Good news for those who’ve been wondering where to get Stormhoek wine in South Africa: it’s now available at Checkers around the country.
It’s not easy getting a big grocery chain to stock a new wine, so part of the deal is that Stormhoek had to do an interesting web promotion to go with the launch.
So 3000 bottles of Stormhoek in Checkers have a little neck tag that encourages people to find Stormhoek Big Love on Facebook and add it as a friend. The people who do so can win t-shirts and wine each week until all the bottles are sold.
Lastly, if you blog about it then they’ll send you a bottle to say thanks:) To let them know, just link to this post, or mail chris@stormhoek.com . UPDATE: for the first 20 bloggers
Here’s a video case-study of the Peugeot 107 campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi AtPlay, entitled “Break Free“. I often use it in presentations, and have had so many requests to burn it on discs that I eventually just asked Allan Kent, Creative Group Head of AtPlay, if I could post it online. Thanks Allan:
Mike Stopforth often speaks of a concept called Guerilla Kindness. There’s not much about it online though, so I thought I’d start the conversation about this as a business strategy.
Guerilla Kindness is an ongoing strategic approach undertaken by a company to surprise and delight people in the hope of creating a great story associated with the experience to pass on to their peers, and hopefully mention online.
Examples:
Graham from Missing Link was sent a toy car by the call-centre agent at Outsurance when he crashed his car. He blogged about it, and many a reader of his blog (including me) was impressed by the remarkable courtesy and good humour displayed by the insurer.
Aston Martin gave Mike the keys to a DB9 for a day after he wrote an article mentioning the vehicle. He subsequently blogged the experience, the post was picked up by some major sites and over 50 000 people read it. As a result and I’m sure quite a few of those have grown their appreciation for the company and its cars (I have).
Execution:
An idea might be to organize a flashmob to clean up a really messy city street in an instant; paint an ugly building; plant a few hundred trees or organise fabulous suprises for random clients.
The idea is not to brand the act, nor to publicize it yourself.
 Your intentions should be good, and hopefully someone will mention it of their own accord (that’s how things work in the blogosphere and the world of S0cial Currency)
In other words it refers to random acts of kindness that are:
Creative
Unexpected, and
Personal
(Drink from the CUP of kindness :-p)
By the way, the more money you spend, the less it is trusted. Use some energy, thoughtfulness and time instead.
It’s a fun idea. I’m already working on my company’s Guerilla Kindess strategy for 2008.
Today is my second day back in the lab after three weeks of back-to-back online marketing and strategy workshops, lectures and conferences. The recurrent theme in all of them was the idea of authentic co-creation. Quite obviously the most important shift that is happening in marketing and strategy is a move away from centralized control of communications to a more decentralized user-oriented approach.
At the iCommons Innovation Series last week in Joburg, Jimmy Wales stated that any business that was dependent on people not copying its products or services was doomed, whereas those that embrace the culture of sharing, and that build in systems to facilitate and benefit from sharing would thrive. This is most obvious in the music industry, where even Madonna has left her old record label which was dependent on DRM and record sales and moved to a label that prioritizes alternative revenue streams such as her brand, her live performance revenues, and merchandising.
In the Attention Economy, having the goodwill of a community can make you rich, and power comes as your ideas, products and services circulate through that community. In this new economy, participation is key, since it is the highest form of Attention that a person can give. It must be pointed out though, that simply creating a platform for participation (such as a Wiki or a video-channel) is not enough to get people involved. You need to help them connect with people that have shared interests.
How do you think Wikipedia maintains the level of quality participation it has? The answer is that behind each article there are little communities of people who are connecting with each other through a shared interest in the subject matter they are compiling – each contribution, discussion and edit is a form of social currency that can escalate their status in the community. People blog for much the same reason. So perhaps the human need for recognition and connection is really the driver of the new web economy.
My advice is to do whatever you can to help reduce people’s sense of separation from each other and your brand. As a participant in one of last-week’s workshops pointed out: A relationship is an ongoing conversation. So I leave you with a question to consider: How will you start facilitating ongoing conversations through your company, with your company, and through your products, services, portals and communications?
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Good news for those who’ve been wondering where to get Stormhoek wine in South Africa: it’s now available at Checkers around the country.
