By Peter Getman, Principal Brand Director

Here is an inside look at the building of a new client’s brand strategy that integrates Internet marketing with a traditional street team tactic (Yes, we have their permission to share this with you:).

Brand Strategy:
Create momentum for brand adoption that hits critical mass and its growth therefore becomes relentless.

This strategy should be near the top of every consumer brand strategy plan. Now, for the tactical “how do we achieve this?” Our brand strategy team has crafted a tactic to do exactly this for a new brand. Here is where we are headed.

Brand Tactic:
Craft a new kind of street team for the brand.

How? Support this street team initiative with an integrated social media Internet strategy (plus a little special sauce) and “Voila!” Well, that’s the plan.

First we deploy our street team.

A brand’s street team is a squad of highly trained people who hit the streets promoting your event, service or product. The primary objective for a street team is to:

Drive product trial while communicating the brand’s unique value proposition—promoting brand awareness and brand adoption.

It works.

In 1985, the savvy entrepreneurs at Smartfood® strategically dovetailed a sound brand positioning with a “street team” tactic. Their brand strategy centered around creating a new product category for a healthy snack, repositioning all competitive popcorn brands as “glow in the dark” and not-so healthy. I distinctly remember their street teams descending upon college campuses throughout the Northeast U.S. after 9 pm, promoting the brand messaging and inviting free product trial. I “tried” it with enthusiastic munchies by the fistfuls. The net-net? They cashed out to Frito-Lay for a rumored $14+ million four short years later.

That’s a typical tactical execution for a street team.

But, but, but, we’ve crafted a “new kind” of street team—one that goes beyond “driving product trial while communicating the brand’s unique value proposition.”

A “free product trial” is cost prohibitive for this brand because it is not a consumable product that can benefit from habitual repurchase.

It’s a shoe. Well, it’s a slide. The Todi Original Slide®.

Todi® is a footwear brand exclusively for aggressive souls®. For those who beat their feet, Todi® is what they wear to and from the locker room. Todi® symbolizes the spirit deep inside an athlete’s soul.

The goal of our Todi® Street Team is to slide the Todi® brand on the feet of the rare athletes whom align with the values detailed in Todi’s brand pillars. More specifically, it is to scout aggressive souls that go all out, unselfishly, for the greater good of their teammates. These high school athletes have the special gift of a respectable charismatic leadership both on and off the field.

The Todi® Street Team’s objectives are heavily influenced by Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point. In this book Gladwell states, “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts.”

Initially, the Todi® Street Team will attend lacrosse and soccer games and tournaments in Northeast U.S. and begin to “chart” top male and female athletes ages 15 to 19. We will track them according to eight criteria:

• Do they go “all-out” every game, the entire game?
• Are they a likable, yet true leader on the field?
• Are they a likable, yet true leader on the sidelines?
• Are they “liked” by the fans?
• Are they recognized by the fans and teammates for their “all-out” commitment?
• Are they charismatic?
• Are they coachable?
• Do they train hard even if God-gifted?

An athlete that carries a “yes” to all of these questions tightly dovetails with the Todi® Brand Pillars.

A Todi® Street Team member will approach only the athletes meeting all eight criteria. Athletes will be approached with the following accolade:

“Hey {Athletes Name}, I’m Peter Getman from Todi. We are scouting a select 100 East Coast athletes who ‘go all-out’ every game, the entire game. You are one of those athletes and we want to recognize you. Your teammates, coaches and competitors respect you for your unsurpassed will.

On behalf of Todi, we welcome you to the Todi 100. The Todi 100 is an elite recognition for up-and-coming, hard-charging athletes—you symbolize the unfettered spirit of the Todi 100. You are 1 of 100 elite athletes on this East Coast USA team.”

To start, we are focused on two sports and have two teams to support this:
• Team Todi® 100 | Soccer | East Coast USA
• Team Todi® 100 | LAX | East Coast USA

The athlete is presented a sweet Todi® 100 team jersey, sport appropriate. It will be a huge win for Todi® to have 200 “Tipping Point” athletes representing the brand.

Now we dial in Social Media and Internet Marketing initiatives.

The Todi® 100 athletes are given a “Team Card” resembling a college ID. With this card, they can receive a pair of Todi® Original Slides®. They simply plug in their Todi® 100 profile and are eligible for their free slides. The brand-building doesn’t stop here.

Along with their new Todi® Slides, each Todi® 100 athlete receives two additional “Team Cards” to honor their teammates at their discretion when he or she believes their teammate is worthy of this “all-out” recognition. The newly honored athlete becomes a member of “Team Todi®” once they plug in their profile and are issued a code for their free slides. Todi® will also do a press release to the athlete’s local paper, naming them an original member of the Todi® 100.

This process is repeated one more time—creating a ripple effect of athletes enthusiastic about the Todi® brand.

After six months, we expect to have the original Team Todi® evolve into the Todi® 500, with complete profiles on TodiUSA.com.

Now cultivate your budding brand evangelists.

The Todi® Street Team will keep in tight communication with their honored Todi® athletes and update their profiles with new accomplishments. They will build each individual relationship by sending personalized notes and making calls to the athletes to recognize their milestones. Upon building a successful relationship, we expect the Todi® 500 athletes will become true Brand Ambassadors who willingly and appropriately evangelize the brand.

If we select and cultivate the Todi® 500 appropriately, we will have successfully seeded a social epidemic around the Todi® brand within these geographic verticals.

Gladwell refers to this as The Law of the Few. He equates this law with what economists call the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the work will be done by 20 percent of the participants.

Using this math, the Todi® 500 will yield 2000 athletes in the East Coast USA with a strong brand awareness surrounding the brand’s difference, as well as create a solid launch foundation of athletes for testing new products in the pipeline.

Now we incorporate a DIGG-like functionality!

There will be two $2,000 scholarships for the Todi® MVP athletes [a female and a male]. Teammates and fans of the Todi® 500 can visit the site and vote for them; the athlete with the most votes wins. A third scholarship will be awarded to an open class of athletes entered online in other sports. These scholarships can be used for the athlete to attend the sports camps of their choice.

This Internet marketing tactic with social media viral flare positions the Todi® brand for wide brand awareness within My Space and Facebook, whereby fans of athletes can easily encourage people to “vote” for their favorite athlete.

Of course, the top 20 vote leaders will be supported with a second press release to their local paper surrounding their status, encouraging fans to vote.

Play hard—hard to get, that is.

During this first six months, while we are building Todi® 500, consumers will only be able to purchase Todi® Original Slides online at TodiUSA.com. Once brand awareness is known on the East Coast USA as the symbol for aggressive souls, Todi® will expand into specialty retailers in this same East Coast region.

Upon success, repeat success.

Upon successful retail sell-through in this region, this same strategy and tactic will be repeated in other geographic markets within soccer and lacrosse.

Simultaneously, the brand will engage a third sport within the East Coast region, leveraging this brand strategy execution.

As a start up, this is the primary brand building strategy we are deploying. We will be measuring success ultimately by:

• East Coast USA revenues [Goal is to sell 5,000 pair of slides in Y1 in this region]
• The number of retailers that call Todi® [Goal is 10]
• 500 brand evangelist athletes in 6 months, each averaging 250 votes
• Press for 50 of the top 100 Todi® athletes
• Being on budget for this program—all-in $151,000

Now, think about repurposing your “2010 kick-the-snot-out-of-your-competition” strategy. Hire a brand agency that goes well beyond traditional branding.