HOME ADVISOR GUERILLA MARKETING
Event Details:
Location: Austin, TX
Venue: SXSW
Attendees: over 250,000
When digital marketplace company HomeAdvisor began their re-brand, they chose the entertainment and technology conference South by Southwest (SXSW) for their launch. So when they came to Matrex for a launch strategy, we were excited because of SXSW’s large attendance of technology and social media influencers. The catch was, HomeAdvisor had not secured an exhibit space, both the exhibit hall and surrounding venues were completely sold out, and the show was in less than three months.
We immediately put on our guerrilla marketing hats and through research and our own years of experience, developed a strategy that exploited one of the major pain-points of the show to draw attention to the HomeAdvisor. The pain point was a lack of transportation at night when attendees are trying to get back to their hotel rooms from entertainment venues across the city. Our solution; give attendees a chance to win a free chauffeured ride “home” by tweeting #TrustHomeAdvisor.
We accomplished this by assembling four street-teams composed of the best facilitators we knew, dressed them in HomeAdvisor colors, and armed them with tablets loaded with digital literature. By day, they drove around the city in touring vans we wrapped with HomeAdvisor graphics, stopping at areas of congregation to engage attendees and let them know to “Trust Home Advisor to get you home” later that night.
Every night of the show, we randomly contacted Twitter users who had tweeted our hashtag to offer them a ride back to their hotel in our branded vans. This prompted even more tweets each night as attendees saw what was happening.
From this effort alone, HomeAdvisor went from zero Twitter impressions to 1.4 million over the span of the show while successfully reaching their target audience of technology and social media influencers.
Program Features:
- Brand Launch Strategy
- Guerilla Marketing
- Social Media Integration
- Vendor Procurement
- Facilitator Training and Management
