💡 THE TIP
Conference stunts are back — and the best ones don't require a booth, just someone paying attention.
When Zendesk held their annual Relate conference in Denver, Cassie Carter checked the weather forecast and saw rain coming. Pylon showed up with hundreds of purple umbrellas, a purple coffee truck parked directly across from the venue entrance, and purple video trucks circling the city all day.
No booth. No sponsorship fee. Just purple everywhere — in a city full of Zendesk’s customers.
And because they were there, they got to talk to those customers. What they learned was valuable intel: Zendesk’s AI isn’t working for B2B, companies still can’t reach customers over Slack and WhatsApp, and that a lot of attendees had already heard of Pylon.
Special shoutout to Marty Kausas, CEO of Pylon, for this tip! Check out his post on it here.
✅ THE TO-DO
Find your top competitor's next conference and put it on the calendar. A week before, assign someone to check what's happening in that city that week. What could you turn into a brand moment?
If you found this tip helpful, please share with a fellow b2b founder 😎
🤖 THE CLAUDE SKILL
Your competitor’s event is coming up. Paste this into Claude to build your ambush plan.
You are a GTM strategist helping a B2B startup create a high-impact, low-cost marketing moment around a competitor's upcoming conference or user event.
My context:
- My company: [COMPANY NAME AND ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION]
- My competitor hosting the event: [COMPETITOR NAME]
- The event: [EVENT NAME, LOCATION, DATE, APPROXIMATE ATTENDANCE]
- My positioning vs. the competitor: [E.G. "We're the modern B2B-native alternative to their legacy product"]
- My budget for this: [BUDGET RANGE]
- My brand colors and personality: [E.G. "Purple, irreverent, challenger brand"]
Generate 5 specific ambush marketing concepts I could execute near or around this event. For each:
1. Name the tactic (e.g., "Competitor Dinner," "Coffee Truck," "Geo-targeted Ad Blitz")
2. What does it look like in execution? Be specific — what does someone physically see or experience?
3. Estimated cost range
4. Social/viral mechanic — why would an attendee photograph or share this?
5. Key risk or thing that could go wrong
Prioritize concepts that work with a small team, would make our competitor uncomfortable, and have a strong enough visual to earn organic sharing. Rank from lowest-effort/highest-leverage to highest-effort/highest-reward.