Anti-marketing is the new marketing 💎

Steal the internet's favorite line.

Gumloop spent its marketing budget on….street musicians.

Max, the CEO, paid a street trumpet player outside their office to keep playing with a Gumloop sign. Then he did the same with more musicians, across the city, during a conference.

The post got 2,300+ likes and hundreds of praising comments:

But look at what Max actually posted: “What if we spent our marketing budget on musicians instead?”

That sentence is the marketing idea, and you can steal it this week:

Declare that you spent your ENTIRE marketing budget on something ridiculous 💡

Sticker Mule does it as a policy:

5% of its ad budget goes to giving strangers $100 bills on camera. Their CEO said “It’s not philanthropy, it’s marketing”.

I did it too: I raffled my 9 favorite marketing books and shipped 45 books (~$2,000) to 5 readers’ doors. Then posted: “That was my ENTIRE marketing budget”.

It didn’t move the needle - but it surely gave me a story to tell 😅

People call this “Anti-Marketing”: taking ad money and spending it on anything except ads. The internet roots for companies that do it, everyone is tired of being advertised to.

THE BEST PART…

You don’t actually need to spend your entire budget on that other thing! Gumloop didn’t. Ask it as a question (”What if we spent our marketing budget on musicians?”) or keep it small and true (”this month’s ad budget”). You did buy the thing, so it’s not a lie. It just sounds bigger than it is.

Anti-marketing playbook 🧪

So, what should you (allegedly) blow your entire marketing budget on?

🔒 Below the line for paid subscribers:

13 ways to finish the sentence “We spent our entire marketing budget on…” that people will actually share. Most of them with a real company that pulled it off.

Steal your favorite ↓