Creative Small Business Marketing, Episode 5

This is pretty cool, not to mention very clever. Hopefully I’ll explain it all well enough that it makes sense. Ready?

360SEE is an art/furniture gallery in Chicago. The owner’s dog, Homer, hangs out in the front window, plainly visible to passersby walking outside. Homer is little and pretty cute, and people tend to stop and shoot a picture of the French bulldog in the gallery window.

So, what did the gallery owner do?

He started taking photos of the passersby as they took photos of his dog, and then started posting his photos on a blog. It’s appropriately called Photos of People Taking Photos of My Dog.

homer

This has been going on for about a year now. There are Facebook pages for both the gallery itself and for the photo blog. And the owner even put little signs in the gallery window that show the long URL of the dog’s photo blog. When you see photosofpeopletakingphotosofmydog.blogspot.com on a sign in the window, you can’t help but want to visit and learn more — doesn’t matter if you took a photo or not.

For much more about this, you have to read Adam Singer’s blog post, which points out the following:

By observing a social phenomenon that happened organically, 360SEE stumbled upon a creative way to indirectly gain more exposure for their art, furniture and design. It was completely unintentional as far as I can gather, but is a story worth retelling. They are building relationships, inspiring stories and even getting some press.

Agreed. Very clever, very creative form of marketing. I love this kind of stuff.

(thanks to Mike B for the tip)

Comments (1)

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  1. John says:

    Brilliant idea! I love the creative thinking to help build visibility for his gallery with an off-the-wall idea. Just shows that social media can help give your crazy idea legs…and before you know it, you’re seeing increased site (or foot) traffic. Good stuff.

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