Taking Photos in Front of Your Business Earns Them Bragging Rights and ….
…may earn you new customers and media coverage.
“The city is our canvas,” GreenGraffiti owner, Jim Bowes told The New York Times. Bowes said, “We can tell a story over the course of two blocks if we want to, without paper, without ink.”
“Using stencils and high-pressure water sprayers, he selectively washes down pavement, leaving behind ‘clean’ words and images that gleam through the grime.”
Give Passersby a Way to Earn Bragging Rights – Putting Your Business in Their Picture
Such images stop passersby in their tracks. When what they see is interesting they take photos of it, often putting themselves in the photo to show others. If that image relates to your nearby business then they’ve taken the first step to getting closer to it.
This method is called reverse graffiti – and you could use it too for your business or cause.
Domino’s Pizza invited pedestrians in three cities to send in photographs of themselves with the street images and win Domino’s gift cards. It estimates that generated about $1 million worth of publicity. How could you adapt this method to your consumer-serving business?
Summary: Get People Taking Action That Moves Them Inside Your Business
1. When people take a photo of themselves or a friend that includes, in the shot, something related to your business they are taking a step closer towards talking about your business.
2. When they have gained such bragging rights they are more likely to walk in the door. Spur them on with the small gift or prize they will get when they do.
Groups as diverse as Greenpeace, the Amsterdam police (anti-auto theft campaign), Starbucks and MTV have attracted attention using reverse graffiti.
Three Partner-Based, Customer-Attracting “What-If” Scenarios for You
Storyboard your sequence of word and images down your business street.
Using reverse graffiti, what if businesses on three or four blocks joined forces to reverse graffiti a themed “path” on their collective sidewalk in one of these ways?
1. Place funny, wise or whimsical sayings or images or bits of history about their neighborhood on the path.
Ahead of time post signs in the windows and on your web sites offering prizes to the first 200 people who email photos of themselves posing on the graffiti “sidewalk trail” they will see “next week.” Also alert the local media and bloggers of this event.
Tell them all photos will be posted on a web page for the event so be sure to include their name and caption for their photo. (Reviewing the photos in advance enables you to screen for inappropriate photos.)
Your web page also has images of the small prizes each participating business will offer to the named winners who walk in their doors to pick them up.
2. Along the path, tell a story, tied to something special inside each place.
3. Co-host a scavenger hunt, offering clues that draw people inside and prizes to receive inside each place for the first 100 people who complete the hunt. Perhaps use Local Squared.
People are using reverse graffiti for all kinds of reasons.
Here are three:
1. In Minneapolis, Martin Pace created murals by scrubbing away exhaust grime on motorway walls as Moose did in San Francisco’s dirty Broadway tunnel.
2. For this year’s L.A. Film Festival Clorox commissioned The Reverse Graffiti Project, a mini-documentary for its GreenWorks line of cleaning products.
3. A solar gadget company used stenciled mud graffiti, eye-catching and sustainable because it last just a week or so.
June 7th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
This is really interesting Kare. I love how you are able to pull ideas & examples together. Re: partner-based approaches… I like the idea of connecting graffiti between busineses in one area. I will have to mention this idea to local folks/busineses here in Victoria. So much story potential in that one – especially if business values are compatible across the different businesses involved. Thanks.
June 7th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Since iI admire your ideas so much Ben I especially value your comments here.
One way we may have a slightly different view relates to your notion ” especially if business values are compatible across the different businesses involved.”
I think the most vital “if’ is if partners are non-competing yet complementary: they serve some of the same kind of customers and/or the same situation for the customer. The relevant values show up when individuals collaborate and discover, first-hand, who actually follows through and who does not – and who does even more to help the partnership succeed and to make partners look good. Sometimes decent individuals who share your values do not follow through despite their best of intentions and others who have different values manage to do their part and mcuh more to make the collaboration a success.
June 8th, 2010 at 5:14 pm
[...] small businesses can’t do the same. For example, what if adjacent businesses joined forces to reverse graffiti a themed “path” on their collective sidewalk? By sharing the cost, they could each get plenty of bang for their [...]
June 9th, 2010 at 3:14 am
Kare,
Thank you so much for talking about our company and adding some great ideas. I hope that this starts a discussion that get’s people thinking about how they could use GreenGraffiti – reverse graffiti to add value to their businesses.
We have created several “green carpets” mostly for events but also for our won business and I can tell you from our direct experience that it stops people and usually leads to them at least peaking in your window if not coming in and starting up a discussion. The space outside any business is incredibly valuable retail marketing space that is seldom used to it fullest potential.
I would add to your idea the idea of including the opportunity for your suppliers to participate as well. This is a great way to help fund such a campaign and will not only give your business added value but will also add value for your valued suppliers.
When used with Google Maps or some of the new smart phone tour applications, one could in fact create an entire shopping experience. Imagine teaming up with local food stores and gourmet shops and planning a route based around a dinner party or recipes. Imagine a flower shop creating a beautiful trail to their store using natural images. Take it one step further and add a clean up campaign leaving behind a small message that the street was clean by such and such – talk about going for consumers good will! By cleaning your street you are actually giving something back to the very people who do business in your store a very powerful relationship builder.
There are literally hundreds of simple ideas that we could talk about it that would help companies add value in unique and in my opinion more long lasting ways. Advertising does not have to be “buy this product today”. Sales are important, make no mistake about it but forming a positive and long lasting relationship based on shared values and vision will result in many sales over a long period of time which is a much more sustainable approach to doing business.
Consumers are SMART! I have spent my entire career hearing the preachings of those who believe you have to hit a consumer over the head a hundred times before they will take action. Of course a media company wants you to hit your potential customers over the head as many times as possible but think about it…. we tend to pay attention to a new ad, tolerate it for the next 10 views, ignore it for the next 20 and at some point it begins to annoy us. How good is that for your brand? We say surprise people and respect their intelligence. If it take 100 views to notice or take action, it must be a bad ad to begin with.
One of the great things about GreenGraffiti is that we are able to stimulate and involve people. The result is high impact and usually a big smile.
To everyone out there reading this, please feel free to contact us with your thoughts, ideas and criticisms. As an open company we have learned some great things from people outside our company and we deeply believe that the best ideas come from outside our own little bubble. So please feel free to fire away.
Jim Bowes
Founder GreenGraffiti®
June 9th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
[...] small businesses can’t do the same. For example, what if adjacent businesses joined forces to reverse graffiti a themed “path” on their collective sidewalk? By sharing the cost, they could each get plenty of bang for their [...]