Equanimity

Case 3 brought to my attention Ambush Marketing, an interesting and relevant topic with respect to the various major sporting events that have occurred in the past year. By its nature, ambush marketing can take on many different forms and faces, but at its foundation, it involves a company associating its brand with an event without paying sponsorship dollars for the association.

Some amusing guerilla marketing from FedEx

Related to ambush marketing but slightly different is Guerilla Marketing, which involves the use of unconventional and often stealthy campaigns capitalizing on “time, energy and imagination”. Since guerilla marketing and social media pretty much go together like Dell and UPS, it’s not surprising that it’s found its way onto Twitter. Hey, if it worked for Obama…

A couple days ago, a company bought promoted tweet hashtags #apple, #mac, and #macbook – but it wasn’t Apple. Hewlett-Packard did some sneaky guerilla marketing on Twitter by buying the hashtags and then linking the tweet to its online computers store. The article states that it’s an old marketing tactic, but I was personally surprised to learn this was occurring on Twitter.

HP hasn’t been the only company to use Twitter as an advertising war platform – Google and Microsoft went head-to-head with simultaneous promoted tweets a couple weeks ago too. It’s easy to see why guerilla marketing is so well supported by social media: when a campaign is successful or buzz-worthy, it can be widely discussed and spread via social media, thus further amplifying the campaign’s triumph.

While social media is still in its relative infancy, it will be interesting to see how far marketers push the envelope in social media for their campaigns. With any luck, one day it’ll be me creating and carrying them out 😀

QuickMBA differentiates an entrepreneur from other small business ventures by 4 qualities:

1. Large generation of wealth
2. Rapid generation of wealth
3. High risk
4. Innovation

As I am quite interested in the world of tech startups and internet ventures, one business that fits the above characteristics sticks out in my mind – Chicago-based group-buying daily deals site, Groupon.

It’s no secret that since the startup began in 2008, Groupon has become wildly successful, spawning clones left right and center in the US and China (in the hundreds!). As the article mentions, Groupon raised $1 billion in valuation in half the time that Twitter took, and half a year faster than Facebook. Estimates have put Groupon’s pure profit at $1 million a week, a huge amount for a relatively new business with minimal overhead costs – they sell no tangible products, only virtual vouchers. Hence, Groupon clearly fits the first two definitions of an entrepreneurial business.

In terms of high risk and innovation, when these two characteristics are applied to Groupon, they kind of go hand in hand. Groupon began the collective buying craze with an unprecedented model, and with any new online/tech startup, there is risk of failure (and social media mockery). Groupon also breaks one of the fundamental startup rules – basing your success purely on that of others. Nonetheless, it seems to be working… for Groupon itself. There is debate about the effect Groupon has on some of its small business partners – but that’s a topic for another post.