A Fun Afternoon Meets Marketing Genius
A Fun Afternoon Meets Marketing GeniusI subscribe to a few local papers and Friday, I was checking out the community calendar sections looking for something fun and interesting to do. I read about Canon’s workshops this week in multiple papers and was considering attending. Then heard from someone staying at the Inn that the workshop was fun, so I decided to do it.
Genuis Idea #1: Free how-to event gets lots of good coverage in traditional media.
Yesterday, I showed up at the booth the requisit 1/2 hour beforehand. First was a registration, filled out on one of three setup Macbooks. It was quick, and took my contact information.
Genuis Idea #2: Canon now has my address, phone number, and email address. Some companies have said this information can end up being worth $75 or more to them (Mequoda.com).
There was an opportunity to borrow Canon equiptment for free. You could certainly borrow a digital SLR camera but you could also try out macro lenses and other specialized gear. I wasn’t going to do this but was persuaded by one of the instructors to give it a shot and there would no doubt be time in my class to learn the corresponding commands on my point-and-shoot.
I shrugged and gave them my drivers liscence and credit card in exchange for a sexy camera. (I used my own memory card so I could keep all my photos! Correction: If you don’t have your own memory card, Canon will load the photos you took to a web server and send a link about a week following the workshop where a participant can
download the photos.)
Genuis Idea #3: If you have a great product, let people try it out and get comfortable with it…Then they can actually start wanting it!
We were then split up into groups based on skill levels. Two beginner groups and one intermediate group ran, each with their own instructor.
The woman giving the course was fun, engaging, and professional. She made the two hours go by fast and taught us the basics of shooting a good photograph. Since there was about eight of us in the course, she even had time to work with each of us, and even show me how to change the settings on my $125 Fuji camera. She didn’t slam the competition’s products or laugh at my camera and lack of skills. I kind of wanted to keep hanging out with her after!
Genuis Idea #4: Having engaging and capable professionals use your product and wear your logo gives us regular people a cool person to associate with your brand.
Once the class was over, small printers were set up that allowed us to print a couple of our photos. The high school girl in my class and I marveled at the coolness of the printers.
Genius Idea #5: Giving a tangible product to remember the experience allows us to show (and tell) our friends.
When I turned in the camera, I was invited to the Abbe Museum later that night for a slideshow presentation. I decided to go, just being thrilled to have something fun to do on a Sunday night.
The presentation (given by one of the other instructors) gave me another knowledgeable and interesting persona to associate with the Canon brand. The questions after came from a woman who hadn’t attended a workshop but wanted to understand how they worked and when they happen.
Genuis Idea #6: Reaching an additional audience via lecture hooked some more passive interested people who were shy to participate initally.
All in all, it was a great program from both a marketing standpoint (for Canon) and a fun time standpoint (for participants).
If you are bummed that you missed it, don’t worry. There are workshops at 9:30 am and 1 pm (show up half an hour early) and a talk at 6 pm at the Abbe Museum. The group has Tuesday off but you can do the workshops Monday (today), Wednesday, and Thursday. They even encourage you to go multiple times to learn new techniques. For more information, click here.
And if you can’t make it this year, Canon does this every year at national parks across the US. They are even running a photo contest related to national parks until September.
Know a company that’s promoting itself in a fun or unusual way? New Breaking Even regular will be Marketing Mondays, highlighting businesses doing cool things. Let BE know about what you’ve seen and you too can be featured on the BE blog!