Mixed Tees Marketing 101
Skip Work and Go See Guardians of the Galaxy!
Some people might say letting your guys take the afternoon off to go the movies is a bad business decision. I said to BeX, “So you mean, take afternoon off and eat popcorn and NOT print shirts?” He nodded solemnly like a Confucius Monk and I was compelled to agree.
I still secretly think this was all a ploy to see the movie for free, but when he said let’s print our new designs and wear them, that sounded like a good idea!
Just showing the designs off wasn’t enough though. We needed people to know where to buy them. T-Bag designed a throwback Mixed Tees logo and we put them on the back of the shirts. And since our group looks like a bunch of homeless sign holders, we added the following to the logo – Mixed Tees; Nerdy Couture (I still don’t know what the hell Couture means. It worked well for Juicy, so we are going with it). Then below Couture it says, “PLEASE GO BUY SOMETHING – ANYTHING… SERIOUSLY, I’M HUNGRY!”
The Mixed Tees staff ambled up to the box office with cheap discount tickets their I gave them because I am cheap and on a budget. “No coupons on opening day” the attractive ticket girl told our crew. BeX explained how our moms didn’t give us any cash and just dropped us off. Then he explained how his sister has cancer and we are saving up for her prosthetic leg. Johnny faked blindness but it didn’t fool her. Jayleen ignored everyone and pretended that she didn’t know them and Matt kept smacking BeX in the butt. Yeah we don’t know why either. Finally Dani stepped up to the ticket stand and said look these guys are idiots. Just let them go inside before they run off good paying customers. And that’s what did it.
John took a seat against the wall of the concession stand and someone gave him a dollar. He totally looked homeless that day. The team jumped around and tried to draw attention to the shirts, but people were making a wide berth around them and pointedly ignoring them. At movie time, they went in with a box of popcorn and cans of mountain dew shoved down Matt’s pants. He kept the ticket girl there was nothing down there; that’s just how big it is, but she just rolled her eyes and called him an “Idiot”.
The team may have gone in appearing as imbeciles, but they came out laughing hard just like everyone else as equals. Then someone said cool shirt and John shouted out “Only at Mixed Tees!” Then another movie go-er said, what is a Mixed Tees? BeX sorta groaned and said, “Apparently a company that needs to work on its marketing since we are right down the street.”
“Well this may not have worked out, but at least the movie was good,” BeX said to me. “True,” I said. “But that’s because you only had 12% of a plan when you brought the team here.”
He laughed and said I was mentally challenged. And while I am mentally challenged, looking at the team it was obvious this was a positive team building event. And while we didn’t make any new friends at AMC, it wasn’t a total loss. John’s made like $10 and got a free lunch. He may be on to something with this whole homeless look.”
With the team happy and causing a scene at the local AMC, it was back to printing our hot, new Guardians of the Galaxy designs.
“What do you think about Go Cart Racing for the next outing?” BeX asked as we walked down the street.
“Please don’t kill our employees, man!” I gave him the evil eye. You know how hard it is to find people to work for food!”
Stay tuned for more miss-adventures from the Mixed Tees team!
Until next time,
Shane "Wards" Montgomery
