You’ve heard the term, you’ve read the intelligence papers, you may have even found yourself in a pop-up retail shop over the holidays.  But is the pop-up model worth the investment?  Is it worth it to your brand?  And if you’re a small to midsize brand, is the model feasible for you?

The Good

Pop-up marketing, whether it’s a retail store or some kind of neat, immersive consumer experience, can create immediate revenue from a new source with a moderately approachable expense ratio.  If it’s a retail shop, you’re typically not locked into a long-term lease, can poach staff from other locations and stock the shop with inventory and display equipment that you already own.

The pop-up model allows your brand to extend in a different direction, which can be very healthy, and even serve as a self-solvent research program.  Perhaps you install an outpost of a well-liked operation in a new location to test adoption; or try a adding a different type of inventory to your typical operation in a new part of town; or maybe you bring a certain type of merchandise into a retail cluster that doesn’t feature your wares; all of these options are feasible and can expand the appeal of your brand.

As a result, pop-up marketing can also generate a healthy amount of buzz.  The brand now has a new reason to interface with existing customers, can reach out to new prospects with a new offer, and can also establish new b-to-b relationships with suppliers, buyers, shippers, designers, etc.

The Bad

Despite all the benefits of pop-up marketing, there may be instances where the temporary nature of the model can actually damage the brand.  For instance, a customer walks down Spring Street in SoHo and sees that a pop-up shop for a hot designer has, well, popped up.  Not able to stop in at the moment, he makes a mental note to return in a week or so.  Upon return, an empty space, with a sign on the window:  “For lease or sale.”

So why is this so bad?  Proponents of pop-up marketing will argue that the customer will go and seek out that hot designer elsewhere, since the pop-up stimulated awareness and maybe even a modicum of desire for the brand.  However, there’s a snub factor there that can impact perceptions of that designer.  It may even be that prospect X now harbors some latent hostility for that brand since it’s no longer easily available.  Or worse, a whole group of customers who may not “get” pop-up marketing might think that hot designer wasn’t so hot after all, and had to close down…not knowing that it was a pop-up shop in the first place.  Perceptions matter in marketing.

On a larger scale, we live in the Internet era, an age where data are stored for eternity and accessible anytime at our fingertips.  The very nature of the information superhighway is embedded with the notion of permanence.  It’s the Library of Congress + every local town library + every special interest database times a zillion.  And it’s always on.  For better or worse, this is the training the average consumer has been given for the last decade and a half.  The pop-up model is antithetical to that rearing.

For instance, what would happen if Facebook just disappeared?  In yesterday’s New York Times, I read an article about how Friendster is about to dump thousands of terrabytes of data – personal memories, photos, posts and testimonials from about seven or eight years ago.  People are up in arms.  Some are distressed.  Many are vocal about their disapproval.  Friendster’s data dump is the pop-up model gone awry.

The Opportunity

So if you’re a small or midsize company, and you’d like to give your brand a boost, you might consider pop-up marketing as a viable short-term solution.  Remember that retail is only one form of pop-up marketing.  Obviously, if you’re a service provider, it’s hard to sell customized solutions in that model.  So be creative:  consider events as a pop-up marketing opportunity: short-term, low overhead, and an opportunity to drive leads and create new business-side relationships.

For the best brand impact, though, consider something truly creative.  Where would your brand do well, but in a physical or perceptual space that your customers might not expect?  The most powerful combination in marketing is relevance + unexpectedness.  If you can create that for your brand using a pop-up model, you might see another good combination emerge:  short-term expense + long-term brand value.