CareerBuilder + a Politically Correct Road Rules = CB Tour USA

Here's the website. Summer is the time for product marketing road trips. It is certainly interesting to see Career Builder, an internet based company, jump on this bandwagon. The tour was put together by Swivel Media. Congratulations to Erik Hauser for getting this out of the gate. This is a huge undertaking.

The site is pretty lame, though.  The scrapbook is static. The listing of events are in html, with no detail.  How would I have done this different? The site appears to be designed to drive traffic to the main website and generate leads for Career Builder. It should have been designed to also drive traffic to the events. In fact, I think that is an easier and more logical goal than getting site visitors to sign up to win a cruise.

So, how would I use the site and the web to drive traffic to the events? Give these kids some digital cameras, digital video cameras, some blogs, a discussion forum and WhizSpark event websites for each stop on the tour. Promote each stop on the tour via local weblogs and using blogads, pics on flickr, postings and profiles on myspace, community websites and forums. Give t-shirts away to anyone that spreads the word which can be tracked through WhizSpark.

The purpose of a tour is to facilitate interaction between your brand amabassadors and the public:

The mobile tour will reach out to   jobseekers across the country   through a series of highly   interactive and engaging   elements.

The Better Job Awaits Tour will   provide a unique, live brand   experience and the opportunity to   engage consumers with a one- to-one   relevant interaction.

Let the web drive that. The web is the cheapest place to have one on one interaction. The web is perfect for getting the word out about events. Why would you not use the tour website to do this?  Let the web make the experience last longer than the day.

Erik Hauser at the experiential marketing forum asks:

All too often, experiential marketing is thought of as simply live event marketing.  I'd like for everyone to list and explain what kind of experiential marketing you all do.

How do we do that?  Make the brand an experience that lasts beyond the event, create a community around it, engage the community as your brand ambassadors. This can all be done on the web for cheap.  In fact, we could have done all of that above for a 50 city tour for less than $20k, which is probably the cost of operating this tour on a weekly basis.

Disclaimer: If you are reading my weblog for the first time, I am the President of WhizSpark.

Comments

[Erik Hauser]

Thanks for the kind words. I'd like to say that we made the site, but we did not. However, the site will contain "notes from the road, and pictures from every town. Also, photo marketing is one of the major elements fo the tour, so there will be no shortage of photos there. The site is undergoing a change re: a few things. We mainly wanted the site to be user friendly for when people came to it to retrieve their photo and for when they came to enter the sweepstakes. As for extending the brand experience far from the event site. Well, I've been quoted in about a hundred articles saying that.:) That is one of the main reasons that we incorporate photo marketing into all of our events. It extends the reach far from teh event site. Currently, the average user is forwarding their photo to 3.7 users.:) Again...thansk fro the feedback along with your input. Best of luck to everyone.:) Erik Hauser

[peter caputa]

Hi Erik! Thanks for stopping by.

I appreciate very much what you are doing. Of the experiential marketers out there, you get the web more than most.

In my post, there are a lot of other suggestions for increasing the interactivity that occurs on a branded event/tour website. What about blogs, forums, invitations, rewards? What about promoting the tour via blogs by proactively seeking bloggers to come out to these events and enjoy vip treatment?

I think the surface is just being scratched (or itched) with photo marketing. I'd love to chat about it, Erik. I think you have my number. But: 508 579 6987.

[jen williams]

Where do these posts go since I wrote a few others that I CANNOT retrieve. Maybe it was WHO I was speaking out against.

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