Much to my surprise, it looks like at least a couple of ScreenScape staff are working the weekend shift. Within a day of submitting photos for approval, they have all been confirmed. There wasn’t a single rejection.
I did experiment with several poster locations, and I’m glad to see that the eligibility criteria isn’t as strict as I initially thought. Even though I was not able to provide a full street address for most of the venues, I was still awarded the $2.00. For one location, there were no places to stick up posters – though I noticed that many ads were left along the windowsill. I left two brochures there instead, and was still credited for that location. I was worried that I may have put up too many posters in SMU, but each one I submitted from there was confirmed as well – even a poster that I stuck up on a random wall in front of a water fountain. *thumbs*
What was not acknowledged (at least not yet) were locations where ScreenScape brochures/stickers were clearly visible. I made sure that these items were included within the picture, but so far I haven’t received any extra compensation for that work. Again, handing out brochures/putting up stickers is supposed to fall under ‘potential for bonuses’, and employees are not given a set rate for the extra work.
It’s been raining all day today as well, and the weather does not look good for the next week. I wasn’t able to get any more posters up today, and I’m going to be swamped with other work in a very short period of time – I really want to attempt to put up the ’50 posters within two weeks’ to qualify for the $50.00 ‘bonus’, but I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make it. At any rate, once I hit at least 25 posters ($50.00), a check is supposed to be automatically mailed to my doorstep. Will keep you updated about payday.
Something I haven’t touched yet, though I should have, is the whole general idea behind ScreenScape’s Marketing techniques.
The approach they’ve taken – hiring young, enthusiastic people who know their city well – is nothing new. Many companies employ a similar type of technique through the use of ‘Campus Representatives’. Hired students with an established network of friends, who are promised awesome perks for promoting certain products. Apple does this – Campus Reps help promote iPods and Macs by throwing Apple parties/concerts and giving away free products. I often see a highly branded ‘smart car’ zipping around my campus promoting the energy drink Red Bull – they usually hit up University sporting events and give out the drinks for free. Certain travel companies also employ campus reps, giving them free trips for organizing a group of friends to participate in spring-break getaways.
However, the way that ScreenScape uses its employees is different and novel – they invest quite a bit upfront (close to $100 for a starter package) and pay for performance instead of # of sales. In other words, you are paid directly for the posters you put up – it doesn’t matter if anyone reads it, tries it, or buys it, you still pocket some cash. I haven’t seen this type of technique used by any other company, and I actually think it’s both a very clever way to advertise, and provides fair returns for the hired student.
ScreenScape is also a small, new company, and spending this kind of cash on street-level advertising must be a fairly large risk. The staff are therefore quite dedicated to making this work – the communication with street team members is quick and thoughtful, and you get the feeling that there is support available when you need it. The fact that they mail you poster-sticking supplies along with their advertisements shows that they have thought this through and are trying hard to make it easy for the street team to do their job.
For their sake, I really want to see this work. Especially since they are a small, local (close enough, us Maritimers gotta stick together), and smart start-up. Catching the attention of local businesses is exactly what they need to sell their kind of product, and once one venue uses it I’m guessing their hope is that it will spread like wildfire throughout the city. Using a sharpie to scrawl the venue name on each poster is another extremely insightful and clever strategy to catch the attention of the venue owner (but the overly excited lady looking like she’s receiving the blessings of the Screen-Display gods, eh… but whatever works). Paying the street team member a reasonable amount for each poster and providing all the necessary tools needed to do the job shows respect for their employees. They know the target market of their product, and the ‘target market’ of the type of people they employ, and use a very intelligent marketing campaign to bring the two together.
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