You may have noticed that I haven't posted very often in the last month or so. I’ve begun posting most of my thoughts at a new website from The Wizard of Ads® Partners. I encourage you to check out American Small Business (americansmallbusiness.com). I look forward to your comments and if you like what I write give me a thumbs up. In the meantime I'll still post here from time to time as well.
While it’s true you don’t have to grow up, you can’t help growing older. Harley Davidson has announced the development of a three-wheel vehicle, which made me wonder how far Harley Davidson could go to keep in step (so to speak) with it’s aging baby boomer customer base.
I can imagine the ad now… “We guarantee that if Medicare doesn’t approve your Harley Davidson Scooter, it’s free!”
The scientists have voted, but will it take? Discovered in 1930, Pluto has been a planet in my book since Mrs. Wakefield showed the filmstrip to my first grade class at Fairlane Elementary in Taylor Michigan in 1959.
That’s not to say that past that I’m not open to new concepts. We (most of us at least) know the world isn’t flat. But trying to re-invent yourself and creating a new image by only changing your name is tricky.
I can’t predict whether vast majority of people will go along with the scientist on Pluto. Americans generally love the underdog and will probably stick up for the little guy out there at the edge of our solar system. But let’s consider two mostly unsuccessful attempts to re-position a product by renaming it.
About 14 years ago, a business owner severely chastised me for calling his establishment a “bowling alley.” The proper term he explained was “bowling center.” “Alley” had too much baggage. Whatever. I was trying to sell him advertising so I humored him. Today, a quick Google search of “Bowling Alley” returned about 2,941,000 results while “Bowling Center” returned only 1,210,000. They’ve got a long way to go.
Let us not forget 
or TAFKAP, or more simply The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. It only took him seven years to throw in the towel on that idea.
Finally, let’s consider Popeye’s enemy Bluto, who changed his name to Brutus. In this case there was a good reason. The attorneys for Walt Disney’s Big Mouse in Anaheim complained that Bluto sounded too much like Mickey’s dog Pluto. Up until this afternoon I thought the character had been known as Bluto, Pluto and Brutus. Go figure.
Here’s the point. If your business is heading south, simply changing your name probably won’t be much help. Fix the things going wrong inside your business or you might find yourself in the alley without a friend to your name.
OfficeMax Ends Mail-In Retail Rebates, Implements New Instant Discount Policy at Check-Out Counter (read)
What this really means is that consumers won’t be able to return merchandise for full credit after sending in their rebate coupons. Fewer hassles for most customers and fewer open box discounts for OfficeMax. The move makes a lot of sense, watch for other to retailers follow suit.
Are you keeping track of what your potential customers are doing in the privacy of their homes and offices? If you aren’t, it’s time to do so. I’m surprised how many times business owners will tell me that “My customers are different, they don’t use the Internet,” or “Our customers wait for our ads to come out in the newspaper.” Whatever.
According to a recent Harris Interactive study cited by Wall Street Journal Online, the profile of online users is looking more like the profile of the overall population. Approximately 77% of Americans are now online, up from 74% in the previous poll in 2005, and compared with 57% back in 2000. In 1995, only 9% of U.S. adults reported they went online.
Let’s break it down by age:
Adults 18 to 29 make up 21% of the population and 24% of Internet users
Adults 30 to 39 make up 18% of the population and 22% of Internet users
Adults 40 to 49 make up 20% of the population and 22% of Internet users
Adults 50 to 64 make up 22% of the population and 22% of Internet users
Adults 65+ make up 16% of the population but only 8% of Internet users
The results also show that adults with higher education and income levels represent a greater share of the online population than the population at large.
So unless your customer is over 65 with less than a high school education making less than 25k per year it’s a pretty good bet that they’re online. And whether or not you are personally on line your business needs to be.
At a recent advertising seminar in Asheville North Caroline I asked an audience of 100+ business owners how many subscribed to the daily newspaper. You could hear the gasp when less than a dozen hands went up. Might be one of the reasons that newspapers are increasing their online presence.
