We returned from a very successful International Toy Fair Nuremberg where we were able to attract a lot of attention despite a small budget. Our goal was to support our customer acquisition team with some guerilla marketing. In other words: Causing some heads to turn our way without investing in some of the expensive advertising spaces on the fair.
Usually, running ads at an event like the Toy Fair is impossible to afford for an event agency. It’s standard business practice for fairs to charge set amounts for every flyer, floor sticker and even promoters running around with a bag full of products. Additionally, you need to check with the organizers of the fair prior to its start and make sure you receive a confirmation in time. We instantly knew this wouldn’t be a suitable solution for us.
Still, we wanted to attract attention and make sure visitors would leave the fair thinking of JOKMOK. That’s how we came up with the idea of custom made suitcases: 4 of our employees would receive big suitcases in the typical JOKMOK green, also featuring our logo together with a little flag so it’s easier to spot them from faraway places.
Both our customer acquisition specialists as well as our project managers made sure to trail the bags behind them whenever they visited a different booth. Additionally, we handed out a number of give aways, starting with the traditional pens and more modern USB sticks all the way through to a very memorable goodie – a condom that came in a JOKMOK branded wrapper, wishing our customers lots of fun for the “best event ever”!
Less than a day passed before we were first approached and asked about the suitcases. During several meetings, we got told that the suitcases had been seen before and quite a few clients were surprised to hear that we only came with 4 of them. Even better yet, our guerilla marketing tactic also worked in our favor during acquisition talks. When a marketing manager wanted to get away, telling us we were the 20th agency that introduced itself to him during the fair, we replied “Yeah, but there’s only one Agency with the Suitcase!” Seems like this did the trick as we received a request for a quote for a promotion the company is planning. 
