Is that a brand in your hand?

I was reading one of the recent posts over at Organic’s blog Threeminds and really like GMC’s latest effort to promote their new Yukon.

It’s a non-branded, branding play. The coffee cup sleeve promotes a unique url that in turn showcases GMC’s new Yukon. What a nice format (in your hand) and method this could be for promoting your employer brand.

Convince the local Starbucks to let your company use their sleeve for your non-branded recruitment branding effort? Not so easy? Yeah. I’m sure they’ve turned down thousands of these offers in the past nationally (perhaps not so many locally). Add some muscle to your offer. Take the charity angle and do the world a good turn (helps with those Starbucks people in Seattle) and offer to use the sleeve to co-promote a charity of theirs. Now a url linking to your employer brand is associated with charitable work and Starbucks. Done for a few stores around your target market (like that College that you’re targeting with your recruiting efforts) you might just pull it off.

OK, on the easier to pull off scale (since I’m SO delusional) how about contacting the organizer for the next major job fair you’ll be at and agreeing to subsidize the cost of X amount of coffee & refreshments for the career fair participants in exchange for the coffee cup sleeve sponsorship? Your organizer saves on coffee cup sleeve costs and coffee costs. This idea has got legs, I mean lids. Yo, it’s off the sleeve!

Or, if it’s that college target you’re really after go find the locally grown Starbucks alternative coffee house where the kool kidz hang (do these even exist anymore or are they all Starbucks?). The local shop will be more than happy to have a new revenue stream. Wow, I really want some coffee now.