Unlike Farmers Insurance, the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) hasn’t really ever come off as an organization with a sense of humor, no matter how funny some of their members might be.

While golf is full of decades-old (if not centuries-old) tradition and is traditionally thought of as a game for the well-heeled, it’s really about spending time with your friends, even when you’re playing a course that would make a good cow pasture.

Friends who golf aren’t just mostly-white, stodgy old geezers in funny-looking polyester pants.

The boy band may not have this on their agenda, I have to ask: What have you done to reach out beyond your traditional market?

PS: Farmers Insurance is donating $1000 to charity for every 100,000 views of this video.

photo credit: freeparking

Yesterday, President Obama sat down in the White House Rose Garden to have a beer and a “teachable moment” with a couple of Cambridge residents and the VP.

The only brewery CEO who managed to use the event for PR during that famous Rose Garden beer party – Jim Koch, the CEO of Sam Adams.

Not only did he let the press know that he’d brew a special beer for the occasion, he (one way or another) managed to get his beer served during the event despite Red Stripe having the early nod from Gates.

Of course he knew full well that every story in the news would likely mention what beer was consumed (amid all the handwringing about that, geez). Even if it meant giving Gates free a 6 of Sam Adams every week for life, it would likely be worth it.

But…that’s all there was.

Silence is not golden

I searched for stories and press releases about Blue Moon – from Blue Moon – about the event. Nothing.

I searched for stories and press releases about Bud Light – from InBev – about the event. Nothing.

I searched for stories and press releases about Sam Adams – from Sam Adams brewery – about the event. Nothing other than the previously mentioned special occasion brew Koch was talking about. To his credit, Koch had managed to the special beer idea into stories from NPR and many others in the mainstream press.

I searched for stories and press releases about Buckler – from the Heineken brewery – about the event, though that was expected since the beer is supposedly being taken off the U.S. market.

None of these breweries had anything on their website about the event or the fact that their beers were chosen.

Hungry?

I searched for stories from pizza stores and chip/dip makers about why the POTUS should serve their food/snacks during this get together. Nothing. Not even the articles mentioned what sort of chip and dip was on the agenda.

Maybe I missed one somewhere, though there were a few stories asking the public what they’d serve.

Teachable moment? Use the news in your marketing and public relations efforts.

You might think that this is a negative moment to tout your brand/product. Not even close.

In colder climates, it’s pothole season.

As the weather warms, ice and snow thaws and “spring break up” begins. The ground creaks and ripples as some areas thaw faster than others, while others go through numerous freeze and thaw cycles until spring truly arrives.

It begins for the roads too, as thawing ice breaks up pavement and creates potholes (or exposes the ones frozen and smoothed over by ice all winter).

Earlier this week, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) parent Yum Foods offered $3000 to help the city of Louisville fix 350 potholes. In exchange, KFC gets to apply temporary chalk emblems to the repaired potholes saying “Re-freshed by KFC”.

Free publicity you say?

http://louisville.bizjournals.com/louisville/stories/2009/03/23/daily41.html?ana=e_bjt

http://www.google.com/search?q=kfc+potholes (11,000+ results as of the morning of Mar 27 2009)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102390105&ft=1&f=2 (how many listeners to All Things Considered?)

What exactly to potholes and chicken have to do with one another?

Not a darned thing. And does it matter?

Nope.

Whether your politics allow you to appreciate the message in this video or not, you can’t help but admit that the parody is clever.

Odd thing is, I’ll bet you’ve never seen a local business use their own “prize patrol” in any way, shape or form – even if prize delivery wasn’t the goal of putting the patrol together.

The problem is that being clever isn’t enough.

Clever isn’t the objective (neither is cute). Results are the objective.

Note that I didn’t say positive or negative results – just results.

If someone unsubscribes from Business is Personal (or swears never to return<g>) because of this post, that’s a result.

Ultimately, it probably means that they couldn’t really take working with me anyhow. While my name is Mark, sometimes I can be a little Frank.

While the fact that they might leave is a shame for both of us, the right person is out there for that person who leaves BIP and never comes back. Likewise, if someone stays because of this (or any post) at BIP, that is also a result (and a better one, but still a result).

Not everyone has to be – or is ideally – your client. And that’s ok, really.

Clever, cute, useless

You see clever ads that win national advertising awards with regularity. But did they produce a positive return on investment? Did they attract a group of new raving fans for that business?

