The Cult Of The Marketeers - Company Business and Marketing

Industry Standard, The, August 7, 2000 by Gary Rivlin

THE FOLKS AT EVITE possess an almost RELIGIOUS CONVICTION in the value of WACKY and ANNOYING STUNTS to get noticed. Whether GUERRILLA MARKETING works doesn't rally matter--as long as believe.

From a distance the trio looked like a circus act in training. For three days in February, culminating on Valentine's Day, a Volkswagen Beetle painted a clownish meld of bright greens and purples stopped in front of workplaces scattered around downtown San Francisco. Out popped two men dressed in bright-red long johns with white cotton diapers wrapped around their loins, followed by a perky young woman holding twin pairs of feathered wings. First she helped each man strap on his wings, then she armed each with plastic bows and arrows. That it rained on them only added to the absurdity of the tableau. "Feathered wings don't do too well in the rain," said Dave Williams, one of the cupids.

It was obvious who was behind the stunt. Evite, a San Francisco-based online invitation service, had stamped its name on the Beetle no less than eight times -- 10 if you include the Bug's twin "EVITE" vanity plates. Loaded down with 25 cases of Evite-wrapped chocolate bars, the cupids hit a long list of local dot-coms; on Valentine's Day, the diapered duo delivered a dozen roses to roughly 20 "VIPs," ranging from two morning shock jocks to the editors of various San Francisco-based business periodicals, including The Standard. Other online retailers might be content giving out Russell Stover red-satin heart-shaped boxes -- but not Evite, a company that shows the lengths dot-coms will go to get above the noise.

"We knew everyone would be sending out chocolates and flowers," says Lija Huston, the company's 25-year-old "guerrilla marketing director" and the stunt's mastermind. "So we decided we had to do something really, really zany."

At Evite, being zany is more than just a 9-to-5 thing, more than a line in a job description. It's a lifestyle. Employees seem so devoted to the cause of guerrilla marketing on behalf of Evite's online invitation service that the word "cult" easily comes to mind. Even CEO Josh Silverman talks about his company's "missionary" zeal.

At Evite, they don't tell you about their services so much as grab you by the lapels and preach about Evite's life-transforming properties (you save on stamps, get an easy-to-use RSVP homepage and have a place to publish post-party pictures). Silverman proudly admits to approaching every social encounter - a dinner party, a chance meeting with a neighbor, a visit to a cafe - as an "opportunity" for people to "learn about how Evite can improve their lives." He's even decorated his apartment in purple and green, the company colors. One Evite employee took it upon himself to rig his sailboat with an Evite sail, and more than a few people inside the company wouldn't think of showing up at a bar without first grabbing a couple of Evite stamped pint glasses to leave behind on the chance they'll be recirculated.

The aim of Evite's Valentine's Day event was simple: Act like fools to get some free ink. "Our objective was basically to get stories written about us," says marketing manager Llana Metcalf. By that measurement, the cupids were a complete failure. For a couple of months people inside Evite combed the media for mention of their roving street theater. Nothing. At many media outlets, including The Standard, they never got beyond the reception desk.

One month after Valentine's Day, Evite's Dave Margulius sits at a cafe near Evite's headquarters in San Francisco's Potrero Hill district, where he talks excitedly about this strange art of stunt marketing. "The goal here is to turn Evite into a household name," says Margulius, a former Netscape employee with an MBA from Stanford University. "Toward that end, we've assembled a team ready to do whatever it takes to attain that goal."

Call it guerrilla marketing or call it by lesser-used terms such as "extreme marketing," "grassroots marketing" or "feet-on-the-street marketing." It stems from the inevitable belt-cinching that followed 1999's gluttonous advertising buys and the Nasdaq Net stock meltdown this spring. It also comes from the vast array of Internet companies desperate to capture the attention of consumers and so-called market influencers: journalists, analysts and the otherwise well-connected, But whatever you want to call it - and whatever the cause - suddenly a little company like Evite is cutting edge.

"There are so many startups out there with so little marketing dollars, but they need to be heard among all this noise, so [guerrilla marketing] becomes the holy grail," says Michael Diamant, who founded a well-regarded boutique advertising agency prior to taking over as CEO of New York-based iClips, a streaming-video message site. "Guerrilla tactics have become a hot topic for a lot more companies out there over the past few months."

Heather Davies, an account representative with Burson-Marsteller, Evite's public relations agency, agrees. In the last few months, Davies says, "we're seeing our [business-to-consumer] clients turn to guerrilla marketing." The cheap stunt is in, and it's spreading almost as rapidly as an e-mail virus. As a result, there's been a marked upsurge in what Margulius, Evite's COO until his recent departure, describes as "the crazy, wacky, fun stuff we do to get known."