Mugs, and the Truck that Delivered Them

Last week we hand delivered 6,000 Smalltown branded mugs to homes in San Mateo and Burlingame, California. The mugs were mentioned by a few different blogs, including GigaOm. Their entry proposed a test for any given startup, asking whether the company would survive longer than the schwag they've distributed. It's a fun question that inspires nostalgic postings by people who have t-shirts, pens, jackets, hats and, yes, mugs handed out by startups that failed.

I have ceramic mugs at home I've been using for 15 years, so it's a little intimidating to think about Smalltown outliving a Smalltown mug. But I can say with confidence the mugs were a good idea for three reasons that might not be obvious.

1. Distributing the mugs was cost effective because Smalltown is truly local. Shipping thousands of mugs to lots of regions is expensive because mugs are heavy. But hand delivering a mug to neighborhoods near our office isn't much more expensive than hand delivering a postcard. The effort would not make sense for a national website; imagine the cost of hand delivering mugs to every neighborhood in the US!

2. Once distributed, the mugs are out in the wild in our part of the jungle. The mugs are helping build awareness in San Mateo and Burlingame, and nowhere else. In other words, our audience is defined by geography and this was a very targeted effort. Compare that, for example, to a radio spot that would have been heard in San Mateo and Burlingame, but also Redwood City, San Carlos and many other cities we don't service… yet.

3. We got a two-for-one. Each mug had a small brochure tied to it that provided information about Smalltown and announced a promotion. How expensive was it to distribute the mugs? Well, you have to keep in mind that we essentially distributed a mug AND a brochure for the cost of distributing just one of them. The messaging on the mug was repeated and explained on the brochure. Long after the brochure was thrown out, the message survived on the side of the mug.

   

I included a truck in the title of this entry because Smalltown has its own customized panel truck, and we used it to distribute the mugs. Isn’t a custom truck an extravagant use of precious funds? Actually, no, for the same reasons that mugs make sense: Smalltown is local. I live and work in our area. I drive the truck on a daily basis. We use the truck to distribute ice cream, water, t-shirts, cookies and coffee to local events. Based on talking to people near our office, I estimate that 30% of the people who live or work in San Mateo have already seen and remember the Smalltown truck. If we were a national website, only a tiny percentage of our audience would ever see the truck. Operating in the “local space” really changes how one thinks about calculating the ROI of marketing and advertising ideas.

- Hal Rucker

Comments

[fiat lux]

I live in downtown San Mateo & have never seen the car. I'll keep an eye out for it, though.

[Angie]

That is an ADORABLE Smalltown car! I love seeing it around. Keep it up! ~ang*e

[Carlo]

My mom got excited when she found a Smalltown mug on our doorstep. She uses it every day.

Nicely done, advertising department!

~Carlo