Building a House…of Brands Friday, Aug 24 2012

I said it again yesterday. “This company is so different from when I arrived.”

The Past and Present of Isle of Capri’s Corporate Identity

I came to Isle of Capri Casinos in the Fall of 2006, and although I still laughingly say that I’m passed my sell-by date, I am pretty proud of the brands we’ve built. Before this transition, I would’ve easily told you that my finest work had been in developing the brands at Wynn Las Vegas. Today, I can proudly say that I am equally as proud of the work done on behalf of the family of Isle of Capri Casinos.

Through a lot of vision and hard work, this house of brands has gone from a collection of variations on a Caribbean theme to a collection of experiences our guests can enjoy for a long time. I’m not sure if these are destined to go down in branding history, but they are surely a part of my brand history. Check out all of our brands.

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That Was Then – This Is Now Monday, Jul 9 2012

Years ago, casino marketing was pretty easy. Give away a car or two. Have an occasional concert. Send out great offers in the mail. Have an exclusive VIP event, and my month was sure to be in the black. My media plan included every newspaper and magazine in the market as well as a rich variety of television and radio, and a fabulous (if I do say so myself) distribution of billboards. At Harrah’s New Orleans, I even got to work on something really cool called a “website”. The first couple of casino companies I worked for didn’t even have websites!

Then we started adding online (banner) advertising into the mix.

Eventually, we realized that there was money to be made selling unused hotel inventory, and we started down the path of search engine marketing and search engine optimization.

Fast forward to 2004 and some geek sitting in his dorm room comes up with a cool way for Harvard students to share information. Facebook was born. This wasn’t new. It was just a new avenue to join Blogger, Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace, Delicious. digg, and Flickr, quickly followed by YouTube and Twitter…oh and something called Second Life. Two years later, Facebook became available to everyone…in the world.

The fiber of communications has changed. Once, it took millions to reach a few. Now a few reach millions. We’ve gone from traditional publishing to broadcast publishing to personal publishing to interactive publishing to network publishing. What used to take months and elicited a few comments here and there, now takes seconds and can generate hundreds of thousands of comments.

Casino marketing, however, has not evolved quite so quickly, probably because casino customers are more represented in the boomer segment than any other market segment. For these folks, the places they look for news and information hadn’t changed quite as quickly…

…until now

Last year Scott Hepburn asked me to give my thoughts on casino marketing and the use of social media. You can read that post here.

I said “Everyone is “dying to be on Facebook,” but with so much on our plates, I wondered if that was the place we needed to put our focus on.” I no longer wonder. It is. When we initially asked customers if they were on social networks, 80% said hardly or never. Today, 77.6% say they regularly visit their Facebook accounts to see what’s happening, and social networking sites have become a prime place to look for information. That change happened in less than two years.

Q. On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being NOT AT ALL and 5 being VERY INFLUENTIAL, please rate how influential these forms of media are in choosing which casino to visit.

Print is fading faster than anyone wants it to. Casino customers are looking for their information in much more dynamic areas.

Now firmly planted as a piece in our marketing puzzle, social media presents new challenges for us. No longer are customers willing to sit back and watch and respond to our ads. Now they want to interact with them. We have to create content that they can comment on or share with their networks. We have to create ads that are shareable via YouTube,

…ads that continue to tell the story on Facebook,

…ads that have a life of more than 30 seconds.

We have to create exclusive content that can only be found on these networks so that customers feel they have a unique access to information. And that new thing I got to work on long ago, the website has changed as well. It can no longer be a brochure. It has to be a living, breathing font of information that visitors can interact with and share.

How has social media changed your approach to marketing?

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Tell Your Agency What You Need (Not What You Want) Thursday, Jun 28 2012

My latest Agency Post column takes a look from the other side of the table.

I usually write something from my point of view that I hope will help agencies vying for casino business. Today, I want to address my comments to clients hoping to get good work out of their agencies.

