Meme Battle Marketing

A story about how a creative agency called Rubber Republic used an innovative event marketing approach to win clients.

"This agency reached out to us - they had emailed before saying 'hey we're a creative ad agency.' Usually that goes straight to the trash pile. But they sent a package to our office with physical flyers that were ticket entries to a party that night, including a free drink. They'd rented out Butter, this famous bar in San Francisco.

They were hosting a 'meme battle' - like a rap battle but for memes. They emailed our office manager saying 'make sure people know about the invites, send 5-6 people to have a great time.'

At the event, they had a projector screen with someone dressed as a cat and someone dressed as a dog. It was a 5-round battle where each would show funny video clips, and the crowd would vote using handles for who was funnier.

At the end, the guy comes on and says 'By the way, that third video was actually a viral video we made. We're Rubber Republic, we make amazing viral videos - 8 out of 10 videos we do get over a million views. We've done it for these companies. If you want a video to go viral, come find me or the guy dressed as the cat.'

We ended up working with them - they made a video for us that got over a million views. Their sales funnel was genius because one client is worth tens of thousands of dollars to them. So renting out a bar and inviting people from 20 companies, hoping one becomes a client, is a great approach."