Street marketing is the art of taking your product directly to the people to whom you’re trying to sell. Rather than depending upon traditional advertising venues such as newspapers, television and radio, you’re using a live person to sell your product face to face.

From festivals to college campuses, we infiltrate public gatherings with attractive street marketers and pass out free products, coupons, music and tickets to company-sponsored events. Cost-conscious consumers are often naturally suspicious of advertisements, but a good street marketing plan adds a human element to a marketing pitch and, in some cases, allows people to let down their guards. And street marketing lets small business owners expose their products to people they might not have reached normally.

Some street teams use props with the hope that consumers will remember their products better. Such a scheme worked on MTV executive Depelsha Thomas. Walking home from her office, Thomas passed a man dressed as a fisherman who handed her a free sample of cough drops that had a picture of a fisherman on them. A few weeks later, when she became ill, she remembered the fisherman and sought out the brand of cough drops the street fisherman gave her.