I’ve had the extreme good fortune to travel the country meeting with business owners in towns and cities big and small. People in America are more similar than you might imagine. If you still believe your customers are different, you might start asking them how often they’re online. The answer might surprise you.
I ordered a tomato juice on a recent airline flight. The label on the can read
“100% Tomato Juice.” Below that, in fine print, “made from tomato concentrate, water and other ingredients.” Interesting definition of 100%
I don’t clip and save coupons. It always seemed to me that I’d end up buying more stuff I didn’t need to “save” a few cents. However my wife Chris was going through an insert for one of the local grocery store chains over the weekend and thought I might enjoy reading the “rules” for their double discount coupon promotion.
Here goes:
Coupons will only be doubled on Wednesday June 21st.
Customers must present the store’s club card at time of checkout.
Customers must spend $25 in a single transaction in order to double coupons (after tax, store coupons and club card discounts).
Only manufacturers coupons with a face value of a dollar or less will be doubled.
A limit of 5 manufacturers coupons can be doubled.
Thank you sir may I have another.
If the thought of losing money on a promotion doesn’t appeal to you and you can’t justify the loss in order to increase store traffic then don’t do the promotion. The more time it takes to read the fine print, the weaker the idea. There are people who will jump through all these hoops to save an additional five dollars, most likely the same people who’ll make sure they spend $25 and not once cent more. In the meantime, the store comes across as a penny-pinching nit-picking miser. It doesn't make cents to me .
Have you ever sat in quicksand? I was sitting on my drafting stool working on a few ads the other day, when suddenly the seat began to sink. When you write on a 36” high workspace, a 22” chair is jus this side of useless. Picking my chin off the table, I Google” heavy duty drafting stool” and get 143,000 results in .48 seconds. This should be easy.
Wrong.
When you get right down to it, all gosh darn stools look pretty much the same. I found plenty of pictures but not much in the way of useful information. I needed to know if the “Buttomatic 2500 HD” takes more abuse than the “Task Master 20,” but it seems no one shares such useful data online.
Now a normal person might say, “Why don’t you just call someone and ask?” I’m a stubborn son-of-a-gun on a mission. That's why. After wasting a half hour on this project it wasn’t about finding a replacement stool, it was about finding the information.
Forty-five minutes later I was ready to throw in the towel. Sitting low on the horizon, hands straining to reach the keyboard I decided to see what Office Max might have available locally (Office Max didn’t show up on the first 10 or 15 pages of search results so I hadn’t been to their site). Suddenly, The Holy Grail of information appeared before my eyes; sizes, fabrics, descriptions of how much use each chair could handle. Feeling a bit like Goldilocks, I narrowed my choices based on Office Max's incredible search function. Now, the only thing I needed to know was whether $219 was a good price.
Office Chairs Unlimited had the same chair “open box,” for $40 less and I figured that as long as I was there I might as well see what else they carry... And there it was, the drafting chair of my dreams, sturdier, with arms and a better warranty than the Office Max chair for $10 less. Cahloo! Cahlay! Only one problem, I didn't know anything about Office Chairs Unlimited. Back to Google “Office Chairs Unlimited Reviews.” The 500 people who reviewed OCU on BizRate gave them a green smiley face. Sold. The chair should be here Monday or Tuesday.
What do people need to know when they come to your website? More often than not they need more than a picture and a brief description. “Waiting For Your Cat To Bark,” the incredible new book from Wizards Of The Web Brian and Jeff Eisenberg provides fantastic insight into the new world of empowered consumers. It’s great reading that even technophobes can understand.
A final note: I do not know much about the technical aspects of websites, so all I can say is that it must be magic that without registering the Office Chairs Unlimited checkout page had my billing and delivery address along with my email address already listed. Now isn’t that convenient?
It’s a funny thing. Business owners all over the country tell me that their town is different. That the only thing their customers care about is price. Perhaps you often find yourself thinking the same thing. But hold the cell phone. While you could spend a lot of time chasing around trying to beat everyone’s price, there may be a few other things you can do to improve your sales and bottom line.
