Product Placement: Why Your Body is the Best Billboard
Over the three years I have been in college, I have seen many different types of marketing strategies. Some of the most common are flyering, social media, email lists, websites, and referrals. There is no doubt that these attempts can be feasible and sometimes even successful. However, I personally feel that what you wear has the biggest impact on advertisting your club, organization, or company, and I will demonstrate a concrete example.
I attend UCLA, which has 43,301 students enrolled as of 2015. I estimate that I pass by around 2,500 students on average everyday just walking to and from class. Many other large public universities have similar enrollment numbers, and even smaller private universities and colleges have student enrollment well over in the thousands range. This is a huge target audience that can potentially be an untapped resource for your club, organization, company to advertise to, and you do not even need to be overly assertive about it. All you need to do is turn your body into a billboard.
I have had the honor of being a part of four great organizations this past year: Circle K International, Association of Computation Machinery, Taboola, and Apple. I have made a lot of great friends and connections in each of these organizations, and I have quite a bit of swag (clothing and apparel) pertaining to each organization. Because of the great experiences I have had for each one, I look forward to reaching out to potential members for each organization and advertising.
The photo above is a great example of how easy it is to market a brand(s) simply by wearing their swag and walking to campus or an event. I have a Taboola hat, Apple jacket and Apple Watch, Circle K badge, and ACM T-shirt all together in one single outfit. Because of how easy it is to add accessories like pins, hats, jackets, and other forms of apparel to your outfit, you can easily spread out your brand and get potential members simply by having brand ambassadors wear clothing that represents your organization and reaching out to people at events or simply walking to and from class.
Why would your outfit be the best form of advertisement? Let’s compare some of the other examples.
Flyering on campus is often regarded as intrusive and bothersome. Students on their way to class generally do not like receiving flyers, especially if they are in a rush. Also, flyering is a more active form of advertisement, so it does take a bit more skill to be good at flyering and convincing people that the organization is worth joining. The target audience is quite varied from people who are actually interested in joining, to sincere and nice people who will take the flyer but discard it later, to people who will flat out say “not interested” or ignore you while pretending to listen to music on their headphones. I have flyered in the past for a few clubs and while it can be successful, I do think the turnout rate is quite low and the costs of production (printing) is a disadvantage for this to be a very viable option.
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram is more effective than flyering in my opinion because it does not incur as many costs of production (no printing fee, posting on these platforms is free, etc.), but it can still be viewed as intrusive to some. Receiving a Facebook Event invite is requires an action from the receiver, who can attend, say they are interested, decline, or flat out ignore the invite. This can be very effective, but usually, the target audience is limited to people you know (Facebook friends, mutual friends, etc.). It is true that the Internet does allow you to reach out to people far from you geographically, but the likelihood of them joining your organization, especially if your organization does not have too large of a national or international presence yet, is not that large if they do not already know you or have heard of your organization.
I would put email lists under a similar category to social media but slightly above that because generally, people signing up for your mailing list will be genuinely interested in using your product or joining your organization. Again though, this is limited to people who have heard of your organization or people you know and have reached out to at events like Welcome Week(s), Career Fairs, workshops, etc. It also does not have the personal feel because you don’t actually see the brand ambassador face-to-face and interact with them.
Websites and referrals in my opinion are a great way to market an organization or product. Websites can be customized to advertise a purpose, and referrals are a great way of spreading an organization’s influence through word of mouth. Combined, these tools can be very powerful and draw a large audience that will be excited to learn more about what your organization can offer them and what they can offer to your organization. It also shows that you are willing to use your own product, which is the ultimate sign of trust because if you do not trust your own product, then who will? However, they do have drawbacks like any form of marketing. Websites generally need maintenance as products and features are constantly updating, and you will definitely need to have someone technical enough to make sure the website is up and running effectively. Like for social media and email lists, websites will not feel as personal since you are not interacting face to face. Also, hosting websites can cost some money (depending on the number of users and servers, it could cost quite a bit), so that is something to consider when advertising. In terms of referrals, those are generally personal so that is good when reaching out to friends and contacts, but it is virtually impossible (and probably not a good thing) to reach out to strangers.
This brings me back to my main point about your body and what you wear being the best billboard for your organization or product. It has the effect of being personal because let’s say you are a potential member or customer and you see the brand ambassador or person wearing the apparel face-to-face. If you are interested in learning more, you can just ask the person what the organization is about and how they became a part of it. This also puts the potential member or customer in the driver’s seat because he/she is the one deciding whether or not the organization is worth joining or not rather than the representative being overly assertive or even pushy. Additionally, past basic costs of production i.e. designing the apparel and sewing the clothes together, you can literally just wear the swag and you are instantly a billboard for your organization. An interesting question to ask yourself is “Why do companies at career fairs give out free clothing and apparel for swag?”. It is because it turns out to be a very effective form of marketing that even complete strangers or non-affiliates can do without being part of the actual company. Lastly, it brings me back to my original point that wearing an outfit that represents your own organization is the ultimate form of trust in your product. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, once said something like this: “Sometimes you’ve got to take ownership, it’s called eating your own dog food. If you aren’t willing to use your own product, then how is anybody else going to trust it and have confidence? Some people might call that being a showman, I call it demonstrating trust in your product, which any smart business has to do.” There is a saying that “you are what you wear”, and if you truly love your organization or product, you will be more than willing to wear its apparel and advocate for it when you walk by.
Your outfit will reveal a lot about yourself to others, and it is an often underrated method of branding. Simply wearing clothes or apparel that represents your organization or product can effectively attract new members or customers to whatever you have to offer. Give it a try!
