What Donuts Taught Me About Startup Marketing

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Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By Bob Crimmins

My seven-year-olds live within three blocks of their elementary school. That makes it especially easy for us to participate in schoolactivities.  One of my favorites is “Donuts for Dads”, a before-schoolmixer that happens every few months or so.  This event has been going onfor a couple of years now and has been progressively drawing a biggerand bigger crowd of dads and kids, but it has never been full.

 
The Turnaround
This morning, however, they blew the doors off the place…wall to wall with dads and kids… and a line out the door and down thehall!  It was as though TechCrunch had just written a softball pieceabout how this event was just what dads everywhere have been lookingfor.  I recognize the effects of good marketing when I see it… and Ihad to find out what the killer campaign was.

Donut BraceletThe Secret

The magic was… little paper bracelets.  In the days prior, five,six and seven-year old kids were treated to a red paper braceletinforming, reminding and encouraging dads to attend Donuts for Dads. The bracelet’s message was worded as a charming invitation from thechild:

“Hey Dad! Donuts for Dads is tomorrow morning at 7:45! Come to school with me for coffee, donuts and card playing fun!”

How brilliant is that — fun for the kids and an effective way to makesure the message is delivered!  And the cost was virtually free when youconsider the already-sunk cost of the labor.  It also successfullynavigates the subtle and sensitive (and, perhaps, unfortunate) barrierto intrusion that can exist between families and their school.  A heartyBravo to the folks at Broadview Thomson Elementary — you rock!!

Here are a few lessons that I think make this a salient example for startups: 

1) This is classic creative guerilla marketing — simple, cheap andeffective.  It considers the dynamics of the relationships within theecosystem they are targeting and devises a message delivery approachthat gets it right.  Do all that for your startup and you’ve donesomething very good.

2) I didn’t mention this up top but the bracelet was the finaltouch point in a “campaign” that included fliers posted at school and amention in the school newsletter.  But these tactics never yieldedanything close to the results that the bracelets clearly generated,i.e., they never overflowed the library before.  Lesson: Keep revvingyour marketing until it works.
 
3) Regrettably, a lot of donut-seeking kids (and dads)were left waiting in the hallway only to find that by the time theyreached the donut table the donuts were long gone… as were all thechairs, the coffee and the juice.  A quick, impromptu trip to the donutshop saved the day for a few kids fortunate enough to have lingered tothe end but by then the damage was done — i.e., the user experience wasnot great for many of the 50 or so dads that got their kids up and outthe door 30 minutes early and drove them into school (many getting alate start at work, no doubt).     So… if you know TechCrunch is goingto cover your startup, you better make sure your AWS instances areproperly configured to scale with the predictable traffic that is goingto flood your site for a few hours/days.  In defense of the great folksat Broadview Thomson Elementary, it was clear that they learned thelesson that so many startups have learned and were all actively thinkingabout what to do differently next time — bigger room, more donuts,coffee, juice, etc.

If someone would have told me before that a little paper bracelet aroundand six-year-old’s wrist could be as potent as massive media coverage,I’d have rolled my eyes.  Instead, I’m now obsessing over the subtlebrilliance and undeniable success of a campaign that any startup shouldbe proud to pull off. 

 

Bob Crimmins is a serial entrepreneur and Chief Instigator of Startup Poker 2.0, a monthly networking event for startup founders, execs and investors.

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