Brands and Inspiration Tuesday, Jan 1 2013

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The start of a new year is always pretty inspirational. It’s like starting with a blank slate and you have nothing but good things to put on it!

The other day, I was working on an update to our house of brands documents. I was a little lost as to what to right for this one particular brand. It was supposed to be a “one-off” until the president of the company I work for announced that the current location would be “the first”. Oh boy!

All of a sudden, this became a matter of brand instead of naming an outlet. Now I had to think about how this brand should come to life. This outlet had always struggled from a naming perspective (as most dining outlets do from my experience). It has a beautiful view and a beautiful environment, but is this enough to create a brand? Unfortunately, the man who created this small little place in a smallish town passed away as we were still in the construction process. At that point, the struggle to name this place ended, but the building of a brand to make him proud began.

This new restaurant would be called Keller’s in honor of Paul Keller. I like to think Paul was my friend, but I KNOW Paul was my inspiration.

He had this uncanny way of taking design from a beautiful picture to an actual functioning space. He could walk through it, not only in the customer’s shoes, but in the employee’s shoes as well!

I once worked for Steve Wynn, who many will attribute with the rebuilding of Las Vegas. Words such as “Visionary” are commonly used in talking about him. He’s well-known across the gaming industry and the globe. So, who is this Paul Keller person? A visionary and an inspiration. He is the man who let us realize that the beer had to be cold and the wings needed to be hot. That, along with a smile and good service would take our restaurants a long way. He could always fine inspiration in the simplest details and then shared that inspiration with the rest of us.

Keller’s….an inspiration to us all.

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Speaking In Tongues Wednesday, Aug 29 2012

My company is undertaking a long-overdue task of redesigning our website. So, content has been top of mind for me recently. Having just read a post  by Star Group’s Michael Cavicini,I though about how easily people use terms that my old boss, Steve Wynn, often referred to as “developer speak”.

Luxurious

XXX-square feet

$$$$$ billion dollar whatever

He was right. These are all the types of terms that marketers throw out when they don’t have a good sense of what they truly have to offer or sell. These things are never your brand. The experience is the brand.

I even took a quick look at some casino websites and noticed some of the same developer speak. Interestingly enough, these platitudes don’t seem to translate to revenue.

The next time you start to write copy for your product or service, think about the benefit and the experience. Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and write the words that will capture their imagination. I know I’ll be a little more aware of the copy I approve today.

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Having All of Your Eggs in One Basket – Redux Tuesday, Sep 27 2011

Thought I’d revisit one of my earlier posts. I’m happy to say that my thinking really hasn’t changed even if my value for one marketing tool or another may have shifted. I still believe integrated marketing is the key to success.

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 and mobile.

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.” His name? Steve Wynn.

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? Do you have a system in place to stimulate this good word of mouth you’re depending on? How much is it going to cost you to get you back where you were before you made your “savings”?

 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 it’s not easy, I probably won’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 really depends on your target.

Social Media and Mobile. 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. We took a while to get to social, but I’m happy we did. We’ve learned valuable lessons along the way. More importantly, for many, we learned that social is the two-way conversation you never control and that if your product stinks, customers will always tell you and tell their world. Our next step is mobile as so many of our targets are now getting more and more comfortable in that space. Before I start developing my mobile strategy, I will listen to our customers to see what they’ll need and want.

What are our marketing comfort zones? What will you do to get out of them?

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BOH = Begin Over Here Wednesday, Jun 8 2011

I “borrowed” that headline from Jan Talamo.

In many industries, we use the acronym “BOH” when we want to shorthand “back of house” as if it’s so irrelevant to our work that we can’t even spare the letters.

I’ve been a brand marketer for a number of years. The first of those years was spent in focus groups delving into the psyche and feelings of our customers to develop THE ULTIMATE POSITIONING STATEMENT and some really cool creative. Then, I went to work for Steve Wynn who always told me to put the customer first, both on the experience front and on the communications front. What he showed me was how important the employees are.

Many companies are starting to realize that the brand rubber meets the road with the employee. THEY are the ones we need to talk to. They are the ones we should be developing communications for because they are the ones that will make us successful…or not. Ideally, we would keep them in the loop at all times. I’ve seen many companies do this successfully.

Eddie Bauer maintained a positive employee culture when the going got really rough, by constantly and effectively communicating with employees. Instead of waiting for employees to see Eddie Bauer on the news, they released information to them and the market at the same time. As a publicly traded company, there are many bits of news that have to be communicated in a very particular way. To release information to employees and not violate the rules is a little tricky, but it can obviously be done. In addition, they educated their employees about the business, not just about the product lines. They understood what it was like to be a public company, what covenants and EBITDA were, and basically how the business worked.

Do your employees know that? Do they really share the same values as the C-suite?

I also heard someone from Zappos ask, “Is People Planning the new Media Planning?” Great question. You have to plan great people. Have the right people with the right voice, and you can do anything.

Senior leaders have the power to engage, energize and empower employees. Technology has given us the ability to connect with employees at all levels in order to provide them with messages that are simple, useable and actionable. Employees will be more engaged when they are part of the plan.

Newsletters are a great example of a tool we think is valuable but is often not. Is your newsletter telling the story of your business or is it just a collection of anniversaries and births with a few additional notes about the company picnic?

Look at your employee communications tools today and ask yourself the following questions.
- Is this giving employees the tools they need to deliver the brand promise day in and day out?
- Is this educating employees so that they can be a partner in the future?
- Is this the best way to deliver this message to all of our employees?
- Is this engaging employees so they WANT to be a part of the plan?
- Is this speaking in an understandable language?

I’d love to hear/see examples of great employee communications!

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