Take the time to teach your agency partner the ins and outs of your business. Don’t assume they know your business the way you know it. Share research. Share trends. Share the business. Share it with everyone at the agency, not just the account services team. It’s important that everyone that touches your account understands your business.

When you ask for creative, always remember that you’re asking for a creative solution to a business problem, not for something that just looks good. There is a delicate balance between art directing, bashing and giving constructive feedback. When you need to make changes, tell them what works and what doesn’t work. It doesn’t do any good to say things like “boring” or “we don’t like this”. That just tells them what they’ve given you isn’t working for you, but why?

I know this is hard to do. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve asked for more options without telling an account services person why I need to see something else. Guilty! I do know that when we’ve taken time to talk about the business goals, we’ve gotten stellar creative – not because it’s pretty, but because it accomplishes the business and communications goals.

Here are some things you should ask yourself (and communicate to your agency).

- What is the current condition and what is it that you are trying to achieve?

- Are there any facts consumers MUST know in order to accomplish these goals? Dates, times, cost of entry, etc.

- Is there something in particular you personally like about the program? Something you think is just incredible? Chances are it’s probably not as important to your customer. Toss that out.

- If this particular job is just a piece in a bigger puzzle, tell your agency about all of the other pieces and how they’ll work together.

Keep your brand as a solid foundation and follow these tips. You’ll find yourself getting better creative with fewer revisions. What do you need or do in order to produce great creative?

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Being popular is great. But is it costing you money? Thursday, May 3 2012

Being popular is great. But is it costing you money?.

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The Battle for the Casino Customer Sunday, Apr 29 2012

This is a “reprint” of my recent column for Agency Post.

High-end customers are the most important focus of casino marketers. True or False?

It’s easy to think that given all the romantic images we see in movies and television. Good casino marketers understand where their bread and butter come from. Great casino marketers know how to divide up the business into manageable segments that help the business grow.

As always, I have to disclaim my statements as being general and applicable to regional operators versus the marquee destinations of Las Vegas and Atlantic City who typically have a larger variety of amenities and offerings. That being said…

“High rollers” (a term that makes me shudder) do not make up the largest portion of the casino’s profit. In fact, they typically make up a relative small portion. Relationship marketing is a big piece of the high-end business. This is more related to one-on-one contact than it is about creative and advertising. The key to these relationships are the casino hosts and their network of contacts. I’ve known casino hosts who have had long-standing relationships with some of the people on their “list” – relationships that span years, sharing births, holidays, vacations, and (unfortunately) deaths.

The fact is that the battle for the most profitable casino customers is usually won or lost in the mailbox. My company probably mails about 3 Million pieces of mail every single month. As the person in charge of brand marketing and the supporting creative, I know this is where the rubber hits the road. This is where that true partnership between a casino and an ad agency comes into glorious play. Casinos understand the science of what is motivating the customer in terms of their reinvestment strategy. The agency creates something that stands out in a pile of mail to be opened by the customer.

So, what does the agency do to become an even more valuable partner? Learn.

Agencies need to understand the science of the offers sent to casino customers so that they can (then) maket the mail (even) more attractive with their great creative. Understand the segmentation being used. Understand the tools and motivators for each segment. Understand the reinvestment mindset and how the players club program (I still question if it’s driving true loyalty, but more on that some other day.) comes into play. Then use all of that insight to develop the creative that will make people open the mail.

Direct mail: part science…part art…no mystery if you take some time to understand it.

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Feel the Hamptonality Thursday, Apr 26 2012

O..O..Over and over, we try to prove our love to you.

Over and over, what more can we do.

Over and over, my friends say we’re a fool.

But over and over, we’ll be a fool for you.

’cause we’ve got Hamptonality!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent a few days sharing great ideas relating to Internal Branding and Employe Engagement with a lot of really smart people representing some really good companies. Among them was Gina Valenti of Hilton Worldwide. She showed us how everyone, internal and external is feeling the Hamptonality.

