StreetSeen LLC Blog #1
StreetSeen LLC’s motto, “Get Seen,” is a simple and apt description of the role, purpose and function of promotional printed marketing collateral and street promotion in the marketplace. Bands, brands, events and fans use street promotion to spread the word about events they want seen, in the places people dine, shop, gather and recreate. And while poster, flyer, rack card, handbill and sticker distribution cannot singularly succeed as an event or awareness driver of scale, these tools are extremely effective as a companion piece or variant strategy for saturating the market and filling gaps in your marketing plan that few other tools can.
In most American cities–and especially in the warm weather of the western U.S.–street poles, community billboards, outdoor kiosks, cork boards and business windows are covered with promotional posters and flyers spreading the news about concerts, festival events, job listings, record releases and new consumer product launches. Mammoth corporations with household name recognition blanket downtown corridors with huge commercial-quality “wild posts” that cover large swaths of plywood sheathing at construction sites, trumpeting the release of a new product, the latest sneaker trend, the newest cell phone, or current blockbuster film. Artists, event producers, ad agencies and companies large and small execute street promotion campaigns for one reason: to get seen. Street promotion plays a disproportionate role in that function for the value it returns in cost.
Street promotion ignites awareness by supporting other elements in a coordinated marketing campaign that will often include organic social and paid reach, digital billboards, e-blasts, newsletters, OTT, print, radio and earned media efforts. Street marketing will not support the entire weight of an important event, product rollout, new release or happening as a standalone marketing tool. The best marketing campaigns seek ubiquity in their effort to spread awareness and brand presence everywhere, the way a portfolio manager spreads out her investment risks rationally by diversifying. Coordinated campaigns seek a presence in every key market sector and have often done extensive research, data collection analysis and shrinkage to ferret out where and to whom they should market their products, brands and services for maximum efficiency, impact, impressions and return.
In this often cacophonous media promotion environment, StreetSeen LLC. has found great success in reaching people where they are, as the analog alternative to all things digital. Reaching people where they are is a fundamental tenet of guerilla marketing. We bombard consumer habit paths on the thoroughfares where people travel, walk, ride and bus to work every day. When they stay home, we service the home with door hangers and porch placements. When they park to shop, we are there with collateral on their car windshield or driver side window and on their supermarket floor with an adhesive sticker. When they walk, we are there with posts on poles and stencils on the sidewalk. When they go for coffee, we are on the café’s windows with flyers and at the point of sale with stickers or handbills. We are at their favorite bakery, eatery or diner with approved collateral appropriate for their environment, because we have opened management to allowing our messaging to exist in their space. When a client asks, “Where is proof of completion of our campaign?”, we are there in their phones with text messaged photo documentation and proof of placement and location, so there’s no guessing about where or if the collateral they paid to have printed and placed was indeed placed. That tenacity and dependability is what sets StreetSeen LLC. apart from all other agencies and marketing firms. This is essential in earning customer trust, market growth and market leadership in a field where high accountability is paramount and a primary vertical differentiator. Our client’s campaigns are getting seen and their glowing testimonials show it. This makes us hungry to do more, be more and grow faster.
Oliver X is the Founding Proprietor of StreetSeen LLC., a street promotion and guerilla marketing agency that distributes print collateral throughout the western U.S. He is the Marketing Director of non-profit arts organization Artown located in Reno, Nevada. The 2015 American Advertising Federation Promotion Person of the Year, Oliver is the former Editor-Publisher of the award-winning Reno Tahoe Tonight magazine and has booked and promoted over 2,000 live events and performances since 1994.