Is the pen mightier than the mouse?

#marketing101

#ONETeam #SNAPS #SageandNotableAdvisesfromPatrickSalazar

One of my organizations is located in a large IT Park. Our Recruitment Team was having challenges hiring a large requirement for people with work experience. While employee referral remains strong, somehow candidates sourced through social media is very few because online channels are crowded by so many other job openings of the industry.

I told them let’s go old school and give out ball pens.

They showed me the pens they gave out in the past which has a huge font of our company name and left a little tiny space for the recruitment contact information. They gave this to applicants sitting inside our recruitment hub.

I told them the new ballpens will have very large visible fonts of our recruitment contact details. There will be no company logo because the company name is in the recruitment contact details anyway. I said we will give 1 pen each to everyone in the food market area in the middle of the IT Park. During US-hours this area is packed with 300-400 people at any given time.

There was a sudden influx of applicants wherein mostly discovered our job opening through the pens we gave out. We fulfilled the huge requirements for people with work experience. The smart-looking pens just costs Php 7.00 each.

I guess sometimes the “simple essentials” like a pen is the best marketing strategy staring us in the eyes.

*About the video

I took this video in 2019 while I was waiting for my family to finish shopping from the garments store across the street when I noticed some of the creative marketing tactics of some stores in the Dotonbori Canal area in Osaka Japan.

While there are more opportunities selling online, Osaka was visited by 12.31 million tourists in 2019 according to the Osaka Mayor’s office report. Hence, the sales from tourist is still a great option for the stores in this tourist area.