Over the past few years acceptance of the "taboo" in the working world has been making huge progress in the tolerance department! More companies are realizing that they need to focus on hiring and promoting their employee's work ethics and potential than their appearance... I mean we're in Canada anyways we have to wear long sleeves when it gets cold so who care's what kind of tattoo we're hiding underneath? As hot as Florida may get even the Walt Disney companies provide their working cast members with long sleeve shirts to cover their ink during their shifts.
Upon coming back to ktown to finish school my friend found a promotional event being hosted by
Don't Tell Momma, a shop downtown that was doing the unfathomable... In 8-12 hours (I say that because after seeing how many people came to the event they added an extra 4 hours to service more participants,) they would give out FREE tattoos to whomever showed up first-come, first-served. Limitations were that it had to be worth under $100 or less than an hour of ink.
Let me tell you the people of ktown went bonkers! My friend and I got there around 9am and there were 30 participants there before us, some who had been waiting since midnight in order to be first in line. Needless to say it was a crazy long day... people of all different flocks of life gathered together to sing, dance (yes the shop hired a DJ for the day,) play music, bond over tattoos and see who was getting what, people were making friends and buying everyone Timmies and pizza all afternoon. My friend and I made many new friends too!
This was a great idea for a tattoo shop, they're located right downtown so not only did over 600+ people try to wait around for a tattoo, but all the cars passing by their shop saw all the buzz and the massive participants throughout the day - Not many noticed other than me but even some local news and photographers started sneaking behind parked cars and hiding in other shops to record the event. Many people were taking to social media all day about what was going on and
Don't Tell Momma's gained a plethora of new devoted customers - my friend and I included! We were numbers 31 and 32 (or something like that, and ended up getting our tattoos around 5pm.) Plus the devoted participants that stayed until midnight received $100 gift cards to come back the next day in thanks for waiting 12 hours in the parking lot with everyone.
The cool thing about their strategy is that it didn't stop there... several weeks later they housed another event! This time a draw for 65 participants to get FREE tattoos worth between $60-80 the day after the drawing. This time it wasn't as crazy (I think they planned to have it the weekend of Mother's Day so that people would be too busy to flock in masses.) Around between 70-80 people showed up in their parking lot this time (myself included because who can pass up a FREE tattoo - beats me saving up the money to get it years down the road!) Second time around I was number 13 and got in just after 2pm.
I really enjoyed my time with the shop - the artists are very great to work with and it's a very laid back and fun atmosphere! I wish I could have saw the official numerical results of both events but I definitely saw the physical results first hand with how much buzz they created around town! It just goes to show that even the more "un-business" cliché kind of establishments can come up with some wicked marketing strategies if they try. I'm sure the people of ktown will be talking about this for a while. I definitely have a few stories to tell now when people ask me about my ink and where I got it!
