Operating out of offices in Boston, Brooklyn and Dallas, Street Attack is an award-winning agency that specializes in both digital and alternative marketing solutions. The company goes above and beyond to help consumer-facing companies and online businesses connect with their customers, leveraging innovative programs that include Experiential Marketing, Word of Mouth Marketing, and Street Teams. Street Attack’s solutions are designed to help organizations engage, boost traffic, and increase their bottom line.
DMB’s Contel Bradford caught up with Larry Jenkins, Street Attack Field Marketing Drill Sergeant, to learn more about the agency that has garnered much success balancing cutting edge technology and old school strategies.
Street Attack is definitely one of a kind. Aside from the obvious, what makes your approach to marketing different from other agencies on the scene?
We’re a unique hybrid of authentic grassroots experiential and socially focused digital. Our approach is often referred to as “inside out” where we build credibility and emotional bonds from within the influential ranks of a subset of consumers. This becomes extremely powerful when applied to hyper-local or super-niche slices. Our approach is to essentially create demand for a product or service based on its merit and ignite a movement around its promised benefits.
How can word of mouth still be so effective in the digital age of marketing?
Blogs, websites, and web personalities are in essence new entertainment properties. Have you ever recommended a movie or a TV show to a friend or family member? The prevalence of content has also exacerbated the need to weed out the junk. Now more than ever we’re inundated with choices and channels. There seems to be an inversely proportionate curve to time and available bandwidth. Thus I rarely seek clips or digital snacks. Rather I’ll respond to the recommendations, fwds or links from my friends and trusted sources. Also technology and developers tend to make things better and smarter and thus forces of attraction kick in. This allows memes to form more rapidly- multiplying the eyes and ears tuned to subject or piece of content. Remixing occurs, further refinement, open source allows for real time editing, wikis blossom… Crowds cluster and rally around topics sculpting the silly putty into clay models just waiting to be picked up by the main stream media and instantly cast in bronze. 0 to 60 is no longer a respectable measure. We’re now dealing with information wormholes.
How can WOM still be effective? Is Has to be and it has way more tools and it’s fun and you’re way more likely to be a contributor/creator which puts skin in the game and thus amplifies your likelihood to spread the good word whatever that may be.
What is the average work day like for your Street Team?
We have a pretty stringent program for our Street Team and I’m happy to say we’re one of the few firms that operate actual BOOT CAMPS in major cities around the country. These boot camps operation much like the national guard and are activated as needed based on the call of duty. On a training day there’s a 6AM call time which starts with a rigorous battery of calisthenics, cardio and strength training followed by breakfast. Next we have 2 hours of acting and improve to sharpen interpersonal skills and field readiness. Finally there’s a psych profiling field test where the Street Teamers have to make snap judgments and profile consumers as they engage them in a mock campaign. Based on their scores we group them into classes and assign them to projects according to rank.
On a day in the field they assume the role of chameleon… slipping in and out of character undetected. They deliver messages across 5 senses with ease (sometimes 6 depending on the client) all with the end goal of a smile. We’re in the experience delivery business masterfully designed with a time-release mechanism that delivers a predetermined result.
Our street team members that get this end up going very far in their careers including hosting a talk show, roles on Saturday Night Live and Olympic divers. We work our Street Teams hard but they produce and our repeat business is a testament to the strict training program.
Please give our readers some in-depth details on your Experimental Marketing program.
Weather it’s experimental or experiential… we’re mad scientists at heart, conjuring curiosity, inspiring discovery, creating sticky and memorable events that brighten and liven people’s day.
The process is a product of the desired result as our campaigns are highly customized and often adapt to their channels and vehicles to ensure delivery and absorption. You could say our lab is like the Brawny testing facility. We’re striving for maximum pick up with minimum waste. We actually have a piece of software called the RAGUM (Random Access Generator and User Maximizer) that will calculate the probability of adoption/absorption of an idea, product or service. We’ve found a much higher take-rate when applied to its purest target (again the paper towel reference) Once we’ve concocted the experiential Frankenstein the fun part begins… field testing. Frankenstein might be in many forms, a senior simulator driving suit, an event footprint full of twists, turns and surprises, and interactive scavenger hunt that has a user solving clues while crowdsourcing ideas for a contest. Finally our experiment is ready for the real world and for public consumption. Then again based on the program, we populate the periphery with additional components such as: partners, media, call-to-action that supplement our “Big Idea” or RAGUM meets Frankenstein. We can roll-out a concept on a national basis overnight. We maintain a hyper-link to our field network. Able to activate at the flip of a switch. These elite street nodes maintain their our respective networks and replicate our concept with minor tweaking to adapt to their own climate and local market nuances. Thus very little is lost in translation between Wicker Park in Chicago and St. Ides district of Houston. So to recap it’s a matter of invention, testing, adaptation and retro-fit coupled with a quality product or brand that’s destined for success. We’re just the grease in the machine wheel that catapults an idea across our own hand-picked neural network of enthusiasts, designed and recruited in the likeness of the mission.
Mobile advertising hogged a lot of the spotlight last year. In your opinion, what emerging trend will make an impact in 2010?
Hyper-local enabled platform games and apps that work on the simple principle the sum of the parts are greater than the whole. There’s a little chicken/egg issue but with the right formula you can reach critical mass in a given neighborhood and prove the concept in short time- then replicate, expand, rinse, repeat, etc. look at foursquare… also rapid prototyping meets circuit bending meets technology curve that enables the normal walking man/woman to control more of their life and their networks from their pockets. Let’s call them pocket jockeys. And the pocket could be a backpack and the jockeyed device could be a tablet, mobile, mini-device - but it flies a helicopter.
