Client Acquisition 101: Blackmail Them.
Surreal Cereal are fast becoming start-up legends on social media. Founded less than a year ago, their posts are already garnering hundreds, if not thousands of likes. How do you get the attention of the most popular kid in school? You blackmail them… Duh.
An idea hatched after an in-depth stalk from our Founder, I set myself the challenge of scoring him a meeting with them, even at the risk of a minor criminal record. After design, copy and a Joe Goldberg level of research into their company, we were ready to strike.
The resulting images ranged from the classic ‘tied to a train track’ scenario to the Batman inspired ‘vat of acid’ (that was actually just a can of Campbell’s soup). Discussions of waterboarding cereal hoops with milk were had, but quickly shot down… I guess the line has to be drawn somewhere.
After several hours cutting and pritt-sticking blackmail letters together, we moved on to Phase Two: Contact. An anonymous Instagram account under the handle @cereal_killer_123_ was created, framed with a menacing edit to their normally happy looking logo. Before the first note was even sent, this account was blocked (*insert Law and Order intro noise here*). This led us to a multi channel approach, locating their office and messaging through a second account to ensure we got noticed. Hand-delivering ransom notes is a key transferable skill, right?
After finally managing to send our first and second menacing notes to Surreal, we got an immediate response, which then turned into a back and forth dialogue over the coming few days (a big win for the Cereal Killers). The final note was a time and link to a Google Meet call, in which *drumroll please*… they joined!
So, what did we learn?
- Criminal methods of negotiation are an effective business tool.
- If you threaten someone they will probably want to know who you are.
- A life of crime looks surprisingly good on us.
Watch your back.
