I’m writing this succession of posts just a little over two months since I got married.
The last six months have been a roller-coaster, which is why I’m using this (always too brief) pause in client work to do a little writing of my own.
Besides the wedding itself and the chaos of an apartment move, the planing — which began just a little over six months before wedding day — was a frenetic period.
For this post, however, I want to focus on the brand awareness campaign that surrounded the wedding rather than the wedding itself.
This probably seems weird and callous so let me quickly explain my reasoning here.
Firstly, I don’t believe in drawing significant others into the weirdness that is fast becoming this blog, so will omit the conventional descriptions of the glory of standing under a wedding canopy and such.
Secondly, tech, marketing, and PR is becoming the theme of this blog and this was a relatively interesting use-case demonstrating same.
So without further a-do here was the rough plan of action.
Objective One: Get Friends To Attend Wedding
Firstly, why hype up your wedding at all? It’s a good question.
As I have covered here recently, I grew up in Ireland, where many of my closest friends still live.
Frankly, I didn’t expect more than a couple of them to make the arduous journey across Europe to attend the wedding.
There were a few reasons for that, besides an innate sense of pessimism.
Although two friends had recently been, in four and a half years of living in Israels, they were the first brave two souls to make the sojourn.
Secondly, Israel is very much “off the grid” in terms of travel from Ireland, there are no direct flights, and the popular perception remains that the entire country is a battle-strewn warzone.
Yet, all humans being susceptible to the powerful forces of FOMO (fear of missing out), I knew that if I could get a core contingent onboard with the idea of coming that others would likely follow suit.
A perfect opportunity for rampant over-promotion.
Objective Two: Throw Sh*t On the Internet and See What Sticks
As I mentioned in today’s previous post, I have a strange relationship with online branding and what I put online about myself.
I have a strong interest in the fields of online reputation management (ORM) (I have a post about engaging in that black art for some old clients in the works), public relations, and branding. I am equally fascinated by building up online profiles as I am about avoiding them.
I wanted answers to such important questions as:
- If I created the first ever podcast to promote a wedding, would anybody actually listen to it? (Surprisingly, the answer was yes).
- Could a torrent of reminder messages, robocalls, and emails really pressure those on the fence into coming? (Surprisingly, the answer was yes).
- What could I do besides creating a podcast and developing robot narrated videos to get people interested. (Besides
spamming peopleemail marketing, on a shoestring budget, not all that much).
Tactic One: Email Marketing Automations
The first port of call was naturally to set up a Mailchimp account and start building out email marketing lists.
Thankfully, I got around to doing this just before Mailchimp started enforcing a one audience per account limit.
I now have 30 on the account, which thoroughly disregards the best practice of building out proper segments.
Once we had agreed upon an invitation list, I wanted people to receive not just a “save the date” email but an entire drip email sequence to truly whet their appetite for the big day.
As we got closer to the big day, I reduced the interval between the emails to just 2 hours so that people would quickly be inundated with a hurried cadence of spam.
After asking them for their postal address to send a physical invitation to, they:
- Were hit with the flagship promotional video “Will You Answer The Call”? This introduced the main motif of the campaign, which was #answerthecall
- Asked to follow the wedding’s social media pages (there were YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Spotify accounts. Yes, I truly went all out!)
- Sold on the idea of purchasing overnight accommodation.
The flagship video for the campaign:
After that, we asked each guest whether they could be featured in the #knowyourguests page, told them about Xperience, “the official pre-wedding guest itinerary” and — to give the idea of a concierge experience — introduced to a “personal” point of contact.
Naturally, those over the age of 40 were unlikely to be entertained by these antics, so they were corralled into a much more dry and conventional email sequence simply consisting of a “save the date” and an email.
Requisite Social Media Activity
The social media activity was actually begun well in advance of the wedding.
Promotional posts and credible quotes from “delegates” (invitees) were devised and spread over the main operated platforms. These were (no effort was spared):
Although some posts were added ad-hoc, the majority of the activity was scheduled in the first two weeks of the “campaign” and sent out, on a roughly once daily schedule, using Buffer for automation.
Sideline shows: Xperience and LockIn
To further sell guests on the idea that coming to the wedding would mean participating in the trip of a lifetime, we decided to brand several components of the wedding trip as “experiences” in their own right.
