How It Started
We didn't plan Ground Game. We ran it, and the market asked us to keep going.
We were promoting our own event, AVCM Vol. 3. We did it the way everyone does it now: posts on Instagram, flyers pointing back to our page, a spot every Sunday morning on our own radio show. All of it worked a little. None of it moved the way we needed it to move.
So we bought 500 flyers and put every one of them out in a single night.
We started easy. Left a stack on the counter at a coffee shop. It sat there next to somebody else's stack, and right then we understood everything wrong with how promotion usually gets done. A pile of paper waiting to be noticed is not a strategy. So we stopped waiting and hit the street.
We went to a packed nightclub and covered every car in the lot. A friend told us later she found one on her windshield three blocks away. That is what saturation actually looks like. Then we moved to the next spot, and instead of leaving flyers, I put them in people's hands. Every person. A handshake first, then the flyer.
That is when a man called out asking where his was. I told him to give me a handshake and it was his. He asked if we were a street team. I told him the truth, that we were marketing our own event. He did not care. He wanted a meeting to see if we would do the same for him.
I left and kept working the block, sliding a flyer into the driver's window of every car on the street. Before I got far, a club owner stopped me and asked the same question the event organizer had. He said he liked how I carried myself and wanted to know if this was a service we offered.
Two established operators, in one night, asking to hire something we had not even named yet. That is when we knew there was a market.
Vol. 3 drew a strong crowd. And somewhere in the middle of it, the last piece clicked. Every flyer should carry a QR code that opens a landing page, so the person holding it can follow us, grab a ticket, and sign up for what comes next. Presence you can see, turned into action you can count.
Ground Game could easily read as a startup looking for its first client. It is actually the thing people were trying to book before it had a name. We did not find the market. The market found us, on a Friday night, one handshake at a time.
About
We know the ground because we come from it.
Ground Game is the street team and field promotions division of A Vibe Called Midwest.
The Position
Owned. Self-reliant. Local by default.
We built this division because the neighborhoods that get talked about in decks rarely get visited. We visit. We staff from the same blocks we work.
Nobody hands us reach. We go get it, in person, one conversation at a time. Then we count it honestly, including the parts that did not work.
Design and print stay in house for the same reason. Control the piece, control the handoff, control the outcome.
Join the Team
Get paid to work the ground.
We staff from the same blocks we work. If you can talk to strangers, show up on time, and move with a team, we want your name on the list.
- Paid field work at events, corridors, and campuses
- Flexible shifts built around your schedule
- Training on the pitch, the pieces, and the capture tools
- Room to move up to crew lead on bigger campaigns