I’ll admit. When Gina asked the audience to show by hands who had traveled to a Hampton and who the fans were. My hand stayed up. As a value-based product offering, I don’t think Hampton could do any better – always a clean room and bed, always a nice breakfast with a smile. Works for me!

From a brand perspective, I think their positioning lines up fairly identically to the one I try to strengthen every day for the brands I work on, Lady Luck Casino and Isle Casino. So, of course, I was more than just mildly interested to see how Hampton relates that positioning internally so that it can be expressed at every interaction.

What is Hamptonality? Check out this video.

Eventually this made its way through to the external audience in the form of a brand campaign.

Do me a favor. Go to YouTube and search for the term “Hamptonality”. I couldn’t believe the number of videos I found.

Thanks Gina! Thanks to you I have even bigger goals to accomplish.

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Validation and Employee Engagement Monday, Apr 23 2012

According to T.G.I. Friday’s, when Alan Stillman founded the concept in 1965, he created a cool new singles bar because he  figured the bar scene in a city full of skyscrapers needed a bit of a shake up.  One week later, the New York police were called in to control the crowds as hordes of young people flocked to the city’s newest hot spot.

Today, it’s a lot less “singles bar” but a lot more fun. After all, isn’t Friday the best day of the week?

Last week, I spent a few days listening to some great companies talk about their efforts at leveraging  internal branding and improving employee engagement. These companies “get it”. They know that no brand has a chance if the employees aren’t along for the ride. After a whirlwind two days, my traveling companion and I headed to the airport…to cool our heals for the five hours we would have to wait for our flight. He wanted to dine at Friday’s. I just wanted a drink. So, off we went in search of their outpost in the Miami International Airport.

As we walked through the dining room to find our booth in the very back of the restaurant, I happened to get a glimpse of the kitchen. There were a number of workers in there and one was snapping a picture with her camera. I didn’t know if a celebrity had dropped in or if something terrible had happened. Ensconced in our booth, I suddenly heard the cheers and celebration. OK…

Our server stopped by our table to welcome us. I have to tell you she was grinning from ear to ear as you can see by this picture she let me take. I asked her what the celebration was for and she told us that they had been “validated”.

Validated? Huh?

I did not know this, but the location was fairly new. As a team, they staff  had all gone through opening and training together, and after a time of review, T.G.I. Friday’s had now deemed them worthy of “earning their stripes”. They instantly went from trainees wearing nondescript black shirts to the most excited group of people I’ve ever seen wearing their brand new red and white striped shirts.

After two days of coveting the beautiful technology being used by some major companies to connect employees to a vision, this group had been connected by the prospect of wearing a cotton poly blend shirt. Wow!

Simple things can connect your vision and your employees.

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Teach A Marketing Director How To Fish (I Mean “Brand”) Monday, Apr 9 2012

Recently, my company rolled out a new brand experience, the Farmer’s Pick Buffet. We’ve introduced this brand in a smaller community, but in a community (and a property) that has embraced it with fervor. This introduction also taught me the importance of field marketers understanding the brand and not just convincing them to like the creative associated with it.

We are also on our third year of a branded Jester’s Jam concert series which has allowed our smaller markets to gain as much visibility for their entertainment options as our larger markets. It took some convincing, but we’ve gone from six to seven locations, 29 to 53 concerts and increased attendance by about 50%. We’re also very close to getting to 5000 highly engaged Facebook fans. I can’t wait to see what we do this year. Branding works when you have a good strategy and a consistent promise that guides you.

