Big Brown Open Day Proves a Massive Success
Jeremy Hunt from Big Brown is once again leading the industry with a creative advertising campaign, inviting customers, competitors and more to tour his workshop. What had originally started as an annual birthday celebration, morphed into a crazy Open Day, thanks to several of Jeremy’s friends.
“As you know, I’m quite sociable and I’m always happy to show anyone through my shop,” Jeremy told us. “So, the basis was to have fun with friends (old, new and soon to be), to have some eats, and show off some of our work when in steps a good friend/customer Shane (“Corner Hunter” on YouTube and social media), who mentions that he would like to organise a car meet and cruise. His problem was trying to find a location, so I suggested that we do it together, at our shop. And that’s when things snowballed.”
After winning a decent haul of awards at the Sign Display Awards of Excellence over the last few years, Jeremy wanted to make the most of the opportunity to show off his work. An Open Day provided the perfect opportunity for people come and see the work, to chat about how and why they do what we do, and to outline the work many people didn’t realise they do (which is a lot!!). The Big Brown workshop is very much an ecliptic mix of signs that they have modified and recycled for their own purposes.
Jeremy called on a couple of food truck vendors that he works with and sourced a couple of race car simulators via another friend, while Shane organised 20 cars to be on show. Then they designed some flyers to drop to the neighbours and gave their social media accounts a bit of a hammering, to promote the day.
“Luckily for us, our social media following, and friends is quite extensive. When combined with Shane’s social media and the neighbourhood flyer drop, we covered a large amount of people.” Jeremy told us. “Saying that, we predicted numbers to be low and had no real expectation of attendance other than close friends.”
“Saturday morning, we set up, parked up our cars, and made the place look inviting. The food trucks arrived, and a few cars arrived for the meet. A few punters started rolling in, as we predicted. I was busy gas bagging and when I then look up, to my amazement there was close to 500 people walking around the carpark and the shop! This was continuous for the rest of the afternoon, in between downpours thanks to the unpredictable weather.”
“All of the vendors had good turnover (approx. $700 each) and our simulator guy has also a ton of enquiries. I personally talked to about 8-10 people with genuine customer enquiries. In addition to this, I spoke to several people about how to get into our industry and educated many people who had no idea what our industry is about. The amount of exposure we have received has been massive with so many more genuine enquiries well exceeded expectations.”
Jeremy said that over 2,000 people came through the shop on the day and that the exposure has been massive, with many genuine enquiries well exceeded expectations. He is already planning the next event and has many other companies wanting to be involved.
“We are in a lucky position as I have always been involved in the car scene (a racer at heart), and a large chunk of the work we do appeals to everyday public. Making ourselves open for anyone is just what I do, and I’m always happy to share and let people experience life in my shop. Everyone who was involved could see the benefit of what we were doing and the recognition it created for our brand. That’s how advertising works. We don’t need to spend big dollars, just be targeted about what we do spend.
Doing something like this is not for everyone, but collaboration with similar minded individuals is what helped make ours a success. Now, time to keep pushing boundaries and keep showcasing our unique work.”
Little clip here – https://www.facebook.com/61561661293923/videos/464397839875951
