Collaboration Chronicles

I’m Pat, and I’m guest posting about Saturday’s event, Sharks in the Park. It was to promote our company, Collab21, by giving out snow cones in Delores Park in the Mission (coinciding with the incredibly busy dyke march.)

It was a fannnn-tastic time and place to be for promotion. (Some years ago, I spent a lot of time doing business as a book dealer, and it gave me ideas about which events were worth going back to. The student-run gamer convention was golden… the shady broken-down flea market, not so much.) For our thing on saturday, giving out spiked snow cones was an awesome idea. Hardly anyone who’s attention we caught said no. We made the cost back from donations without even pointing out the money jar.

The people who gave us attention were probably 1/10th of the potential. We didn’t have a sign. Most people didn’t even make eye contact, because we looked like people having a party among ourselves. We can measure the notice by looking at new mailing list sign-ups. Here’s some preparation ideas that could use the potential better next time:

-For presentation- bring a big, nice-looking sign, good to re-use any time there’s an event. Not a little piece of ripped-off cardboard with a note on it like we had. (That was nobody’s fault- it was our first time public event. I’ll help make a sign next time.)
-Stacks of flyers, not a little pocket full.
-I wonder if there’s a way to custom print snow cone sleeves? Maybe not a good idea because they’re guaranteed to go in the trash. Dual purpose small napkins with our info could be better.
-Once you get people’s attention, you have a short minute to give them a reason to care. If you don’t give them a reason, the flyer probably goes in the trash when they get home. Flyers don’t do much by themselves- I flyered a city once for a film fest I promoted, with a couple hundred at 11×17. You’re lucky to get 1 interested body for every 100 flyers you put out. To get people to care, just start with some random conversation. They will say “oh really, that reminds me of — I want to do —” and you say “well here’s the service/thing we do that can help…” I used to sell 4 times as many books by just talking to people about science fiction I used to read, as a fan myself, not a salesman. Then they would buy on my recommendation.

When people did give us a minute to talk about what we were doing, it could have helped to show, not tell, that we’re a group of creative people. We were just hanging out. Beth mentioned we could have been doing sidewalk chalk drawing (well, if it was a regular day, not a parade)… or drawing up a real sign… or caricature art. We originally planned to have poker games. We stopped those because of wind, and it’s kind of hard to get a random passer-by into that (but it’s a start.)

Being fun is important- the people next to us had it down. They put a satirical initiative on the ballot to rename the city sewage plant in honor of George W. Bush and were collecting signatures. They had a megaphone, patriotic music, and uncle sam costumes. If we had some unifying clothes, it could help show we’re not random people having a party. Of course, it’s best not to look like salesmen, more like people having a party… for a cause.

It could have been a great opportunity to fund raise. A lady selling veggie sausages for $5 was raking it in hand over fist. She must have made a few grand. Beth mentioned doing vegan baking to sell, another great idea. I was pretty sad that I didn’t have a chance to put out all my crates of leftover stock from my book dealer business. At $1 apiece, I probably could have made a day’s pay just sitting there.

Weather probably affected people’s interest in snow cones. It was slightly grey and not very warm (still OK for t-shirts). A hot day would have increased the interest a lot. Even so, we went through an entire 50 lb’s of ice in 3 hours.

I think doing snow cones is such a good idea that we should do it again this summer, at least once.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 2:55 am and is filed under Collaboration, Contribution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.