Last week, I had a great meeting with our agency, the Media & Marketing Group. On our agenda was what we called “Isle 3.0″. You see, I came to this company with the challenge to update the Isle brand, making it relevant for today. We’ve spent the last four years slowly modernizing the brand. We chose evolution over revolution for a number of reasons, but as a result, the evolution can sometimes be seen as a simple desire to change the graphics and or the logo. In fact, I can’t say a week goes by without someone asking for the “new brand” when they mean a background to their ads. Sigh…

It occurs to me how important it is for our field marketers to understand branding and what it actual means in terms of a promise to our guests. When you understand that promise and visualize how this impacts operations, the logo and the color of your ad seems (with apologies to our creatives and artists all around the world) a little less important. So, I’ve sent each office a poster for inspiration where the logos are background and employees and the promise are front and center.

Brand more. Logo less!

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Having all your eggs in one basket is only good for Easter Monday, Apr 2 2012

Originally published in 2010, the upcoming Easter holiday and the opportunity to speak at a gaming conference this Summer, made me think it would be a good time to dust this post off and take a fresh look.

Kids love Easter. They love to search for hidden treasures and gather them all into one basket. It’s how they show success. It works for them. For marketers, it’s not always wise to have all your eggs in one basket. At least I don’t think so.

I think good marketers spread their efforts across a multitude of baskets. Better marketers recognize how all of these efforts are connected to each other. The best marketers see how all of these connected efforts add value to each other rather than detracting.

Advertising. Promotions and events. Direct marketing. Interactive. And now social.

We all have our “favorites”…those channels we know so well we can practically make them sing a siren’s song to customers. It’s how we use those other channels that make us good marketers. Going where you’re comfortable is easy. Going where you’re not is harder. We have to admit we don’t know what we’re doing. We have to ask for help.

Advertising. For casinos, it used to be you had to have the biggest ad in the local paper, preferably in color – full color, not the cheaper spot color. You did that every week and you knew people would know what was going on at your place. They’d clip out our coupons and dutifully bring them in. Wait. Does that mean I’m paying for the ad and discounting my business? Hmmm… It took a while for us to realize (no, accept) our customers weren’t just reading the paper. They were watching that expensive medium, TELEVISION. The horror. The expense. The audience!

Then there’s outdoor. Just how many words can we fit on one billboard for customers to read and retain while they drive 60+ miles an hour. I used to work for a really smart man. He could make any creative person crazy. He always wanted to see his billboard during a presentation. Not the ads. Not the cool things we’d designed for logo application and sale. Not the spot. Just give him his billboard…and don’t explain it to him. Give it to him and walk away. He knew it was the toughest medium to deliver your message. He knew that if you were successful there, the other things would fall into place. Like I said, “Smart man.”

Can we do without advertising? I say, “No.” If you were to turn off all your messaging, you could very possibly still keep existing…for a while. You can’t grow without new customers, and if you’re not advertising are you just going to depend on word of mouth? Do you feel your business or experience can live on word of mouth?

Promotions and events. Creating experiences that customers will want to attend are always a puzzle. Does this attract my top customers or my low-end customers? Will my investment pay off or am I just adding to the cost of making a sale? Understanding what drives people is the key to developing effective promotions and events. In the casino business, they are the life of the property. They provide the energy for the day. They are a delicate balance of appeal across all of your segments.

Can your business live without some sort of energy?

Direct Marketing. As casino marketers, we think we know EVERYTHING about direct marketing. Who could possibly do it better? I don’t know. I think we do this very well, so well that we often think this is our most powerful tool and often end up depending only on this…putting all of our marketing eggs in one basket. We do this until we realize how upside down we are in our reinvestment strategy. If I pay for every visit, and I keep raising the amount I give a person in spite of the fact that their spend isn’t increasing (in the desperate hope that it will), I eventually end up in what my co-worker calls “the spiraling vortex of death.” The spiraling is so fast and so bad that I can’t get out of it because now I’ve trained my customers to only come in with an offer. If I take the offers away, they’ll stop coming. If I start trimming back the offer, they’ll complain. I’m in a no-win situation because I put all my eggs in this basket and never balanced my marketing efforts.

