evetns

Just when I said that event marketing doesn't really work for startups I end up getting a close proximity reminder from www.Muxlim.com that sometimes it does work, if you are being clever about it. This can be taken as a showcase of "how its done right" as a startup and how, after all, you can benefit from expo-style marketing. However naturally Muxlim has its own special flavor; but in the end it is not that different: it's still real people, social media and teh Internets.

Last weekend London hosted the 4th annual Global Peace and Unity Event at the ExCel. They hype the event by saying: "The Global Peace and Unity event event is the largest multicultural gathering in Europe - expected to attract more than 60,000 people over two days." In another words its a big expo/conference/event with a whole lot of things going on. Including extreme sports and concerts.

Muxlim Team (back row, left to right): Steve Lee, Mohamed El-Fatatry, Jussi Vaihia, Ashar Saeed, Desiree Khalid, plus some culturally compliant booth babes ;-)

Muxlim totally rocked the event. Muxlim stand was one of the most memorable and noticeable ones. It was tall, visible and had the Muxlim signature color that kind of stands out. The stand was designed in a way to welcome people inside as opposed to have them standing outside. High-tech look with laptops and flatscreens. It had a "meeting point" there, and prior to the event Muxlim had used their own online media to let people know about Muxlim being there, and allowing Muxlim.com members to set up meetings in the style of "see you at the Muxlim stand". This is precisely the way you should do event marketing; well-prepared and nicely followed up.

Muxlim's tall stand, with the meeting point.

Muxlim had a team of 5 volunteer girls (check the pic above) helping out. They were hard working and great, and got very excited about everything regarding Muxlim, and managed to transfer plenty of that enthusiasm to event visitors.

pic: spontaneous Muxlim fandom from expo visitors. "Muxlim Models"

The most famous Muslim video blogger in the world, mr. Baba Ali from www.ummahfilms.com has been a long time Muxlim fan and member. He came to the Muxlim stand to meet and greet some of his fans. He stayed around a good while talking to people, signing stuff and having pictures taken.

Pic: Muxlim Team members with Baba Ali in the middle.

Some interesting bits from the event; the London Metropolitan Police Department was there to recruit more Muslims to work with them. There was also a group of Rabbis having friendly conversations with people, including the Muxlim crew. At the same time the next expo hall (or something) had a cartoon convention there. So people in batman, superman, spiderman, joker, and even power rangers -costumes were running around in the mids of people wearing robes and hijabs ;)

Pic: Muxlim stand getting crowded.

Muxlim managed to attract a great deal of attention and sign multiple hundreds of new users to the site during the event, many of them there on the spot. Many (especially female) fans volunteered as "Muxlim models" and went around wearing Muxlim t-shirts giving out flyers to people, just because they liked promoting the site (cool, eh?). Word of mouth effect kicked into action, and Muxlim's stand received a steady flow of people throughout the weekend. At some point there was a big queue of people just waiting to sign up to Muxlim.com, with all terminals there busy. You could see Muxlim t-shirts all over the place.

Muxlim also sponsored a concert in conjunction with the event, and got cheered on by the crowd multiple times - with plenty of people wearing Muxlim t-shirts there in the audience.

The event was also busy business-wise, with Muxlim having an influx of interesting meetings, and even sizable deal closings right there on the spot.

Looks like a good example of 'work well done' to me, grats to the Muxlim team! and thank you Mohamed for the details on the inside scoop.

TechCrunch UK just published that Muxlim will be sponsoring the TechCrunch brunch at the Slush event in Helsinki. Let's see if the fandom continues there! Read about that from here:

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/10/29/come-to-helsinki-for-the-techcrunchb...