In the beginning this fun-poking was primarily a way to articulate my amusement and/or disbelief over things I experienced thru the events I took part in as a brand ambassador; such things as: Am I really getting paid $17/hr to walk around with a rocket-pack full of coffee on my back serving it to as many pedestrians as I can handle?. Has this guy I'm calling the manager ever actually done this before?
It was not long before the dawning of a strong supposition; perhaps these phenomena were not merely incidental to my first gigs in guerilla marketing but were actually-simply put-the norm.
If this was true it meant two things. The first is that there would be plenty of questions to ask and curiosity to satisfy and points to raise about this slice of marketing in America, but there was not much I could do as a novice to intelligently problematize observations like, how can a whole team of brand ambassadors disappear into a mall when they are getting paid to be on the streets marketing or disappear into the streets when they are supposed to be in the mall marketing! (GUILTY!)
The second is that every day in America thousands of other brand ambassadors were having similar experiences. This might seem a mundane observation considering bartenders, dishwashers, mechanics, and every other profession are also experiencing similar things each day in America. Brand ambassadors, however, and the "events" that they take part in, are uniquely set apart from the traditional structure of other "jobs" for several reasons. Namely, the gigs brand ambassadors work tend to be extremely short-term, taking place over the course of a week or even a single day. Further ensuring such brief contracts between employers and employees is the fact that the number of hiring agencies and marketing firms in America relative to such work is mind-boggling.
Turning to the actors involved in these campaigns and the configurations that manifest and dissolve between them opens up another can of worms; suffice it to say that the characteristic trademark of a brand ambassador's relationship with their employer is often that it disappears faster than a brand ambassador can say 'craigslist'.
The combination of these various attributes about the work are counter-balanced by the obsessively self-aware universe of advertising; trends, methods, metrics, tactics, approaches, markets; the love/hate turnstile of involuntarily shared information or research is an upward spiral but its all traveling around the same axis.
My point is that when we look around at packaging or store layouts or media we see so many constants across the board. Things have to feel and appear fresh, exciting and extremely useful but in reality they are guided by what is familiar, safe and trusted. Thus even as all promotions are fragmented from one another they are conceived and manifested with a singular set of intentions, purposes, expectations, and unknowns. We might even reduce it to one word, which is 'profit', and one question, which is: how to make as much of it as possible? Still, what follows is deeper than I could have imagined.
The point in saying all of this is not only to begin sketching out what the world of brand ambassadors looks like for those who live outside of it, or (I hope) to spark in brand ambassadors a more nuanced and critical perspective on what they are doing, but to convey the mechanics and general laws of this universe as well as indicate how particular phenomena might arise from or resist or reify those laws.
Somewhere in the apparently great distance between the brand ambassador on the ground and the Client like a god in the sky are blueprints contracting them intimately together across space and time; there is always a plan of action in the offing with tens of thousands of dollars riding on its assured efficacy.
Somewhere in between the guidebook of what is theoretically supposed to happen and the footprint that initiates the first step in making it happen is the space summoning the brand ambassador and the place calling them forth to represent a god they will never see and may or may not take seriously; they are expected to at least feign worship so that the unbelievers may believe when the Brand descends upon them like a holy spirit and the spectacle on which it survives with no ROI vanishes back into nothing.
That is the ritual. Look long at the label on the sacramental premiums there and ask yourself of the brand; does It exist?
I said that I experienced things in my first events as a B.A. that seemed seriously problematic at most and extremely amusing at least. I said that there were thousands of other brand ambassadors having similar experiences every day in America. It was solely for the amusement of those people that I wanted to write a promotional blog; to create a site detailing incidents and insights that all brand ambassadors might relate to or shake their heads with or laugh at because they know exactly what it's like but never had an outlet to express it or perhaps never realized they were in such good company. WE ARE LEGION! (Couldn't resist). Still, blogging for amusement, as it turns out, is an obvious method for working out more serious considerations along the way.
In 2006 I was sitting at a pizza dive in Boston royally slacking off with several other guys and getting paid $17/hr to promote Staples Copy & Print Store's grand opening. I was taking notes and I suppose that was my excuse for tagging along. When the idea for this blog first came to me I had just finished a gig under Productions Plus and I thought it would be clever to call it 'Productions Suck' assuming most ambassadors would either know the play on words or figure it out. It wasn't a dig on the company but a reaction to the promotional world and everything that came with it, all the way down to capitalism. I thought of it all in good fun yet I could not believe the money thrown at these events or how much of it was wasted through gaping holes in the plan. I could not understand the immense ambition of certain corporations to close the distance between human beings with real pressing needs and their own trite products and unnecessary services.
It's 2012 now and I'm in Austin, TX waiting to hear back about a tour management position after making it thru round one of the interview process. There could be three or thirty people from all over the U.S. and Canada right along with me vying to lead another zany journey through promo-land. I may never know. A lot has changed since the Boston Staples Copy & Print Grand Opening when my street team alternated on someone else's clock between socializing and capitalizing. I am still amused by much of the same phenomena these days but my skill-set now impels me to close the holes.
As I finally sit down to write this blog six indescribably complicated and life-changing years after my first foray into the promotional world, I struggle to remember what it was like when I lived and worked without a computer; when I had only just learned about Facebook and scoffed at it until I finally started using it because I had Twitter to scoff at. Now I use Twitter and I am wise enough to know that if I'm scoffing I'm not paying attention. I grew up in a world without internet or cell phones but now we hearken to the proclamation: "Social media is in its infancy!"
If I ever seem alarmingly less excited about the future of "social media" than my peers in this profession it's because I am not yet capable of taking the term nor the ubiquitous buzz of it lightly. Make no mistake, my head is in the game, but in my heart I wonder what it will be like when my generation is "old and grey" and struggling against mythological implications to understand what happened when 'social' met 'capital' and, transfixed by the bright lights cast off from a marriage so consuming they fused, we missed the transmutational moment when a dialectic synthesized and disappeared into something completely different.
Something unbelievable has already happened but it's down so deep only vibrations have arrived. It's all over the world and everyone's feeling it. Brand ambassadors-whether you're on the front lines getting hundreds of petitions signed a day, or slacking off in some cafe, I hope you will come to realize if have not already that what you are doing is important and it does matter. Play your part, and if you don't believe in the part believe in the play, and have some fun along way!
Signing off,
M.C. Tobiasz
