Pop-Up Rep

A hot marketing fad involves so called Pop-up Shops. Depending on which colony you’re in, you might also know this trend as pop-up stores, pop-stores or pop-up retail.

From Olde Worlde once-off market traders selling Christmas Trees, to fireworks outlets springing up the week of Bonfire Night, the concept’s been around for years. Here’s a 2004 take featuring “guerilla mobile units”.

The obvious example is where a previous store has shut down and in its place a tiny-term temporary retailer moves in. Even those sparky magicians of The Real Hustle showed how easy this is by setting up on a High Street for just a single Saturday with home-made fake hand creams and the like and making off with a fortune.

2010 saw marketers’ evolution of this concept go mainstream. Pop-Up Shops began to appear in two new flavours.

Non-retail space began to be commandeered. Places like inner-city lofts and even homes in the suburbs became stores for a day.

Mobile stores took off. English smoothie makers Innocent sent their grass covered ice-cream and cow vans to outdoor events like music festivals. Cadbury South Africa’s Stimorol chewing gum drove around in an extended township taxi, a limo-taxi, generating enormous PR.

For maximum impact, I caught The Win Win Group’s Thurlow Hanson-Moore suggesting on Maggs On Media that your “pimped-up vehicle” must “surprise and amaze” and naturally, be part of a broader social and viral campaign.

Away from big budget consumer brand marketing, I wondered how this tactic could be appropriated by the solution sales arena.

Where can you pop-up to ‘surprise and amaze’ your clients and prospects?

The hardened salesperson will point to traditional networking. Become a sector expert, trade journal columnist, conference seminar panellist, buying group speaker and industry body board member.

Where else can you pop-up these days?

I’m not advocating you rock up at your big client’s car park in a pink-painted tank with your logo plastered across the turret offering speed dating.

Yet there is scope for appearing in person and genuinely add value to further your relationships. What is it you and your organisation are renowned for? How can you share or provoke debate about what is interesting in your client’s world about it? What departmental forums can you enlighten? How can you interact with your client’s clients?

How can you put a plan in place to create this kind of programme?