Guess what – results are not part of the criteria for most of the national marketing/advertising awards that the “big name” agencies win.

Do I enjoy these ads? Sure.

Do I think they are clever? Absolutely.

Do I wonder if the client can find a single identifiable return (or result) from the ad? Definitely.

It’s Payback Time

The job of marketing is not to entertain. The job is to sell, motivate and/or engage. And even to build the Tribes that Seth talks about, though the growth he talks about occurs organically because you do what you do so darned well (among other things).

Don’t get me wrong – The prize patrol could easily be used in a campaign that not only was entertaining, but also produces results. In the case of the stimulus video above, it wasn’t designed to product quantifiable results…or was it?

How many views on YouTube did it get? About 70,000 between Feb 22, 2009 and today (March 14, 2009 when this was written).

But…what did those views produce? Hard to say. If I’m the owner of the site that produced the video, I can look at my inbound links from YouTube and see how many of them turned into donors, subscribers and so on.

Those are quantifiable results.

photo credit: Picklepud

Anyone in the beauty / spa / cosmetics / girls / women’s products or similar businesses has a nice opportunity to feed off of the likely sizable public relations push surrounding the reveal of the 50th anniversary Barbie’s new face by Mattel.

Yep – she’s getting a facelift (or something like that) for her 50th birthday

Even if you aren’t in one of these businesses, with a little thought there are ways you could siphon off a little free PR from it.

“Take Barbie (and your parents) out to a birthday dinner tonight and get a free dessert” (that was the easy one)

photo credit: piotrek plecke

You’ve likely seen the catchy commercials for Axe products for men.

Here’s an example of how they are always looking for the right opportunity.

They could have staged the run. That would have cost thousands.

This cost them a tshirt and a few moments with a camcorder. My guess is that the guy doing the stunt was one of many volunteers, and possibly an Axe employee having some fun.

A little creative thought goes a long way, even if your product isn’t quite like Axe’s.

Motrin learned this the hard way recently, with this ad on their site (note: it might disappear from YouTube):

Want to see what happens when you say the wrong thing to moms?

• 5,700 hits (as of noon Monday Nov 17) on #motrinmoms, which is a tag for people blogging and tweeting on the subject – that is, Motrin’s misguided website ad about moms who carry babies in a sling.
• 61,300 hits on motrin+baby+carrying+ad+mom
• At least 16 people went to the trouble to make a YouTube response video.

You might be thinking that it’s hard to imagine that people give a rip about something like this, but when you insult the same people that your marketing is supposed to attract, it’s not hard to wonder who in your business is on the same wavelength as your clientele.

Peter Shankman has a pretty good angle on this Motrin thing as well – particularly as he wonders who is writing the ad, 23 year old guys or 20-30-something moms, but more importantly that there either isn’t anyone listening, or the right kind of person isn’t listening.

Though it took a while, McNeil has posted this apology on the Motrin.com website:

With regard to the recent Motrin advertisement, we have heard you. On behalf of McNeil Consumer Healthcare and all of us who work on the Motrin Brand, please accept our sincere apology. We have heard your concerns about the ad that was featured on our website. We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms very seriously. We are in the process of removing this ad from all media. It will, unfortunately, take a bit of time to remove it from our magazine advertising, as it is on newsstands and in distribution. Thank you for your feedback. It’s very important to us.

Sincerely,
Kathy Widmer
Vice President of Marketing
McNeil Consumer Healthcare

I suspect the folks over at McNeil have been taking some of their own medicine over the last few days.

Once again, I’ll say it: Enter the conversation already going on in your customers’ minds. If you can’t relate to the situation of the person you are trying to sell to – find a way to get yourself to relate to it. McNeil could have saved themselves a lot of pain by showing this to 5 moms who work at McNeil.

You can – and should – do the same. If you can’t understand your customers, their problems, their wants and their needs, you’d better find someone who can.

Over the years, I’ve advised a number of businesses to use what’s currently going on in the news, sports (Super Bowl, World Series, Olympics) and politics as creative fuel for campaigns of this nature: http://www.7-election.com

But few have the nerve to actually do so, particularly as well as this campaign (no pun intended) by 7-11 convenience stores.

