Sequel.io's Off-Site Webinar Protest Outside HubSpot's Conference

What's the play

We staged a (very tongue-in-cheek) street protest outside HubSpot's INBOUND — picket signs, a street team, the whole bit — protesting one specific villain: the off-site webinar. The premise wrote itself. Every webinar that drags your audience off your site and onto someone else's platform is an audience you just handed away. So we marched out front from 11 to 4 with signs, chants, and a camera, demanding people own their audience. It was a joke that everyone in the building got immediately, which is exactly why it worked.

What was the alternative?

A polite booth, a branded tote, and a fishbowl of business cards... blending into 200 other vendors all saying "come see a demo."

Results / what moved

The protest became the most photographed thing outside the venue. It fed a man-on-the-street video, kicked off a viral wave of LinkedIn posts from the team, partners and attendees under #OwnYourAudience, and gave the brand real air cover with demos flowing in, mentioning they saw our protest. We don't have a clean attribution number for the social reach, but the comments section did the selling for us.

Cost breakdown

~$3k for signs, t-shirts, and an energetic crew of "protesters" ready to chant for 4+ hours

Time to pull off

You can do it within a week if you have a printer with a quick turn around time

Would you run it again?

Yes. Next time we'd put even more firepower behind it, bringing in more people to protest. More associated assets and swag, and filming even more content that we can amplify across social.

Steps

1. 1

   Pick a fight your product already wins

   Protest a problem you actually fix. Ours: off-site webinars vs. keeping your audience (and your first-party data) on your own site.

2. 2

   Keep it playful, never political

   "We're protesting off-site webinars" is silly enough that nobody's offended and everybody's curious. That tone is what gets you photographed instead of escorted off the sidewalk (which is still possible).

3. 3

   Get creative with signage, attire, and chants

   Come up with a variety of sayings and taglines that you can tie back to your core value proposition, and include them on protester t-shirts, on the signage, and anywhere else tied to the activation.

4. 4

   Build a street team

   Lead a picket line out front of the venue for a minimum of 3 hours.

5. 5

   Put a camera on it

   We filmed man-on-the-street reactions with customers and conference attendees — the raw footage became the most shareable asset of the whole thing.

6. 6

   Turn the crowd into amplifiers

   Give it hashtags people can rally behind (#OwnYourAudience) and get the team + partners posting in real time.

7. 7

   Point the buzz at one conversion moment

   The protest was the spectacle; the QR code was the close. Funnel the attention you create toward the place where people can actually book time or learn more.

Notes

After protesting for quite a few hours, the conference staff actually came out and asked us to stop chanting, which we agreed to do (we had already gained a lot of brand exposure at this point). It's never nice to have to be told to shut down an activation. This was also an experiment for us, so we definitely could have pushed harder on the social amplification piece to build even more buzz through influencers and others in our network.

Tools & resources used

FigmaSequel