In just about any given week in Times Square there's a street team or two, often in attention-getting costumes, working to get some marketer's message across. And if it's a particularly clever campaign, the team will earn a spot on the local news or even on one of the morning news shows like "Good Morning America."

Street campaigns go back years to the time of sandwich men, so called because they wore signs over their torsos, hanging front and rear and held together by straps across each shoulder. Retailers planted them on sidewalks to promote special offers or store openings.

Things are a lot more sophisticated these days. What you see in place of sandwich men can reach to the level of a theatrical production.

Teams zoom about on Segway scooters, waving signs, or they're in costumes and wearing interactive monitors on their chests. They might be handing out samples, but they also talk, as street salesmen connecting with passersby with information about the product.

Sometimes they're trained singers and actors, performing the marketer's message against an elaborate backdrop. One campaign, for a new Microsoft product, had a team of dancers performing high up on the face of a New York skyscraper, suspended by wires.

But as effective as street campaigns can be, they require a bit of know-how and street smarts on the part of media planners and buyers to ensure they come off well. A poorly executed street campaign can lead to all the wrong sorts of headlines.

To find out how to get your client’s message on the streets with street teams, read on.

This is one in a Media Life series on buying the new out-of-home venues. They appear weekly.

Fast Facts

What
Using street teams to connect with consumers and win mention in the local media.

Who
A large number of companies across the country offer street teams, and the range of their talents is vast. For this article Media Life spoke with Brand Marketers in New York, Attack! Marketing in San Francisco and Mango Moose Media in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

How it works
You can get a street team to do pretty much anything that’s legal, and legal here is a loose term, in some cases meaning simply not getting caught, though that tends to cross over into guerilla marketing.

The best and most memorable street campaigns are always the most imaginative.

In a recent stunt for Taco Bell’s Fruitista Freeze frozen drinks, teams of actors were made up to look frozen, and they stood utterly still while others handed out coupons at the entrance of a stadium as fans poured in for a game.

In another, for Mini Cooper’s new Clubman model, professional drivers maneuvered in tight single-file formation through downtown traffic in various cities. On the cars were these words: “Zig, Zag, Zug.”

In this year's buildup to its Shark Week of shark-related programming, Discovery Channel posted lifeguards atop lifeguard stands at eight locations around Manhattan, sitting under umbrellas.

The guards warned passersby to beware of sharks and to stay close to the shore, while at street level young women handed out branded shark-shaped visors.

As these examples show, what matters most with a street campaign is a smart idea that conveys the marketer's message in an eye-catching way, and that's way more important than how much money is spent.

But there are some practical issues to consider as well.

First is location. As in real estate, so in street campaigns: Think location, location, location. The campaign must be staged in areas of high visibility and high traffic but also where you're going to find the target consumer.

Taco Bell’s Fruitista Freeze worked because it was staged at a stadium before a sports event. There was the crowd, and it was the right crowd: a mix of all sorts of people, as you would expect at a sporting event.

And they were in the right frame of mind. Through the game they would be snacking.

For more targeted products, the location has to be product-appropriate. “For a Latin-based product, we’d want people who speak both Spanish and English,” says Adam Hollander, creative producer at Brand Marketers.

“If it’s something for medical, you may want to center around a trade show or convention you know target consumers will be attending.” says Christian Jurinka, managing director at Attack! Marketing. “A high-traffic downtown area doesn’t make sense. Relevance is the common thread."

It's also important that the tastes and values of the target consumer aren't ignored in the creative process. If you are targeting missionaries, for example, don't send out a bevy of scantily clad beauties. You want to connect, not offend. (If that seems obvious, consider all the ad campaigns that are highly creative but utterly fail to connect with their target consumer.)

Finally, a street campaign in many ways is like a theater production. There's zillions of details that need attending, and one screwup--one detail overlooked--can sink the whole production.

Says Jurinka: “If you want to pass out 50,000 packages of nutrition bars, where are they going to go? Have you ordered bags to hold them in? What are you going to do with all the trash? You have to think of things from start to finish and in between.”

You probably won't have to worry about getting permission from the locality. "You typically don’t need permits," says Ray Wali, president of Mango Moose Media. "It’s guerrilla-style media, so as long as you’re not selling anything you don’t need a permit."

Markets
Street teams can be deployed in any market, and they can be found through local agencies with a specialty in out-of-home. They'll be familiar with issues such as permits, if any are required.

Numbers
Little data exists on the effectiveness of street teams, since campaigns can vary so widely.

How it is measured
Impressions can be estimated from things such as foot traffic counts and event attendance data. The number of samples handed out can also be tracked.

For a recent campaign for “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” a team from Brand Marketers handed out 10,000 branded tissue packs with 20 percent-off coupons for tickets. In the month that followed, more than 20 percent of the coupons had been redeemed.

What product categories do well
Packaged goods and snack foods work well because samples can be handed out. Other categories that have used street campaigns to good effect include automotive, financial, fast food, entertainment, shoes, soft drinks and TV networks.

Demographics
Marketers can target very broadly by sending street teams to high-traffic locations, or they can target by age, sex, race and other factors by choosing locations where those audiences can be found.

Making the buy
Brand Marketers: Pricing starts at around $20 per hour per street team member but that figure can come down for larger campaigns. Add-ons such as special talents and props increase the cost.

Mango Moose Media: Preferred lead time is four weeks. A 20-day campaign spread over four weeks using 10 promotion reps runs roughly $50,000.

Attack! Marketing: Lead time is generally four to six weeks. Twenty people for eight hours a day, five days a week for two weeks can run between $20,000-$25,000.

Who’s already using street teams
Taco Bell, Mini Cooper, Airborne, Quiznos, Dwell magazine, DirecTV, Conde Nast, Evian, Sketchers, USA Today, Ben & Jerry’s, Virgin Mobile, Nestle, Del Taco, Visa, Adidas are among some of the brands.

What they’re saying
"We encourage clients to be consistent with their campaigns and incorporate elements of billboards or TV spots into the street team. Clients usually provide us with a training brief, then we school the team on the product, and then send them on the street."-– Ray Wali, president of Mango Moose Media

Web site info
Brand Marketers
http://www.brandmarketers.com

Mango Moose Media
http://www.mangomoose.ca

Attack! Marketing
http://www.attackmarketing.net