I’m a big fan of guerilla marketing. The kind of marketing that makes you think, makes you engaged, makes you want to know more. Billboards, radio spots, flyers, etc are all fine and have a place, but doing something different is always cool.
Which is why I was curious about a mysterious grey box that appeared on a concrete pedestal outside a house on Stony Plain Road a few weeks ago.
At first it was just a grey box. No writing, just a box. I thought it was an art piece of some description (each to their own!), but then in late June a date appeared on it. I say a date, because I assume it was a date. It said “07.01″. I always thought in Canada we put the day followed by the month, but hey, I’m foreign, what do I know?
True enough, on July 1st a URL appeared under the date.
(sorry for the quality, taken with my beat-up iPhone)
That’s what it looked like anyway. Made sense too. A grey box with greybox.ca on it.
I thought I saw something a little weird on the .ca, but driving past at 50km/hr looking at a word 3″ tall, the mind helps fill in the gaps, and I decided it was greybox.ca.
Quick visit on my iPhone (not while driving, honest) to greybox.ca…
(obviously not my iPhone…)
Hmmm, that’s weird. Why would someone got the trouble of advertising a GoDaddy holding page? Maybe their DNS hasn’t propagated yet or something.
On my way home, I took another, closer look. By this time I’ve noticed 2 more of these grey boxes on Stony Plain Road.
Wait a second…! That’s not a .ca, it’s an awfully similar, but importantly different .co
The website is www.greybox.co
Why would some be using the domain extension for Columbia for their website?
So eventually I make it to their real website, something I’d imagine a lot of people wouldn’t manage. See, the thing about a guerilla marketing campaign, is that they tread a fine line with regards to how much work you can make the viewer do before they get bored. This is especially true when you’re relying on people’s curiosity to the get them to do something (in this case, visit a website). Up until this point, people have no idea why they’re visiting the website, just that it’s mentioned on a weird box on the side of the road. That’s probably enough to get them to visit it, but probably not enough to get them to get over the fact they landed on a GoDaddy landing page full of ads.
Anyway, I’m now at their real website. I still have no idea why I’m here, so I’m hoping it will become obvious very soon.
Hmmmm.
That’s a fancy login box. But doesn’t tell me anything about why I’m here.
Turns out you have the hit the somewhat un-obvious arrow on the right to see some brief pages about their product. I’m still not entirely sure what their product is. Some kind of blogging platform? It keeps talking about writing and community, expressing yourself, etc. Not sure.
But it is $35 a year…
No idea what you get for $35/year mind you, but they want your credit card details!
So what can we learn from all this?
- Guerilla marketing can be a great way to get attention.
Thousands of people will have seen the mysterious grey boxes on the side of the road. Building suspense with the (mis-formed) dates is a good way of keeping people interested. - Domain names and their extensions are important.
greybox.ca is a great domain for this campaign. Shame it’s not the domain used in the campaign.
I once ran a very successful campaign with signs on the side of the road that just said “HorseSummerCamps.com”. Simple domain name, told you exactly what it was about and where to find out more information.
Using a .co domain name instead of a .com or .ca domain name was a mistake. Even going with something like BigGreyBox.com would have been better. - Landing pages matter.
The landing page of a website is the page that people ‘land on’ when they first visit your website, usually the home page. You have precious seconds to do a few things with your landing page:
a) show people they’re in the right place
b) convince them to stay
c) tell them what they need to know to feel comfortable buying your product (or give them a way to get that information).
Giving them a login box and an un-intuitive navigation system is not a good way to do any of those things. - You need to explain and sell your product
People will not just hand over their credit card information without a good reason (surprise surprise). You need to show people what they’re buying, and why they should buy it. greybox.co does give people a 30 day trial, but you still need to give your credit card details to get it. There’s a growing trend (a good one) at the moment for websites to allow you to trial their services without giving credit card details.
The people behind greybox.co missed a great opportunity here in my opinion. Almost all the pieces were in place for a mini version of the very successful Southgate-Centre re-opening campaign (you know the one, with the cryptic dates on the side of the road). But somewhere along the way it all fell apart and you’re just left with a marketing mess.
Shame really.
I can’t see it happening, but Grey Box, if you want some help with your marketing, contact me? rob@robdavy.com