By Darren Gilbert

One only needs to look at what World Wide Creative (WWC) has done with their Heavy Chef talk series to see that it works. Speaking to Media Update’s Cassy van Eeden earlier this year, WWC CEO Fred Roed said it stemmed from an experience they had had with a client who was unimpressed with the fact that while WWC was selling a service, they weren’t about to deliver on it.

For World Wide Creative, Heavy Chef has been a great opportunity to build their brand. And they’re not the only business to use non-traditional marketing methods to build a brand.

Cerebra and the power of eBooks

Cerebra, described as Africa’s social business authority have turned to eBooks as a way to further their brand.

“We wrote and shared our first eBook about three years ago,” says Cerebra MD Craig Rodney. “Based on the success of that first eBook, we formulated our ‘official’ eBook publishing model in March 2014.” Around an eBook, Cerebra has the opportunity to write blog posts, do conference talks and set up meetings.

“Tweeting, blogging, and speaking about a topic are all great ways of building authority, but nothing is quite as authoritative as having written a book about the topic,” says Rodney. "Even if it is an eBook."

Mind you, the eBook doesn’t do all the work. “You still have to work hard to promote and publicise the eBook,” adds Rodney. “But if you get it in front of the right people, it will do its job.”

IMM Graduate School of Marketing chooses a magazine

For the IMM Graduate School of Marketing, their publication, the Journal of Strategic Marketing, has been in print format since 2009.

Editor and publisher of the publication, Mike Simpson, says, inspiration came from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) published by Harvard Business School. “The idea was always to produce a local magazine with impartial, high quality, thought-leadership content, as HBR does.”

“The benefit of the IMM Journal of Strategy Marketing to the brand is it has intrinsic value because it offers valuable and useful content.” Of course, Simpson wouldn’t say that every brand should consider publishing a magazine.

“Doing a magazine properly is an expensive exercise and you need to be in it for the long term. Not every brand can commit to that,” he says.

To add to that, brands need to consider whether the industry they’re in will provide a constant flow of new information that their audience will want to know. If not, it becomes difficult to justify a magazine, concludes Simpson.

The business of hosting industry talks

As mentioned above, World Wide Creative hosts monthly Heavy Chef events in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Another company to do the same is New Media Labs with New Media Mondays, which take place once every quarter.

Again, speaking to Van Eeden, Thando Kumalo, marketing and business development manager at New Media Labs, says, “Hosting in-person events has the potential to be the most effective activity in a brand’s content marketing strategy.”

At the same time, it’s a perfect opportunity to mingle with like-minded individuals while also building relationships. And if you play your cards, right, find new business.

What are your thoughts? Do you know of any other unconventional methods to market your business?