 133 million blogs (creating 900,000 blog posts every 24 hours)
- around 77% of Internet users read blogs

While the above numbers show the scale of the consumer driven web – B2B influence also lives here. According to a Forrester Research report of business buyers:

- 91% read blogs, watch user generated video, participate in other social media
- 55% of decision-makers are in social networks
- 43% are creating media (blogs, uploading videos or articles, etc.)

Consumers and prospects are already here. Marketing dollars care catching up, fast:
- $55 billion - number of dollars marketers will spend on interactive (display, mobile, email, social, search) channels by 2014 - representing a compound annual growth rate of 34%.

Media influence, too:

- 89% of reporters use blogs,
- 65% use social networking sites,
- 52% use microblogging sites according to a national study by GW University.