Peter Caputa is looking for advice
Peter Caputa is asking for advice. Here’s his pitch:
My super secret stealthy plan involves giving away our services to what Seth Godin would call connectors. I’d also arrange for these people to get backstage at concerts like System of a Down, no cover charge at bars like Irish Times, dates with girls like Krysy and other VIP perks. Further, they’d have the opportunity to make cash by helping to promote other events through email, their own websites or blogs. We are basically trying to build an army of citizens that wield much more ROI-driven event sponsorship power than any old media company ever could.
In the beginning, this’ll be a method of lead generation for WhizSpark. People will have to fill out a form to apply. They’ll have to meet certain criteria. Not everyone will be accepted. The free services would be free for a limited period of time. And if these people aren’t good at getting others to events, they won’t continue to be part of the program.
Assuming this works and this generates business… Eventually, we’ll be a self sufficient event promotion cooperative of affiliates. This’ll involve some more development to faciliate promoter to promote transactions. But, the tracking and tools are in place to manage the cross-promotion now. We’ll also have to build some trust and performance measurement mechanisms to manage reputation. So, in the beginning, we will ensure the quality of the people promoting and ensure that these people get what they deserve (or what they are promised) from planners of bigger events for helping to promote the bigger events.
The question is: What do we call it? And how do we position it? What criteria do we use to accept people? How do we scale it past Massachusetts? How do we get lots of people to apply?
So please help out Peter.
I say he calls it “Event Husslers”.