The public relations boost from local media alone is worth it. Many times these kinds of things are picked up nationally. This was the case with the introduction of a Palin sandwich in a Anchorage Alaska restaurant called “Lion’s Den”.

In case you want clear evidence, click here to find 1,250,000 search results for “Palin sandwich”.

Could your business use some national publicity for the price of a couple of cases of custom cups, plates, pizza boxes, etc?

If you’re on a tight budget, mosey over to the local election headquarters and tell them you’d like a pile of free stickers to put on your pizza boxes, coffee cups, or whatever.

Let your customers choose which sticker they want. Keep track, make a big deal of it when you announce the results of your very scientific poll just before the election.

Last week, you might have seen a news piece on CNN or another national television network showing a high security team from Kentucky Fried Chicken moving their secret recipe to a new location.

You might have thought “What a puff piece” when you saw the news.

What I hope you saw was a large corporate that was wise enough to make a big deal out of (relatively) nothing: moving their secret recipe to a more secure location.

If it was that big of a deal, they would have moved it in the dark of night and would have done so very quietly. You wouldn’t have seen the press, a big fanfare, news helicopters, etc.

Instead, they made a big deal out of it and for the price of a little imagination and a press release, they got a TON of free publicity out of the move.

If you look closely at the Google search below, you’ll see 54, 200 search engine results for KFC secret recipe move.

All from a little clever public relations.

There’s no reason at all why you can’t make a similarly big deal out of your little news items. A restaurant in Anchorage got similar press coverage today because they added a Sarah Palin recipe item to their menu.

Woolworth. Sears. KMart. WalMart. The Internet. Napster. Amazon. iTunes. Open-source software.

And now, HARO.

HARO, aka HelpaReporter.com is proving to be disruptive to PR Newswire’s ProfNet, a service for subject matter experts (SME) – which could easily be you. ProfNet charges sources to connect with reporters who need an expert to interview for their next story.

NOTE: Reporters and other journalists (hmmm, bloggers?) get access to PR Newswire’s ProfNet at no cost. Only sources pay.

I’m on the HARO list (from a source side) and the queries from reporters are indeed high quality and often from the NYT, AP, etc.

But that really isn’t why I mention this today.

I’m thinking of how you should be looking at this angle.

It might be hard for someone to come into your nice, juicy market and have this kind of impact, but this is far from the first time it has happened.

What would a HARO look like in your market?

It wouldn’t have to be free. Clearly, HARO creator Peter Shankman is getting work as a result, so don’t limit your thinking to “the HARO for my market must be free”.

How long is it going to take you to be a disrupting force instead of the disrupted one feeling the effects of that force?

Or will you simply wait for someone else to disrupt your market?

Think about it.

The Democratic Presidential candidates (and for that matter, McCain) are so very glad that it’s finally over.

The pain of weekly battles on the television, in front of huge crowds and in living rooms all over the country is mercifully, finally over.

No, silly, not the Democratic primary elections. That’s still going on.

I’m talking about American Idol.

Wednesday night, David Cook was announced as the American Idol winner.

The 21st century Donny Osmond, David Archuleta, is the American Idol runner-up.

Clearly not the kinds of guys to ignore opportunity, Archuleta and Cook are now immortalized by new Guitar Hero commercials that educates a new generation about the classic Risky Business Tom Cruise Bob Seger underwear lip sync scene.

Archuleta’s Guitar Hero act:

Yet amid the red carpet celebrity love fest at the Nokia Theater, amazingly, there are lessons for the small business owner.

Several of them, in fact.

A lesson about the power of social media

Is 96 million American Idol votes cast in 24 hours social enough for you?

That’s only 4 million less than the total number of votes cast for the Bush vs. Kerry Presidential election in 2000, and it’s 9 million more than voted in the 1996 Clinton vs. Dole Presidential election.

A few more startling numbers:

• More people voted for American Idol winner David Cook than voted for Bill Clinton in 1996.
• More people voted for David Cook than voted for either George Bush *or* Al Gore in 2000.
• More people voted for runner-up David Archuleta than voted for Bob Dole in 1996.

Social media is personal (note the title of the blog).

A lesson about involvement.

Find a way to involve your customers more deeply in your business.

Simon may get to chew up wanna-be American Idols and spit them out – but the voters with their text messages, toll-free calls and web votes are the ones who were brilliantly kept involved by the show’s marketing and structure/design.

