In this day and age of the 24 hours news cycle and a constantly changing landscape in the marketing world, it’s hard to know what’s a fad, what will work, and what’s worth spending your hard earned cash on. We do know the power of guerilla marketing is stronger than ever and that wild postings will never disappear. Recently we partnered up with posterGIANT for a little Tried & True wild posting experiment – the results were pretty fantastic. Completely custom campaign with wonderful customer service and a great final product that involved A&P taking over the nation…it was exactly what you want to get a little extra attention on your business.
They walk you through the process from start to finish — from branding, messaging and design to strategy, production and execution, carefully and specifically creating a campaign designed to meet any unique needs. We had a chance to chat with Doug Cox, posterGIANT’s founder and CEO about the power of posters and why it’s the best bang for your buck.
Tell me about the inception of PosterGiant.
It started kind of by accident. I am a sound engineer of twenty plus years, and about fifteen years ago I was between tours and looking for something to do. I came across a help wanted ad and saw one that said entertainment distribution with a vague description and a phone number.
To make a long story short, a serendipitous trip to Seattle sealed my fate and I started gluing posters to plywood walls for promotional purposes—and after a few months I started thinking to myself, if they are paying me this much, how much are they getting paid? How many other companies are out there doing this kind of work?
I did a little research and could not find one company in the entire PNW that did anything close to this. There was an obvious demand but no local businesses. That is when I got the idea to start posterGIANT. I kept with my audio career and the postering job that I had started and slowly grew posterGIANT until it was my sole job and PG could stand on its own. The rest is history I guess.
Is it a competitive industry?
It is very competitive. The biggest problem is there is a handful of companies out there that do guerrilla marketing and PR stunts that are good at what they do and a ton of companies that claim they can do these type of executions that can not or do not know how to navigate the often treacherous legal waters and pit falls of doing this type of work.
There is risk so you have to know what you are doing to minimize those risks and not cause damage to your clients brand and reputation. A lot of clients that come to us have had bad experiences with other companies and are leery of the risks. Our main goal is to create eye catching campaigns while protecting our clients brand and reputation.
How do you stay fresh and relevant with the ever changing marketing world in social media?
One of the reasons I decided to root posterGIANT in guerrilla marketing and posters is that it will always be relevant. As long as people walk in the cities, drive or ride a bike there will be a need for out door advertising. I have always said if we ever end up in the MATRIX that I will be there putting up posters in your mind!
Messages on walls have been around since the dawn of man so I don’t think the relevancy of posters is going anywhere soon. In addition to the laws of nature being on our side we do run social media campaigns as well. We have also developed some great tactics to integrate our street campaigns with social media.
What’s new and on the horizon? Any expansions planned?
Right now we are starting to expand into Europe. We have done a few big jobs in the UK in the past few months and are working on proposals for work in Germany, France, UK right now. We are a national company and work in all states in the US now so the next step is more work in the US and break into the European market. We have started some relationships with great partners over there and are very excited about the opportunities.
Who is the typical PosterGiant client?
There is no typical posterGIANT client. We work with everyone from local to federal government agencies. Mom and Pops to the fortune 500. Fashion to video games. It is literally across the board. If you need to promote a product, service, event, or even PSA’s we will get your message out to your audience loud and clear.
Why use wild postings instead of social media? What’s the big advantage?
People have to find your message online. We take your message to the people and make sure they get it. You can delete my marketing email in your inbox without reading it but the odds that you will take our door hanger off your door knob without reading it is pretty low.
