Dog Poop Silly Marketing Campaign
It’s been about 2 months since I committed to my new philosophy of refocusing my creative attention from social media into real life. My goal is to grow my local tattoo audience and client base in the beautiful city of Nancy (and Metz and Strasbourg), by using Silly Marketing.
In case you haven’t read any of my previous blog posts:
Silly Marketing is a creative and fun take on traditional, off social media advertising. It’s direct, it’s personal, it’s funny and wholesome. It’s catching new audience through its silliness and honesty. Silly Marketing is street art that should surprise and make people’s day at least 1% better. Stickers, posters, mini games and more. Though I hope it will be amusing to everyone, ideally it should reach my target audience.
And last month I finally took my first Silly Marketing campaign out on the streets of Nancy.
Dog Poop Silly Marketing Campaign was one of these ideas that just pop (not poop haha) into my head really clearly and make me super impatient to finish.
First step was to define my target audience, of course in a silly way. You can read all about it in my last post. I looked closely at what clients I tattooed in the past year. I found out that among others, one of the most clear categories of people who can be interested in my custom tattoo services are PEOPLE WITH PETS. That’s right! People love their pets and they want to have their image immortalised in the form of a tattoo. And they do love to see how I turn them into funny, out-of-a-picture-book characters.
Step two was coming up with all the real life places people with dogs show up at. It just happened that I already had in mind one of these spots. I’m talking dog poop-bag boxes! A while ago I saw them on the street and thought how cool is it that the city is providing this kind of motivation for people to clean after their dogs. And that’s exactly a perfect place for Silly Marketing to happen.
The only people who pay attention to the box are people with dogs.
They use them regularly, so even if they don’t notice Silly Marketing at first, they might do it the second or the third time. Even if they don’t check my work immediately, through the repetition of seeing the sticker again and again they might remember to eventually go to my website.
They use the box at the moment when they are not in a big hurry, like running to work. They might have this extra 20 seconds to get hooked.
It’s not just one place, but many many tiny places all around the city. The same person might end up using more than one box, which brings some room for extra creativity.
Since my art ends up on the streets (please don’t call the police), I wanted to be as respectful as possible. I wanted to show something nice to people while at the same time support the purpose of the box. Let’s say, to create an extension of the box. That’s how I arrived at the idea of making a simple call to action sticker that screams “Ramassez les crottes de votre chien!” (Pick up your dog’s poop!).
Clean it up people, here are the bags to do it, and by the way hi,
my name is Agata and I make tattoos.
I decided to print the sticker on a durable and waterproof material that will keep the stickers looking neat for very long. Last thing I want is to add any ugliness to the city, with low quality, half torn trash. While I waited for the paper to arrive, I put myself to work on the design.
Obviously, the sticker had to show off a sample of my drawing style. The Dog Poop Campaign is aimed at the dog owners who’d like to have a custom tattoo of their animal friend. I tried to come up with a design that would clearly indicate what I can offer to them. At first I wanted to draw one anonymous dog doing something funny to get people’s attention. But then I thought, that would not give a clear message that I can draw people’s dogs. It should be The Dog, The Character. But what one specific dog should I choose? I don’t know any dogs! I could look on Pinterest for a reference or…
The Overachiever in me, that was asleep through all December, woke up and whispered maniacally
“Why draw just one dog, when I can do … six different dogs”
As to where to source the references, there was nothing better than asking my followers if they want to tag along for this tiny adventure!
I spontaneously posted a story on instagram, asking mysteriously for dog volunteers for my next project. A couple of people answered and after one hour I had selected 5 humans owning a total of 6 dogs that would become my team. Evie with her dog Bomber, Carla with Xouba and Mancho, Manon with Dewey, Claudia with Peeta, Sam with Ulmo. I realised, it will be just great to include these names on the stickers. To highlight that this specific dog is owned by this specific person, who by the way chose this specific outfit for their little friend.
And that’s how I came up with another element of the sticker. The headline that says “Bomber, dog of Evie, asks you to:” which connects to “Pick up your dog’s poop!”. Then I drew each of the dogs and the stickers were pretty much ready for distribution. I just had to wait for good weather.
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So far I did two separate walks around the city, one on Saturday 27th of January and one on Monday 29th. Both were a total blast. Dear friends, do you know what is the difference between social media marketing and Silly Marketing? The first one makes you want to scream and bang your head against the wall. The second one creates a wholesome moment not only to a potential new client, but also to you as well! I had the best time walking around Nancy, visiting some places I know already and creating some new paths as well.
On my Monday’s walk I made a new acquaintance - Laura, a drawing enthusiast who moved here recently from Portugal. I have to admit: since I stopped maniacally caring about TikTok and Instagram, it feels like my brain has regained a big chunk of mental space to cultivate real life human relationships. And that’s fully amazing because moving to a new country, then moving every two years inside France, didn't help to start a healthy social life. On top of that, being often exhausted and busy with superficial work basically killed any chance for building a meaningful connection. But now, just after a few weeks, it feels totally different. Suddenly inviting someone to walk with me didn’t seem too tiring.
Another amazing thing was walking itself. In my teenage and young adult years, I used to love taking long strolls around the city. Usually without a goal in mind. It was just such a great opportunity to listen to good music on my headphones and observe the outside world. I used to feel like I am an adventurer who discovers new streets / shops / cafes, notes funny incidents, and admires people wearing cool outfits. It was an essential part of my identity.
I think I lost it somewhere in Paris. You’d think that city is made for people who enjoy walking? Wrong! It legit triggered agoraphobia in me. The noise, the speed, the insane amount of people and very tiny pavements compared to the one in Warsaw. It all made me terrified of going outside. It made it seem like taking a walk was not a casual little joy of the day but a planned big event. Each of these events was nice but I ended up so tired after. Needing-a-few-days-recovery kind of tired.
I’m not kidding, doing these walks was like taking the first steps towards reconnecting with this part of my life. Essential part. I’m so happy with how I spent these days.
Let’s say 10 people get to know about my tattoo services thanks to this campaign. It’s possible I’d get this many new followers by posting a well done reel. But with Silly Marketing I’m sure they are located in the same city as me. And I actually had so much fun preparing this campaign and going on walks. While making a reel or a TikTok is my personal hell. The amount of work and stress it takes me to do each TikTok or reel, I feel I should be rewarded 100 new followers, 2 articles in magazines, 1 Nobel Prize and a key to the city given by the mayor.
It's possible that my efforts will go unnoticed and I will not manage to fulfill my mission of getting a larger local audience. But the fun I have while trying is priceless.
It’s just the beginning of my Silly Marketing adventure but I can already see how wholesome it turned out to be to… me. And maybe that was the most important thing that I didn’t even consider. I was so sweaty, shaky and shy when sticking the first stickers. I was a bit afraid that someone would notice it and say something to me. Nothing like that happened. By the time I was sticking the 10th sticker I felt like a kid playing a game. A Silly game.
God, how I missed being Silly.
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I hope you enjoyed this episode of The Silly Marketing! As always, if you have any questions or would like to share a thought, you can leave a comment. I cannot wait to give you the next piece of news about this project. If you don’t want to miss the next post, subscribe to my newsletter. If you love drawing, you’d like see my other projects and do a monthly draw-along-livestream, you can become my Patron for only 3 euros a month. If you join, I promise - next time I buy a coffee on my Silly Marketing walk, I will think about you!
