I like the T-shirt idea and really just the attitude of spur of the moment making it happen kind of marketing. Step 3 seems a bit much.
We just started marketing a start-up for the first time and this article led me to question an upcoming situation:
If I was unable to secure vendor space at a conference/expo, would it be ethical for me to wear my company t-shirt and have cards/fliers available for people who ask me about it? Would it be appropriate for me to talk to vendors about my company?
I too love the T-shirt idea.
Last week my team just had some T-shirts made, so we could catch some eyeballs on the streets while we hosted our walking-tours. We designed our T-shirts to have our company name inside a Search Bar and a mouse cursor pointing at the Search Button, hoping people on the streets will go home and google us!
I think its fair game to wander around and talk to vendors in the expo, but putting flyers on the chairs of a competitor's panel is kinda crossing the line.
I think your instincts are spot on. There was nothing wrong with the fist two ideas, it was just the third that may have crossed the line.
Talking to vendors is fine, just realize that they are probably sales oriented people (largely depends on the conference of course), so if you are trying to get them to use your service, you may be barking up the wrong tree.
That is a really good point. The conference is at least game/entertainment oriented so I'm hoping that some of the vendors will be game developer types. I guess we shall see.
Veronica Belmont is speaking, and Billy West, so even if we don't get some folks, we at least get to see cool people :)
We just started marketing a start-up for the first time and this article led me to question an upcoming situation: If I was unable to secure vendor space at a conference/expo, would it be ethical for me to wear my company t-shirt and have cards/fliers available for people who ask me about it? Would it be appropriate for me to talk to vendors about my company?