Morzine, France. My hometown. Picture from my Flickr photostream.Brand Ambassadors
Yesterday, I had a lot of fun distributing promotional material for Microsoft's campaign theultimatesteal.ca, but I quickly realized that not everyone can be a brand ambassador.
Not everyone can positively interact with 500 strangers in one day.
There are two-ways for companies to conduct guerrilla marketing and/or promotional efforts. One is to hire a mobile team that will spend a couple days on each campuses. The other way is to hire current students to act as ongoing ambassadors in their respective colleges.
The clear advantage of having existing students is their knowledge of the campus and their existing relationships. The main barrier, however, is the difficulty and resources needed to recruit the right people.
In my case, they did a 10-minute phone interview. That's clearly not enough when you know that good brand ambassadors need to be presentable, good communicators, friendly, self-motivators and reliable.
The Idea
So to save money to ad agencies, let's start a company that specializes in interviewing and cataloguing 10-20 people in each universities, on a yearly basis. Their picture, experience and bio can be shared with companies that need local brand ambassadors. In turn, those companies can be put into contact with each respective brand specialist without going through the hassle of recruitment. This saves companies and agencies time and resources and most importantly, it reduces the risk of hiring the wrong people to virtually 0%.
Self starters, I've identified a clear gap in the market, so get out there and make Brand Specialist ltd. a reality.
[edit: Thanks to Katherine for pointing out an Australian company doing just that called Student Marketing Australia.]
3 comments:
Sweet idea Morgan ... maybe you should share it with Zac at Pigs Don't Fly blog ... he is on site at a uni and can offer an Aussie perspective and maybe get it off the ground in Australia.
Haha I had a similar idea a while ago - though more about PAs than brand ambassadors.
Have a look at www.studentmarketing.com.au - is that kinda what you were thinking of?
Daniel, I'm putting the idea out there cuz I know I won't take the time to do it. Thanks for trying to help, that's what I love about the blogsphere!!!
Katherine, that is basically what I had in mind. I just checked their website and I'm impressed by the quality of what they've put in place. It seems that you Auzzies are always ahead of the curve :)
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