Start ups are not like other marketers. More often than not, they have an amazing product but not the financial firepower to promote it. However, marketing is still critical to them, as it validates the brand offering and is a surefire route to scaling up.

Upstart is a unique product designed by Merry Men exclusively for start up brands and small marketers. In keeping with their needs, Upstart offers effective but low cost marketing solutions that can be measured against benchmarks.

Also being a 3 month closed ended marketing program Upstart does not require the promoters of the brand to make major long term marketing commitments. Upstart is designed on a ‘build and transfer’ model, wherein we train a team on the brand’s inside to handle the various brand platforms created and transfer the reins to them seamlessly at the end of 3 months.

How it works:

The rise and rise of digital and alternate media has proven a boon for small and start up brands. We cleverly combine the use of viral marketing (social networking platforms) and other digital media platforms to deliver a marketing solution that is both effective and light on the wallet.

Once you sign on to Upstart, we chart out the activity plan for the next 3 months. This is done in close conjunction with the promoters of the brand. The plan will cover the span of what we want to achieve in the next 3 months, how we propose to do it and lastly, how we can measure the results.

Mails at regular intervals and monthly reports help you keep a close eye on how Upstart is performing for your brand. This also allows for any course correction in case of any changes in environment.

Deliverable:

1. 3 month activity plan
2. Increasing the brand’s digital footprint by using social networking sites and other platforms
3. Seeding the brand’s content in various forums.
4. Monitoring the activity constantly and regular updates via mail and reports
5. Training your team on managing the digital brand activities initiated and smooth hand over to them at the end of 3 month

Cost:

Upstart has been designed specifically keeping (often) cash strapped start ups and small marketers in mind. We charge a fixed fee of Rs 60,000 (excl. taxes) which is split into monthly payouts of 3 months.

Other advantages:

Upstart is powered by Merry men, a media neutral agency run by seasoned advertising professionals which works with a host of well known brands. It helps them with advertising solutions across the board, from print and TV to digital. Once you sign on to Upstart and believe your marketing program needs more support like in the areas of website designing or creating print and TV ads, collateral, etc, then Merry Men can offer you those services for an additional discounted fee.

Contact:

If you’d like to enlist for Upstart or need more details then call and speak to Kartik on 9870014333 or email us at kartik@merrymen.co.in

We’d also like to hear your feedback on Upstart and if you think there are any features we should add or improve in the product. Use the comments feature below to let us know.

This year at the venerable Cannes awards, as usual the best of advertising from around the world got a standing ovation. But what stood out was how many ads refused to look like one. Or rather what we are used to seeing them as. Messages boxed into 100 cc spaces or a 29 inch tube. Something we at Merry Men have been talking about for sometime now.

Take for instance the winning entry for the digital category. Which to start with is a giant mix of ambient, technology, event and a strong idea. A few years ago, we wouldn’t have known what category to slot it in, let alone award it.

The Chalkbot by Nike is an inspired piece of creativity. But the question is, is it an ad? Yes, absolutely. Just like any ad, this piece of creative had a brief, a target audience and other advertising parameters of judging success. Yet, we fail to see it as something that must come out of an agency. Someday, we hope a Chalkbot comes out of ours.

Being an agency that challenges the norm, we like to keep tabs on new agencies with a similar agenda.

In the last few months, two agencies with radical missions have been set up in the West. One, calls itself ‘the world’s first agency built on Crowdsourcing principles’. Now one could laugh it off, except, it’s started by two guys you don’t want to be laughing at. They are both ex-Crispin porter, and haven’t seen the inside of an asylum. To prove how serious it was, Victors and Spoils got its logo done using crowdsourcing. So instead of some fancy in-house designer, every single designer in the world got to give it a crack. They finally selected a logo that was created by a recluse designer, sitting in another part of the world. Incredible.

The other agency to deviate from the tired and tested model, is Agency Nil. They work on the principle of letting the client decide what is the right price to pay for the agencies services. Brave, and brilliant. Puts an end to the commission debate which has often earned advertising the sobriquet of – the ‘2nd oldest profession in the world’. The oldest being ‘prostitution’.