- For early-comers, a very loosely concocted tour of the country was invented and dubbed “Xperience”. By “loosely concocted” I mean that we hadn’t actually figured out transport for the “delegates” (invitees)
- The overnight post-wedding entertainment at the hotel was called the LockIn program.
- The “VIP Club” was supposed to be a bachelor party but didn’t really turn out that way.
Fun With Flags (And Kaftans)
As the wedding got nearer, and my graphic design skills were on the up, I decided to begin ordering a massive amount of budget designed flags from Aliexpress — the lead time still manageable enough to arrive on time for the wedding.
These played on my main motif for the wedding which was the use of Paleo Hebrew, a subject I am greatly interested in (I also typed up what might be the world’s first Grace After Meals books containing the Paleo script!).
The YouTube videos also promised that there would be abundant “goat meat” and “hordes of dignitaries attired in ancient garb”. I kind of followed through with the second by ordering a supply of kaftans for the wedding, which people seemed to enjoy wearing.
In addition to wedding flags, I designed and had printed:
- The famous Xpernience flag (“We Experienced Xperience”)
- Custom-printed Xperience t-shirts
- The “I Went To #DanHanWedding And All I Got Was This Lousy Aliexpress Flag” flag
As anybody who has spent time at a music festival can attest: drunk people love flags and ridiculous promotional gear.
As Xperience’s fist itinerary stop got into full swing (Mark’s birthday), the flags proved a roaring success, and a bunch of marauding Irishmen spent the best part of the next week roaming around the country draped in a variety of colorful flags.
Some Other Touches
Anybody planning a wedding, with guests visiting from abroad, should be prepared to answer a lot of questions repeatedly.
Envisioning this, I put quite a lot of time in developing the wedding website at DanandHan.Wedding.
These touches included:
Developing a “Jerusalem guide”, a custom Google Map with recommended niche stop-off points, and a “Jewish wedding e-book”
Rolling out a “Gift Card” which was actually an attempt to get people to spend the night at the hotel for the post-wedding all night party:
Streamlining the query managing process by rolling out a formal support ticketing system:
(Remember, we were organizing this ourselves):
The crazy thing was that people actually took it seriously and it worrked!
Developing a ridiculous wedding registry. Surprisingly, some people actually bought the onions and toilet paper!
When uptake of the overnight rooms got slow, it was time to roll out an email campaign and landing page:
People were surprised to learn that Scot’s Guesthouse does not, in fact, have an on-site jacuzzi!
The #knowyourguests initiative
The centerpiece FOMO driver however was undoubtedly the #knowyourguests initiative which — under the pretext of enabling guests to network with one another at the wedding and pre-festivities — sought to subtly drive up demand and hinted that a vast and illustrious crowd of “more than 500 superstars, including industry titans, and social heavy-hitters such as high net worth individuals” would be in attendance.
This was comprised both of the aforementioned social media posts and a central #knowyourguests online database whereby those in attendance could scrutinize who else would be coming:
A couple of final layers of tacky promotion were added on to this just so that people had no means of avoiding the hype:
Last Minute #answerthecallchris Petition
Upping the Ante With Robocalling
Using Callfire.com (and by requiring phone numbers during the RSVP process!) I was able to send robocalls to all US and Canadian guests reminding them that they needed to attend the wedding.
I was able to confirm successful recordings through the dashboard and more than one person told me that they were going about their daily business when a robocall came in!
Those lucky enough to be targeted received this audio message, recorded by my beloved text to speech robots:
A number of WhatsApp groups were set up over a dedicated cheap phone plan and eventually became the main point of coordination for all “delegates” (attendees). A group SMS system was abandoned in favor of this.
Although we totally dropped the ball on actually executing Xperience according to the plan, thanks to the group, a lot of the group sort of knew each other virtually before they even arrived, and the plan executed relatively smoothly.
A Success!
Overall, the wedding was a great success.
The massive over-promotion was well received and might have encouraged one or two more people to come.
It was my attempt at going all out on promoting something and is probably the last time I will have such energy to devote to a not for profit venture of that nature.
Lots more details on DanandHan.Wedding and some photos below!
Final touch: personalized thank you videos via Mailchimp!
Photos
Photos from the actual wedding itself are here.
Social Media Goodies
Paleo Hebrew Bentschers
There were some last minute font changes at the type-setters, so I’m not sure whether the Birkat HaMazon text that I manually typed out made it all the way to production. I also cannot do not take responsibility for the artwork!
