Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Does your marketing plan include free ice water?

As previously mentioned, I took a vacation on the other side of the state last weekend. A stop we made both directions will be familiar to all South Dakotans and road warriors everywhere. Wall Drug has been an institution in this state since it was founded by the Hustead family in 1931. Pictured to the right is the third generation, Ted Hustead and yours truly (on the left).

To say that theirs has been a non-traditional marketing success story, would be like saying that the Pope is Catholic. Their first breakthrough came in 1936, when the struggling drug store came up with idea of luring travelers by providing free ice water and letting them know about it with road-side signs. It transformed them overnight to a South Dakota success story.

Today, although they have a web site, their marketing plan still primarily consists of free ice water and signs all over South Dakota and all over the world. My personal favorite is the sign at the South Pole (pictured to the left). The other thing Wall Drug has benefited from is about "a million dollars in free publicity." The publicity machine cranked out another success story over the weekend, when Wall Drug was featured in the USATODAY Road Trips. In Gene Sloan's article for the largest newspaper in the country, Hustead is quoted as saying: "Sometimes it's hard for us to understand what it is that our customers really love about this place." It's not hard for me to understand. I came for the pancakes (which are the best in the world) and the donuts (of which they serve more than 4,000 per day).

Actually, people love Wall Drug because it provides a completely authentic customer experience that makes people (like me) want to tell others (like you) about it. Throw in some free product, a heavy dose of guerrilla marketing and more road-side signs than BP and what you have is a genuine purple cow. Some 20,000 people come through their doors every day and Ted tells me that business is booming. I'm not surprised.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Attention = the new commodity

Ahhhh…vacation. I took two days off before Memorial Day Weekend to give myself (and my family) a five-day weekend. We spent the time in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which is one of my favorite places in the world (pictured to the right). We spent time fishing, hiking and soaking up the sun well off the beaten path.

In addition to the rest and relaxation, I caught up on some reading—two books that are relevant to this blog: All Marketers Are Liars by Seth Godin and Life After the 30-Second Spot by Joseph Jaffe (many thanks to Joseph for supplying us with a copy). I’d been meaning to get to these books for a long time and this vacation supplied me the time to get to both.

With the proliferation of blogs, I’ve noticed myself spending less time with books. It just seems that by the time a book comes to print, everything included therein has probably been covered by the blogosphere. However, this particular vacation I was without an Internet connection and my Treo was out of range, so I was forced to read the old way…and was rewarded for doing so.

One thing that jumped off the pages of these two marketing texts was the importance of gaining the attention of the consumer. The cluttered media landscape (which is rendering the 30-second spot irrelevant) has led to the “attention economy” with time “the new currency” states Jaffe. Rather than ROI, we need to focus on the “consumer’s ROA: return on attention."

Godin calls attention “the unstated precious commodity” and tells marketers that they “can no longer force people to pay attention.” Both authors reference the effectiveness of “permission marketing,” the title of a previous Godin book, and Jaffe calls for the introduction of “permission advertising.” The permission is necessary because marketers waste the time of today’s time-pressed consumers at their own peril.

Both authors see attention gained in similar fashions. For Godin, attention is earned from the consumer by telling a compelling story that does not conflict with their worldview. Jaffe urges advertisers to get attention by crafting advertising that is real, relevant and beneficial to the consumer (hint: it’s tough to do that with a 30-second TV ad).

This is consistent with what our agency regularly discusses with our clients. In our view, the first job of good advertising is to stop the consumer and get them to pay attention. The consumer is not looking for your ad; in most cases they’re actively trying to avoid it. That’s why they signed up for the “Do Not Call List,” bought a DVR and installed Google pop-up blocker. An ad can’t convince its target to do anything if it doesn’t first get someone to pay attention and today that’s harder than ever to accomplish.

I’ll be blogging more about these two texts in the coming days (perhaps even review them), but I first wanted to highlight a theme or two that was present in both. Following all the vacation reading, I have a lot of thoughts to share with Fresh Glue readers.

Incidentally, public relations pros have joined advertisers in discussing the importance of consumer attention. In a presentation titled “Communicating on the Read-Write Web” by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson, of For Immediate Release fame, attention is called “the scarcest resource.” The presentation is well worth the read.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Podding along

I have always been a massive consumer of media. It's probably what got me into public relations. When my friends were listening to AC-DC, I was listening to talk radio. When I had a job that required a lot of windshield time, I became a regular listener of audiobooks. I always had a shower radio so I could catch the local news every morning before I got out and started watching CNBC.

But, my busy schedule frequently does not mesh with the media schedule so that I can watch what I want, when I want to. Many others are in the same boat and that's why the DVR has proliferated so quickly: it puts the consumer in charge of the schedule. That's also why I like podcasts so much. I subscribe to my favorite podcasts on iTunes, which downloads the latest episodes to my computer. I then copy them to my mp3 player and listen to them whenever and wherever I desire. I listen while I'm driving, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn and biking or running.

Podcasts also remove the geographic restrictions that limit content that can be played on local radio. My two favorite podcasts are Across the Sound and For Immediate Release. They are about new media marketing and public relations and technology, respectively. Not exactly topics that would draw radio advertisers in Sioux Falls, but both have carved out large audiences in the podosphere. By the way, the two of them did a Mashup (joint podcast) a few weeks ago that you can listen to here. I'm hoping that its the first of many. To find your favorite podcast, try iTunes or podcast.net.

Now, you can reach that nationwide network of distributors with broadcast information that they can consume on their own terms. Your niche radio show might find an even bigger audience as a podcast. You're only limited by your imagination...so start imagining.

Thursday, May 4, 2006

Man Bites Dog

When you start out in public relations and seasoned professionals (as well as reporters) are explaining to you that real news is the extraordinary, they usually grab for one particular metaphor: 'man bites dog.' Dogs bite men every day, the story goes, so that's really not news. But when a man bites a dog, stop the presses!

That old metaphor was the first thing that came to mind when I heard that the New York Times was searching for a p.r. expert. It seems that amid readership losses and a declining stock price, the Grey Lady wants an expert in crisis communications to help them right the ship. Man bites dog, or newspaper hires publicist. Either way, it reads the same to me.

(Hat tip to PR Machine for the link).