Ninjas are known for stealth, covert actions and — for the last two months — for snowballs.
Based on the precedent set by Kogi, a Korean barbecue taco truck in Los Angeles, Ninja Snowballs moves to a new Baton Rouge location each day disclosing whereabouts only on Twitter and Facebook.
Ninja Snowballs opened for business in mid-summer with a specific goal in mind — remaining as “ninja-like” as possible.
With a 346 followers on Twitter and 312 Facebook friends, Ninja Snowballs’ owners post the stand’s location each day through “tweets” or Facebook statuses, said “Ninja Josh,” co-owner of Ninja Snowballs.
“Most snowball stands in town are known by their location, like the snowball stand on Perkins Road… There’s no known brand,” Josh said. “We wanted to take it to the next level and basically use social networking to do it.”
The three co-owners of Ninja Snowballs choose not to disclose their full names to avoid confusion with other business endeavors. Refusing to disclose their names also helps to stay in line with the “sneaky” ninja image, Josh said. Employees also don ninja-style clothing to conceal identities from customers.
Ninja Snowballs’ owners count the business’ mobility as a huge asset, Josh said.
“We want to keep up the theme of ninjas,” Josh said. “We’re going probably four different places this Friday through Saturday.”
John Byrne, 2008 alumnus, said he purchased snowballs at the stand twice on an impulse.
“It’s a hot day, you see a snowball stand, [and] you buy a snowball,” Byrne said of the convenience of finding Ninja Snowballs set up in various locations throughout Baton Rouge.
Byrne, who said the snowballs at Ninja are of average quality, is not following Ninja Snowballs on Twitter because he said he is not a heavy user of social networking sites.
Judith Anne Garretson Folse, marketing professor, warned the novelty associated with some forms of new media could wear off relatively quickly, leaving the companies using them scrambling.
“Anytime a company tries to create something new to take advantage of new media … it’s exciting, it’s fun, it’s interesting,” Folse said. “[But] anytime it’s new, the success rate is always unknown.”
While Folse said using new media is a “good way to stand out [and] gather a following,” she also noted mediums such as Twitter may not be as salient as others.
“Twitter is the new thing that … a lot of companies are trying to integrate into their promotions as well,” Folse said. “I don’t know a lot of companies that are using Twitter as much as the media is suggesting … It seems like most college students are interested in Facebook.”
Casey Miller, communication studies senior, said he frequently uses Twitter throughout the day, but he is not familiar with the traveling snowball stand.
“I walked out of Chimes, and the little cart was parked there — I’d heard of Ninja Snowballs,” Miller said.
Josh said Ninja Snowballs typically tries to spend at least two days a week in the University area, but customers in downtown Baton Rouge are sometimes more adamant about following the stand.
“We’re getting more and more [followers], especially the downtown crowd,” Josh said. “We can keep everyone up to date on Twitter.”
The Ninja Snowballs pages on Twitter and MySpace are steadily gaining followers, Josh said.
“We definitely get some everyday on Facebook and Twitter,” he said. “We’ve only been doing it for a couple of months.”
But the ninjas will temporarily ditch their stealthy habits in lieu of predictability for certain occasions by setting up near the University for every home game of the football season, Josh said.
—-Contact Lindsey Meaux at [email protected]