Street team

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A Street team is a term used in marketing to describe a group of people who 'hit the streets' promoting an event or a product. 'Street Teams' are a powerful promotional tool has been adopted industry wide as a standard line item in marketing budgets by entertainment companies, record labels, the tech industry, corporate brand marketers, new media companies and direct marketers worldwide.

[edit] History of Street Teams

The now ubiquitous "street team" model was originally developed by urban record labels such as Loud Records, Jive, Bad Boy and Priority Records. Rap labels found an affordable and highly effective bridge to their target audience that did not require the traditional outlets found in print, radio, television mediums and elusive large scale record distribution deals.

It was a modern version of a credible "cool" field marketer working for you with the ability to create hype for your artist (brand) through credible peer-to-peer interactions and viral word-of-mouth influence marketing[1].

This grass roots tactic was partly born in the mid 1990's from the larger monopolistic record distributors trying to shut out rap and smaller music labels of the day from radio and mass distribution due to the early stigma of "gangsta rap" and "punk" on those genres as a whole.

Street Teams were used by smaller independent record labels as a tool to circumvent the larger out-of-reach distributors and corporate owned record labels. Other independent label owners used street teams as a way to build equity in their stable of artists for the benefit of gaining a courtship by a larger music label or record distributor to merge or sell part or all the company. (see Loud Records sale late 1990's)

For the smaller labels trying to get in the door of the music business, the thinking was in part to build a loyal fan base in key markets first, get strong street hype and "street-cred" first, try to get on the local radio stations through hype/word-of-mouth, then go to the larger record distributors with a much stronger negotiating hand and a solid "sellable" commodity.

Through this method of building a solid fan base with disposable income first, the smaller label wielded greater power in their initial distribution negotiations for the benefit of their music artists and their profit margins. Distribution deals for an "unproven" new artist that came with a built-in fan base, generally received better upfront money deals than music artists had previously received without street teams sharing the music and spreading the word (viral marketing) nationwide.

  • Street Teamers:

The position of street team representative was often filled by fans of an artist or young people looking for an introductory position in the music industry. In many cases, an influential teen referred to as a neighborhood "tastemaker" was sought out or pinpointed by a record label to be used as a conduit to their respective neighborhood, due to their stronger influence over other teens that looked to them for "what's hot" or "what's the next hot thing". The tastemaker was directed to create a team on the streets to make an unsigned music artist more popular through word-of-mouth and hype.

The concept for organized promotion teams in the music business can also be traced back to January 1975, when Starkey and Evans, two teenage KISS fans from Terre Haute, Indiana created the KISS ARMY as a group of fans determined to promote the KISS name. Although this could be more attributed to fan clubs, fans worked together outside of their homes, to promote KISS to other kids at school or while hanging out. This KISS army was quickly taken over by the band KISS itself and army recruits were offered limited edition merchandise and seating.

Usually unpaid, street teams for bands and artists are still often comprised of teenagers who are rewarded with free band merchandise or show access in exchange for a variety of actions:

  • placing stickers and posters in their communities
  • bringing friends to the shows
  • convincing friends to buy band merchandise
  • phoning your local radio station to request their songs be played
  • bringing vinyl and CDs to local DJs in the clubs where they work
  • putting up posters
  • posting to band forums and bulletin boards online
  • maintaining zines or websites dedicated to the band

In some cases, points are assigned to an individual for a particular action, and those points can be exchanged for tickets to shows, or for band merchandise. Some bands even produce special items just for street team members.

Loud Records/SRC, pioneered the use of street teams to broaden the reach of many urban music artists with no airplay, including the Alkaholiks, Tung Twista and Wu Tang Clan. Loud Records and founder Steve Rifkin (who owns the copyright to the term "Street Teams") also began to see the advantages in the "online street team" model very early and invested in Internet startup AKA.COM.

