At Crescendo Properties, where I work, we own or manage a portfolio of 13 self storage properties. We've been having a lot of internal discussion about generating word of mouth among our existing customer base to drive more demand to our locations and drive up occupancy.
Like I mentioned before, I've been reading Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz. In his book he tells about Jansport (the backpack company) and how if a customer sends their backpack in for repair they will get a postcard back from their backpack telling about the good time they are having while away.
So, I tell Matt Telles, who we recently hired to help implement some new ideas, about the backpack thing and I suggest that maybe we could do something similar, i.e. send a letter to our customers as if it were coming from their stuff.
A few hours later Matt sends me this rough draft. It's supposed to be the front and the back of a mailer. The copy in the offer needs a little work, but all in all I thought it was hilarious. Matt's a genius.
Front Back
My analysis: I think its funny and that its worth talking about. The fact that this concept is designed as a mailer to be printed introduces a lot of friction to the word of mouth. The person would have to do a lot more work to share it than if it were in some sort of email-able format that could be shared with multiple people quickly and easily.
