X-One is the most socially active coffee mug ever!

Guerilleros, today over at the ASI Central I read a cool post about 5 hot marketing trends and if it’s hot, there’s social media all over it.

No doubt, Social Media was the very first “hot trend” (they call it “trend”, we know it’s a GUERILLA!) and even though they didn’t seem to be very familiar with the topic, they picked a real Guerilla strategy to talk about: The X-One Mug Fan Page

The company that makes the X1 (Gold Bond Inc.) decided that

As a travel mug, the X-one is always going places, so the marketing team figured social media was a natural fit, and the X-one Facebook page was born

Pretty clever, huh?

There are a ton of reasons why Gold Bond marketing director Karen Sherrill should receive a considerable bonus, but here at the Guerilla we’ll discuss why their campaign works like charm:

Social Media Marketing With Humour

Attention to details: humor and constant updates on the x-one fan page

Now raise your hands those who enjoy when companies make fun of themselves… ???

When you go social, online or offline, it’s your personality that attracts people – and the X-One team have created a darn cool one for their fan page.

Mentioning personality is important not only to make the X-One remarkable but to instigate people to talk about it (like I’m doing right now).

I’ve written about the guerilla marketing viral effect and how content goes viral when there’s a benefit to the user that is syndicating it.

Sherill proved to be a master guerillera when she stated this in regards to being remarkable:

One of the important elements seems to be humor or intrigue that will give friends and fans a reason to pick your tweets and posts out of the onslaught of others

Why the x1 Guerilla Marketing Has Gone Viral

Sherill and her team have made the X-One campaign extremely engaging by asking people to share how and where they take their mugs. When customers send them pictures, they’re all published on the fan page under the album “Places I Have Been“.

Check out these pics from the album:

Is that a successful campaign or what?

Remarkable social media marketing...!

They’re completely NOT A SOCIAL MEDIA SILO – From their facebook page, you can see that the entire company participates: there are mentions of the plant manager, becky the sales rep…

What they missed – Subtle Monetizing…

We could not find a link to the company website at the fan page, and we could not find a link to their twitter account either.

ATTENTION: Good social media guerillas are subtle about these strategies, and it’s not a bad practice to make it a bit less obvious for your visitors that you’re trying to sell something.

In the X-One case, however, they’re really not trying to sell anything. Their approach is almost entirely entertaining, and that’s where they missed the point:

What If I wanted to buy an X-One?

My wife drinks more coffee than Brazil can export it, and I’d love to buy her one.

How about a link to a “getthex1.com” domain with more pictures, and an online order form?

Anyway, many praises to Sherill and the marketing team at Gold Bond Inc. They’ve put together a really powerful guerilla campaign, and it should be an inspiration for companies who think social media marketing is about blasting 140 character ads over twitter.

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