  • Online Street Teams and Mobile Phone Street Teams:

AKA.COM borrowed from the online street team affiliate model and the techniques created by Gibran Burchett and Mike Bell the creative directors of Wu Tang Creative department at the time. With financing behind them AKA.COM began to grow rapidly there were no significant other companies operating as an affiliate for corporations. Wu Creative only focused on affiliate programs with their own traffic. AKA.COM was the first major attempt of of branching out to the corporations such as Sprite. The idea was to direct users from high traffic sites to their site which would run ads and collect revenues from companies looking to promote their products.

Over the next year Loud, AKA and Wu Tang Creative often shared ideas on how to market online since there were no current online models. The three companies at the time each shared traffic between sites by creating cross promotional programs. The three companies would discuss concurrent campaigns strategies to redirect traffic to Loud Records and AKA.COM site from Wu Tang.

Leveious Rolando co-developed a a pin-point research memetics methodology on global effects and memes of the Urban market in 1992 for Critical Intelligence Inc. Spearheading the idea street teams were the urban, suburbia-rural marketers that use non-traditional advertising media and "street marketing teams" to gain information on consumer purchasing, their input and test beds for launching new products. Street Teams explored ways to leverage peer influence to elevate brands from actual market perception. The memetic engineer methodology then co-developed and implemented within the context of Asian youth markets. Street Teams began to be redefined in terms of the methodology and began to take on a global approach for Internet this was primarily because of what was going on in terms of online development with Gibran Burchett at Wu Tang because of the advent of 3-G mobile networked phones in Asia. This has snowballed into the new Mobile markets in 2004 then redeveloped again in Europe in late 2006 in Graz, Austria, Britain, Japan, and South Korea. Leveious with partner Gibran Burchett continued research on mobile marketing street teams which are actually Grassroots Teams until they developed Mobile Marketing a word coined by Lawrence Lotman

  • Street Team (R)Evolution:

The modern street team has now been appropriated by most music genres and is frequently utilized for corporate branding campaigns and brand building worldwide. By the late 90's scores of Fortune 500 Brand Marketing Executives wanting to their brand asset to be perceived as being "down", or to be seen as credible in the streets (see the term street-cred) to an ever-growing cross-pollinated urban demographic, embraced Street Team marketing.

By 1997, companies like Brand Marketers and Street Team Promotion.com[2]in 1999, utilized organized street teams as a method for brands to reach consumers on a direct level.

Today, many companies such as Street Team Promotion.com[3], PromoModels.com, thebooth.net and BrandAmbassadors.com, pay pre-qualified and pre-screened street team members to advertise for a variety of corporate clients, ad agencies, pr firms and new media clients worldwide.

In 2007 Microsoft Corp employed Street Teams[4] to support its Vista operating system launch in key markets.

  • Street Team Employment Opportunities:

StreetTeamPromotion.jobs[5] is a website that people looking for Street Team work and Brand Ambassador work can sign up to get email notices if there is a job opportunity in the area they live in.

Since the work may not be steady with any one particular staffing agency, talent is always recommended to sign up at many different agencies in order to get numerous Street Team job opportunities sent to them from month-to-month.

Street Teamers that get the most jobs in their respective market are often referred to by their peers as "Promo Queens" or "Promo Kings" for their hard work, and are highly respected by employers and sought after for their talent.

Well trained Street Teamers are always enthusiastic, professional and articulate in their delivery of product information when engaging consumers.

Highly skilled and trained street team members are sometimes referred to as Brand Ambassadors [6] because they literally serve as ambassadors or a act as a paid evangelist[7] for a brand. Other grass-roots organizations such as PETA, Greenpeace, Young Republicans, Etsy, Beta Entertainment, etc. also use the street team concept to promote social causes and important social issues of the day.

In 2008 "Street Teams" are a powerful promotional tool has been adopted industry wide as a standard line item in marketing budgets by entertainment companies, record labels, the tech industry, corporate brand marketers, new media companies and direct marketers[8] worldwide.