A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting a brilliant South African entrepreneur called Paul Raphaely. Paul is the man behind NoMu, a company started by wife Tracy Foulkes and himself in 2000. They are essentially a South African food and lifestyle brand, and are beginning to take the world by storm.
One thing that all small brands have to deal with is the lack of marketing budget, luckily Paul is an ex Mad Man ad man and stumbled upon a stunningly simple idea that has been working a charm.
One of the main places where all discerning Capetonians stop at some stage during their week is the Engen/Woolworths 24 hour petrol station and food shop in Cape Town. It’s a busy place at all times and Paul managed to get access to an unused billboard space for his fun marketing idea. The campaign basically works by getting local celeb bloggers to appear on the poster and then get passers by to pose with the photo and email them in. The best picture wins a range of donated prizes each month from NoMu & brands associated with the bloggers. So far the posters have included prints from 2OceansVibe, Cape Town Girl, Richard Hardiman and more (See some examples of entries at the bottom of this post).
The only things that cost anything for this whole campaign is the printing of the poster and a bit of design which costs next to nothing. Photography and styling are free and all the prizes are donated. Paul Raphaely said the following on the campaign:
“Ultimately, the real benefit is the online exposure as all the associated bloggers do their bit to drive their own hype which means NoMU gets to be guaranteed of quite solid exposure to a potentially different audience every single month. Taken individually this doesn’t seem like much but if added up across several months, the real impact is significant.”
The entries keep getting higher as word of the mechanic of entry gets more regularly spread around and people begin to treat it as a ‘thing-to-do’ each month that involves little to no real effort and could win massive prizes. The campaign has been doing so well that it has even attracted the attention of District 9 Actress Vanessa Haywood as a future NoMu poster lady!
All in all great work, if you want to be kept up to date on all things NoMu check out their great blog here.
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