I guess the other side of that coin is businesses that gather information through a “loyalty” program and then never seem to use it. I often wonder why I bother to use my club card at the grocery store. I never receive anything in the mail…never see anything tailored to me, yet they probably know more about me than anyone. I think Safeway has taken some steps to develop programs based on the knowledge they gather. I don’t live in their market so I can’t say that I know from personal experience.

Interactive. Our virtual storefront. There are so many schools of thought about this. Because we’re in an industry that measures everything, we often believe that our websites need to focus on transactions. Get to the check-out as easily and as soon as possible and you’ll be successful. True? I think that’s a valid argument if you’re a retailer. I love being able to find a product easily and being able to buy it easily. If I didn’t want it to be easy, I probably wouldn’t use the website.

Some think that your website should be your online brochure. Tell your visitor about everything you have. The more you give them, the better. True?

Then there’s another school that says you need to entertain. Maybe it’s not so much a “school” as it was one man. Back to my past life…we were directed to build a site that would engage and entertain and to heck with transactions…”our guests are looking to be engaged.” The stunned looks in the room were priceless. Against all of our instincts, we built a heavy Flash-based site. It had beautiful pictures, a sound track and great video vignettes from some really interesting people. Those in the online industry pointed to our site as a good example of sites gone bad. Our customers….LOVED it. Again, Steve Wynn proved he knew his guest.

This just goes to show that there isn’t one way to do things. It depends on your target.

Social Media. Now social media has become a bigger and bigger part of our lives. Some businesses have taken this outlet and have run with it. They’re active and engaging with people every second of the day. Is this a must in every marketing plan? Only time will tell, but you can only tell if you give it a try and give it time. You have to start somewhere. Start today. Start listening. What you hear should tell you where to go and what to do.

Maybe my next post will feature those I think are using these tools well. Do you have any favorites?

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Know Thy Customer Monday, Mar 26 2012

This is a “reprint” of my Agency Post article.

Growing up I remember my mom watching Vega$. It was one of her favorite shows. Robert Urich played detective Dan Tanna. He drove around Las Vegas in a red Thunderbird, making the streets safer for everyone. Coincidentally, one of his clients, the Dessert Inn, would play a big role in my career.

Later in life, I couldn’t get enough of the show Las Vegas, and I can’t miss CSI.  The casinos are full of beautiful people doing some remarkable things. Real life? Don’t bet on it.

I get pitches from agencies all of the time. Often, the casino work is slick and populated with thin models in their 20s and 30s. I’d love to work in those places, surrounded by beautiful people in beautiful clothes, seemingly working a total of about an hour a day. I’ve never worked there, but I’ve worked in a number of “real” casinos. They are these one Shirley and Mary like to go to, sometimes with their spouses, sometimes for just a girls’ night out. These two ladies like to visit casinos because they’ve decided they want to spend a portion of their highly valued entertainment dollars on some of their favorite slots. They’re not looking for the big jackpot, but they would certainly not turn it down if they got lucky! They are part of the large Boomer generation. Empty-nesters, their children have gone off in search of who they are. Shirley is married. Mary used to be. One has her house paid off, and the other sees that mortgage burning party in the very near future. (Do people still have mortgage burning parties?)

If you’re thinking of working with one of the many regional casino operators, get to know these ladies because they contribute a large portion of the revenue regional casinos generate. Forget that 30-something with the perfect girlfriend drinking premium vodka betting on eight the hard way. He’ll gladly make a contribution to tonight’s revenue, but we’re not building our business around him.

Some say regional casinos are now about a three-hour drive away from anyone in the continental US. If you’re thinking of pitching casino business, please take the drive. Sign up for a player’s card. Participate in any of the promotions going on. Take a look around and really see where the activity is on the floor and who is creating it. Then take all of that information and prepare your presentation materials with images that would make our customers feel comfortable and welcome and not with the dream of having the hip place to be. Don’t think your work won’t be as beautiful as the dream. The right casting can be spot on and successful.

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