This past weekend I put down the laptop and picked up a paintbrush. For some inexplicable reason our garage door has been slowly acquiring a patina of rust for the past few years (my wife says at least 7). A few weeks ago I said enough was enough and on Sunday I took action with a quick trip over to my local ACE Hardware to pick up oil based primer, paint and roller brushes.
Painting gives one plenty of time to contemplate the big questions such as “Why?” Not why was I finally painting the garage door but why I always go to ACE Hardware. Having tested several hypotheses, I believe it boils down to the relationship between “Time, Money and the store’s PEF (Personal Experience Factor).”
The ACE store is marginally closer to my home than the True Value store and equidistant to K-Mart where I’m told I can also find paint. There’s a Home Depot and Menards in town where prices would seem to be lower than at ACE. But in my world of weekend home improvement projects price barely registers as a motivator.
Despite massive amounts of print, television and radio sale advertising by Home Depot and Menards, nothing will persuade me to drive across town through congested traffic to buy supplies for a home improvement project. I hate traffic and crowds so unless I need something out of the ordinary like oak veneer plywood, there is no way I’ll take nearly an hour to shop the box stores. If I happen to be in the area, remember that I need something and the parking lot isn’t too full I’ll stop. That doesn’t happen very often. My wife says I have too many rules. Maybe so but they are my rules.
Now let’s consider parking lots. My ACE store has an adequate parking lot although all of the parking spaces face toward the store, which seems rather weird. Down the street the True Value store’s parking lot is smaller and sits between two other buildings giving it a claustrophobic sense of enclosure. A feeling that continues inside the store as well.
ACE and True Value have remarkably similar floor plans. I’ve only shopped True Value the last time. I’ve only been in the store twice in the past several years, but despite the fact I “know” where things are the store makes me uncomfortable. It isn’t well lit, the ceiling is high, and it has a tunnel like feel. ACE, on the other hand, is well lit, wider and shorter than True Value. It seems more open and friendlier.
In short, I go to ACE because I can find a comfortable parking spot, find (or be shown where to find) what I’m looking for and get back to work in record time which more important than saving a buck or two.
Consider your buying criteria. Is the lowest price the only thing you base your decision on? Why would you think your different than anyone else. Price is important but the fact of the matter there are very few instances where prices vary much more than five or ten percent. Before you throw another sale look at your retail establishment and your competitors through your customer’s eyes. Look at the neighborhood, parking lot, lighting and the hundred other “little things” that are a part of your customers’ experience even before they encounter your “excellent customer service.” You don’t have to be great just better than the competition. If your customers feel good about shopping with you, being a little more expensive won’t matter to most people. And that’s true no matter where you go.
In 2003, Verizon Wireless spent $880,000,000 dollars to institutionalize “Can You Hear Me Now.” McDonald’s “dah dah dah dah dah, I’m Lovin It” us to death to the tune of $673,000,000 the same year. So I find it somewhat amusing that some folks in Washington are frustrated that spending 1.5 million dollars (that’s total for operations and marketing!) over 5 years hasn’t moved the needle to get people to include a thirty second moment of remembrance to Memorial Day celebrations.
There's a logo, pens and coasters, prewritten news articles and television spots even a song. There have been events, like a sand-sculpture display inspired by D-Day. I don’t know about you but I’ve been pretty busy the past few years and I must have missed the memo. Maybe it goes back to the National Holiday Act of 1971 when Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day) was moved from May 30th to the last Monday of the month to give us another 3-day weekend.
I think a moment of remembrance is a great idea, but it takes more than a ton of money to launch a new idea. Even as a holiday Memorial Day took some time to catch on. First observed after the Civil War in the mid-1860’s it wasn’t until 1873 when all Northern States had proclaimed the holiday. The Southern States refused to recognize the day until after World War 1 when it became a time to honor the dead of all wars, not just the Civil War.
We should remember those who have fallen in all wars with a moment of silence. But the moment of remembrance will be an uphill battle, much more difficult than say institutionalizing a moment of silence the morning of every September 11th. But I’ve always admired people who battle giants and I'll observe 30 seconds of silence at 3 p.m. this Monday.
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