Penny Marketing

Or how to turn some dollars into huge attention for your startup

When working on Red Moose, a virtual stock exchange for sports — imagine a mixture of fantasy sports, betting and trading — I spent time thinking about marketing campaigns to boost the product when we were ready and first users began to play.

I have never been enrolled in a marketing course on college nor did I read a book about. The only thing I knew was what I read in the WSJ, German Handelsblatt or in spots, campaigns and everything that was linked to marketing campaigns. Coca Cola was good in creating spots you can remember. Or do you know anybody who doesn’t remember the Coke-Truck? But I really loved Red Bull. Not for the spots, but for the representation of its culture in fun and extreme sports excluding the engagement in professional soccer. Felix Baumgartner’s jump from the edge of space, Red Bull Flugtage and more represented the character of a brand. Later there were Monster, Rockstar, Captain Morgan and others. Yes, okay, Apple did the same.

Now I thought it’s time to think about a campaign. But it was no surprise that as an unfunded startup we had no money to give away to an agency. So what should we do? I wanted others to work for us, to create attention, buzz and that represented the feeling of our product. What was the message? I thought of a trader like a cool guy, debonair, crazz or enterprising. Today I’d say a bit like Jordan Belfour, the Wolf of Wall Street. For a photo I thought about a man in his early thirties, staying outside of an elegant bar with a glass of whisky, it’s evening and the caption would be something like “Nobody expects me to trade thousands with sports.”

But we know that video is going more viral than an image. The idea? Create many videos with fun content that everybody shares. How? Create a competition and say that every participant should record a video while he or she is doing something crazy and the video would be the winner if it claims the most views on YouTube and win $100. Not much? You’d be surprised what people are willing to do on Facebook for $50 or a t-shirt. Of course the challenge would have restrictions and requirements. Nobody should risk lives and we must see the name and URL or simply our name, Red Moose.

The idea was that we would have some funny videos that everybody shares if they were good enough and if just one video went viral, less or more, more people would see our name. Cheap marketing for little work and just some Dollars.

Now, I wasn’t able to realize this because we didn’t have the human resources to compensate missing UI and UX skills you have with a single developer and the lack of experience. Am yet convinced that this strategy would work at the beginning of a startup.