Friday, September 3, 2010 How honest are you?
This isn’t exactly the type of question you’d expect a brand to ask you. But for Honest Tea, it’s all part of having an experience with the brand.
I recently attended an event featuring Max Lenderman, author of Brand New World and Director of OuterActive at Crispin Porter + Bogusky, talking about experiential marketing.
The example he highlighted that stuck with me the most was from Honest Tea. When most of us hear the words “experiential marketing,” we think of a huge semi truck that rolls up fully outfitted with multiple ways for people to experience the brand its promoting. We also think about huge budgets.
That’s not the case for Honest Tea. They set up simple stands in major cities full of their product. There’s no company representative around, just a sign that asks you to pay $1 for a bottle of tea and a locked box to put the money in. It’s based on the honor system. It perfectly aligns with their brand. And it couldn’t be a more cost effective way to provide a genuine experience.
The best part is that there’s a web cam overseeing each store. So you can go to the site to see just how honest your city is. While they haven’t come to Milwaukee, our colleagues in Chicago are only 78% honest (compared to 93.3% in Boston and 91% in San Francisco).
It just goes to show that with a little creative thinking, you don’t need a huge budget to create a really big brand experience.
Photo credit: Advertising Age
advertising, brand, marketing, strategy in Marketing 
Reader Comments (1)
I find it really interesting that Washington DC, the land of politicians, has amongst the highest honesty ratings for this program. :)