Of course, there’s a lesson about the lack of vision of the music industry, except for 3 months on a TV show where customers get to make a choice about what to listen to next and where the show (business) goes next.

We’ve talked about iTunes rise to #1 in retail music sales (CD or online), and how they’ve knocked off Amazon, Best Buy and even Wal-Mart. A website and a music player software sells more music than 4000+ big box stores.

Same lesson. Involvement is personal.

American Idol works because of involvement. Choice. Interaction. And…The psychology behind making a superstar (or at least, a hero) out of a nobody/underdog.

Where’s the choice for your clients?

How are you providing your clientèle with choice, convenience, interaction and control over the experience they have when doing business with you? I don’t mean give them the keys, but you can give them a far more interactive experience without losing the control every small business owner wants.

Study the methods used by American Idol. Celebrity. Interaction. Technology. Choice. Convenience (3 ways to vote – at least).

96 million people, 1/3rd of the United States population just spent 3 months scheduling their evenings around 1 TV show, living and dying 2 nights a week (sometimes more) with American Idol. Can’t get much more personal than that.

How are you going to get their attention today?

On Thursday, American Idol will be the subject du jour at corporate water coolers, bars, blogs and elsewhere.

I’ll bet Barack and Hillary are really looking forward to Friday.

They could have sulked.

They could have sued.

They could have said “No comment.”

They could have done absolutely nothing, and likely would have paid the price quietly, possibly for years with some customers.

photo credit: Sonnett

Instead Cleveland-area Papa John’s offered 23 cent pizzas as a way of making amends for the unauthorized production of a t-shirt calling Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James a crybaby. James’ uniform number is 23, thus the price of the pizzas.

The unauthorized Crybaby t-shirts with LeBron’s number were made by a Washington DC franchisee. While that franchisee might be getting grilled in private, their mistake was turned into a positive by the way that Cleveland Papa John’s handled the flap.

All Papa John’s locations in the Cleveland area, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown will offer the discount pies today from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The lesson for small business owners: How you recover from mistakes and bad news is often more important than the bad news or mistake itself.

Update: Want to put some numbers on it? Google papa john 23 cent pizza. You’ll find 64,300 search engine results in Google on that search phrase. UPI. AP. ChicagoTribune.com, Cleveland.com and on and on. Most of it positive PR for how they handled the situation. Hear more on the Papa Johns LeBron Crybaby story on my May 9 Hotseat Radio show.

I ran across a couple of whining news stories recently that talked about paying celebrities like Paris Hilton or Donald Trump $10000 to $20000 to appear at a party or other event for 2 hours. In Trump’s case, it’s more like $250k per appearance, but it doesn’t really matter.

The news reporters don’t get the big picture because they aren’t looking at the economics. The bright shiny celebrities distract them from the business that is going on.

photo credit: 708718

Let’s consider for a moment that you are having a small business seminar in Seattle, Dallas or Chicago. You plan to charge $3000 and you know for a fact that you are going to deliver far more value than that.

Your problem is this: demonstrating that you’re going to deliver $3000 worth of value.

Certainly you can do that, but look at what it might take to allow you to get Trump at your event – for free.

If his price is $250k, then you need to get an extra 83 people to show up at your event. In a city of 3-5 million people, are there 83 business owners, real estate people or entrepreneurs who would be interested in hearing Donald Trump speak, get a photo with him and have a brief word with him?

Sure there are. 83 people gets Trump at your business event for nothing out of your pocket.

People line up to pay $25k to have lunch with Warren Buffett every year. He donates that money to charity, but the concept is the same – and in fact, you could do this at your event with Trump (or whoever).

So when you read these celebrity stories (regardless of where they are – even in the WSJ), don’t gloss over them and think those people live in another world. Business-wise, they don’t. They are making hay while the sun shines. They know that you only need to get (for example) another 83 people there to pay their fee and they know what that does for you, your business and your event.

You simply have to do the math to make it easy to get someone like that for your promotional event.

What does this have to do with your small business? Lots.

Local businesses have promotional store events all the time. Anyone can do a live radio spot. Do the people in your market really want to talk to the DJ? Who in your market can you get at your store for a big event that will blow away your local market and position you as the only place to do business with?

For example, if you’re an attorney and you held a private event for your best clients, what would it cost you to get George Ross (Trump’s attorney) there? On the other hand, what positive can come of it? Be sure that you think that part through. Your guest needs to be strategic to your long term business goal, not just someone to ooh and ah over.

