Profit Copilot | Young Entrepreneur

Anyone who’s spoken to a Christian in the last few years will be aware of the ‘Left Behind’ series. Game developers for the series,  Left Behind Games Inc, have shown how grassroots marketing can play a powerful role in today’s strategies.

Troy Lyndon, CEO of Left Behind Games Inc. says, “We have been working on this church marketing program for nearly 2 years and our most recent results make it clear that 60% of the country’s 300,000+ church Pastors are interested in playing a part in our long-term success.” Mr. Lyndon continues, “Investors must understand that our intent is to solidify our grass-roots marketing program and improve shipment efficiency such that we can insure proper sell-through of our products as we gain momentum in our testing efforts with Walmart and other national retailers.”

So here’s the nuts and bolts of things. They give their games to influential church Pastors, who in turn recommend the games to their congregations.

Offline viral? Hmm maybe. Or maybe just good old fashioned word of mouth marketing. I guess if you remove the computer from the equation it probably amounts to the same thing.

Either way, it reminds me of the marketing campaign behind a little known film called ‘What the Bleep’.

It  was really quiet clever. In the build up to the release they made their marketing campaign appeal to anti-war activists, encouraging them to fill out a website form to receive a free ‘activist pack’.

A week or two later a big box of material would arrive.. posters, flyers, stickers etc, and a set of instructions asking activists to distribute the material.

Result. ‘What the Bleep’ had managed to tap into it’s target audience’s core desire to live in a fairer World, and turn it to it’s own advantage by labeling the action of marketing as activism.

Still, I’m not sure how many activists really took them up on their offer, as the film only saw a small release, and was forced to focus on DVD sales.

Good idea though.