photo credit: juhansonin

Today is Talk like a Pirate Day (TLAPD).

In honor of such a fine day, a few thoughts, er I mean… Aye, what would a pirate do t’ strenghen your business today? A pence for an old man o’de sea?

First, how about sliding over to Mashable and look at their tips for celebrating Talk like a Pirate Day… and then come back here for some pirate advice before you get business scurvy, matey.

Great ideas for celebrating the day, but bummer – your business is open on September 19 every year. Now what?

Wasn’t that awesome Mashable post a great example? Mashable is a tech news blog. See how they took TLAPD and turned it into their own – while doing exactly what they do best?

Yes, it’s your turn.

So…what can you do to (here it comes *again*) use the news (calendarrrr, whateverrrr) to make your business stand out on this fine, fun day?

Maybe by the time you see this, it’s too late.

Let me help: Put it in your appointment calendar for August 19. Make it recurring on an annual reminder. Type this: “Plan Sept 19 Talk Like A Pirate Day promotion.”

Yarrr, some examples

“But Mark, our business doesn’t have anything to do with pirates…” (Yes, I *can* hear you saying that)

OK, some examples are in order to get your creative juices flowing.

Maybe you make custom coffee mugs for the day that you only use on Talk Like a Pirate Day. Or you order a gross of them for cheap and give them away with today’s purchases. Of course, the mugs will have a silly pirate image, your phone number, URL, etc.

If you own a boat store, raise the pirate flag, silly. Dress everyone up like a pirate, or have some temps come in and dress up like pirates. You of all people should be able to hit this one out of the, uh, dungeon.

Own a lingerie store? If you can’t see some great ideas to get publicity using TLAPD and some temp models, you really need a cuppa joe:)  Hint: Imagine it was Talk like a French Maid Day. Now translate that to pirate.

Run a computer store? What a great time to have a “Bring your computer in and scan it for pirates (ie: spyware etc) Day”. Or to have an event that educates your clients about software piracy (find a smart way, please), or similar.

Develop software? What a GREAT day to offer amnesty to anyone who pirated your software and is ready to come clean. They liked it enough to steal it and keep using it, now they’re convinced that they have right product. Help them buy. Don’t embarrass them.

Do you run blood drives? Put your “I donated” stickers on toy eye patches. You can get half a million of them for $3 at Oriental Trading (well, close) or make them yourselves (a fun event for kids). Dress everyone up. Don’t be so boring. It’s just blood.

No matter what you do, make a fuss…matey.

Promote your event far and wide, have some fun with it, dress up your staff or those temps I mentioned and be that purple cow.

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.