Think bigger and do the math to make amazing things happen when you hold a local promotional event.

PS: Don’t forget to record the event on digital video and put pieces of it (drip, drip, drip) out there on all the social media sites you use to promote and position your business (ie: Facebook, YouTube, and so on). Your event isn’t a one time thing. It should pay dividends for a long time.

For some time now, the news has covered Administrative Law Judge Roy Pearson’s $54MM ( 54 million dollar ) lawsuit against Custom Cleaners, a dry cleaning store in Washington DC.

Originally, the basis for Pearson’s lawsuit was about a pair of supposedly lost pants. Later the pants resurfaced, but the lawsuit was altered to be about Custom’s alleged violations of the District Of Columbia Consumer Protection Act. Among other things, Pearson’s contention was that the presence of a sign saying “Satisfaction Guaranteed” means you should be able to get anything you want.

Sadly, the owners of the store have removed the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign, as well as one saying “Same Day Service”, a gutless move in my book, even though they won the lawsuit. They should have an event to celebrate putting the signs back up.

But this post isn’t about a frivolous lawsuit, or the removal of the signs. It’s about the dry cleaning industry’s nationwide failure to take advantage of an obvious marketing opportunity by turning this weird story into a big win.

A win?

Dry cleaners all over the country have been thrust into the spotlight over this lawsuit, yet I’ve not seen a single marketing piece or press release taking advantage of it. It’s publicity that some businesses would be thrilled to get, but couldn’t afford – yet no one is taking advantage of the buzz from this goofy lawsuit.

Perhaps the industry and store owners are figuring they’ll just hide from it and wait for a verdict, or simply ignore it and hope it’ll go away. What they should be doing is using the buzz to bring attention to their store, their guarantee, and even making a little fun of the whole situation.

But they aren’t. How totally boring.

You need to let the locals know that their satisfaction is guaranteed, tell them what to expect and make sure they understand that you keep track of their clothes “as if they were a suit-happy judge”.

How many ways can you use the word “JudgeMENTAL”?  Ok, maybe that one isn’t a good idea:)

You need to make sure any paperwork hanging in motel closets is updated to reference your guarantee and note that you’ll ship clothes to their home or some other destination of their choice – on your dime – if something unfortunate happens, or a pair of pants loses its way back to the motel.

Issue a press release and a Q&A to the radio stations, letting them know you have a sense of humor about all this – it might get you a brief interview during the morning and/or evening drive time shows. Big audiences follow these shows.

Contact each of your clients via email and/or print newsletter – depending on what contact info you have (you’d better have some – if not, get it). Make sure they understand that you have a better guarantee. Have a lost-my-pants promotion or special event for those clients.

Update your signage both inside and outside. Update the paperwork you hand out to your clientèle. Let them know you’re aware of the lawsuit and your clients’ valuable clothing is safe, then elaborate on the steps you take to keep track of their clothing, what your guarantee covers, and why they should continue to use you.

Speak at the local service club meetings (Rotary, Kiwanis, Chamber of Commerce, Lions, etc) about it. Even if you only get a chance to toss in a little funny comment during your self-introduction, it’ll get the point across.

In your ads, press releases and elsewhere, be sure to use testimonials from your existing clients and include comments from people who have never lost anything and from people whose clothes you lost yet you “made it right” and they still use your cleaners years later. These testimonials should be a core part of your existing marketing and “customer-facing” paperwork.

Have a special event at the store to make a bit of fun with the situation.

Do a mailing to the local judges and lawyers. Again, have some fun with it. Include a coupon for to have cleaning done on “a lawsuit and 2 pair of pants”, or have “Attorney/Judge Appreciation Week” where you pickup and deliver for free as a way of greasing the cogs of justice or similar silliness.

Designate the lawsuit’s decision day as “Dry Cleaners’ Judges Appreciation Day”, include it on your annual marketing calendar. In “honor” of the $54MM lawsuit, offer to dry clean pants for judges for 54 cents.

In other words, USE THE NEWS to bring attention to your business. Take advantage of the buzz from silly things going on in the world. Did you have a special on jumpsuits lately? “We clean prison jumpsuits – and regular ones too.” Paris is all over the news, why aren’t you?