Don't make your reservations quite yet. But it could be opening soon, thanks to a good idea from Smith & Wollensky.
Background: I recently saw the ad above, and my first reaction was that here's a good idea that seemed to have come out of nowhere. It's not based on an event, holiday, or celebration. Just an unexpected, attention-getting good idea.
Basically, you go to their website, take a "pledge*" to make Smith & Wollensky your steakhouse, and then make a reservation. If your name is chosen, they go whole hog...changing the, awning, signage, virtually everything, to include your name with theirs.
This is not the first time they have taken the path less travelled. Last year they did a "Steak for Stock" promotion. (Can't wait for next year.)
So when you are sitting there, wondering how to make your Halloween promotion stand out from all the others, lean back and think about creating innovative, unexpected good ideas, not just incremental tweaks.
Got the idea?
*Even their pledge is well done (pun intended), with bullets such as, • Smith & Wollensky is MY steakhouse. I will have no other. • If I must go to another steakhouse, I will go to Smith & Wollensky Chicago. • If my significant other wants to try a new steakhouse, I will try a new significant other. • I will not go to Del Frisco's.
Books are good. Paper, electronic, old, new, hard cover, paperback, classic, trash, fiction, etc. I really love books.
I have downloaded a bunch of books on my iPhone, and caught up on classics I somehow never had gotten around to. (Does Elizabeth finally end up with Mr. Darcy?) So I was delighted to see that Starbucks, along with their weekly free MP3, also offers free books. This week it was The Night Circus, which I had wanted to read. And you certainly can’t beat, “free.” So I used the code on the back of the card, and downloaded the book.
And though I think it is a wonderful thing for Starbucks and iTunes to do, I now have mixed feelings. Because it was only after you downloaded the book to your iBooks library that you discovered the disclaimer on the book's cover, “Extended Sample.” It was not mentioned on the front or back of the card.
So why do I feel cheated? The book was free, the download was easy, and it was a generous offer. But it is not a free book; it is a free (extended) taste, part, edited, modified, abridged, subset. And because it was less than what was promised, unlike their coffee, the offer left a bad taste in my mouth.
If you are going to offer something, make sure you spell out the details of what you are providing. If it is a smaller, briefer, time-limited, older version of the product, let the people know. Up front. With no asterisks or mouse-sized type of restrictions. You may get fewer redemptions, but you will also get far fewer cranky people like me complaining, perhaps unreasonably, about what you thought was your generous offer.
Today is my 500th blog, give or take a few. While I wait for the applause to die down, I realize I have already broken one of my rules of marketing; so far this is all about me, with no hint of why you should care.
But let me continue about me, though by using a Question and Answer format so it seems more third person and objective.
Q. Why did you start a blog? A. John Wiley, my book publisher, suggested it, as one way to publicize my book. In fact they said the blog had to be live before they would let me put the address in the book. Which forced me to jump into the deep end of the pool rather more quickly than I wanted.
Q. And why do you still blog? A. Partially habit. Partially because I think I have something useful to say about creativity and ideas that could actually be helpful to marketers. (As in my book, I don’t just make a comment or do a critique without usually trying to tie it in to how the reader might adapt the thought to something they might be working on.) Partially ego; I indeed think I have something valuable to say. Finally, I said I would do a blog twice a week, and by golly, I will do a blog twice a week!
Q. How do you decide on your topics? A. I read everything and anything, from other blogs, marketing and not, to physical newspapers and magazines. Always have. But by force of habit now, I particularly pay attention to print ads, posters, kiosks, emails, commercials, etc., and somehow know if it might make a possible post. Usually I avoid discussing big budget TV campaigns, which are covered nicely by other sources.
Q. Any thoughts on some of the good things that have happened because of your blog? A. I have “met” some really interesting fellow bloggers, which makes me regret, once again, never having created a blog roll so that my readers can see how truly insightful people do it. I have been amazed at the worldwide audience I reach. Not only cities I can neither pronounce nor spell, but places I couldn’t previously have found on a map even given the longitude and latitude and a magnifying glass. And I have gained more from writing the blog than I have given. Which is often how it works.
Q. And the down side? A. Well, one compulsive, competitive thing I do is checking the number of readers of each post as if it were a popularity contest. It’s like checking the sales of my book on Amazon; you are not certain how it actually pertains to anything, but you have to have your daily fix.
Q. Who do you think reads your blog? A. Not really sure, but I do know who it is written for. It is meant for the small business owner—the lieutenants of industry, rather than the captains—who are probably more concerned with a small space ad or local promotion than a $300,000 TV buy. And if an idea interests me, sometimes I go way off topic thinking it might be of interest my readers, even if it is not strictly speaking a marketing idea. It is good to be king.
Q. Anything else to add? A. Yes. The usual thanks to my many—a relative term—readers, for commenting, enjoying and perhaps even occasionally finding some useful marketing ideas.
I noticed these two posters in Penn Station in New York. Just a small part of a new, colorful, very noticeable campaign. And these are just a small part of the ads, and... what’s that? You’re not certain what product, or service, or even what category is being advertised?
Well, I obviously wasn’t being completely fair, and the complete ads are shown below.
But my real point is that these are examples of what is known as “Borrowed Interest.” That’s where you make a headline statement with copy or a visual to attract attention, and then your product is featured as the solution, no matter how tenuous the connection.
That works fine when the headline is provocative and leads you unswervingly to a particular product. But the more generic the possible answers, the weaker the ad. These might have been ads for coffee, milk, cereals, or toasters, any of which could claim to be the good part of New York mornings. Assuming you got that far after reading the rather bland headlines.
Now, this is hardly the worst example of borrowed interest. I leave that to the many sexy celebrity ads that make absolute no connection to the product, but hope to lure you into the message with a minimum of clothing and a maximum of marketing dollars. (And often, I must admit, get my attention. Though rarely my dollars.)
And I do like the Tropicana orange replacing the heart in the “I Love NY” logo.
Also, I do have a soft spot in my heart for the product; my daughter was in the first TV spot, way back when, that introduced the straw in the orange campaign.
Guess I just wish they had done a better job with this new advertising. Which I am sure you will do with yours.
I was in my office, on west 38th Street in Manhattan, and had just called my wife to tell her that I had finally gotten through to the phone company, and they were going to remove a disputed charge. As usual, I did not let her get a word in edgewise, though I sort of realized that she was trying to tell me about some accident with a plane and the World Trade Center. Turn on a radio she insisted. And I did. And I heard.
But of all the events that happened that day to my family and me, the moment when it first became real took place in the dirty, junk-filled basement of the building that I worked in. That, to me, was the seminal moment of the day.
The building's superintendent invited us to go down and watch his television for the updated news. I can't remember why I had a camera with me, or why I thought of taking a picture of the TV screen. During the next few days, I saw the same horrific videos you did. Heard the screams, saw the tears, smelled the smoke, listened to the anguished interviews.
But this static frozen frame, with no sound and no motion, was the one that said get home, get to your family, make them safe.
I reacted negatively to this line in a television review in The New York Times. “That’s the thing about ideas: They’re so cheap that anyone can have them. They’re ubiquitous sparks. They’re democratic.”
I guess I thought the columnist was trivializing how difficult it is to come up with ideas. Then I realized he was right; ideas are easy to create. At least, the common, comfortable, dime a dozen varieties.
Ahh, but the good ideas, the ones you and I strive for, are not easy to find. Worse, they are controversial, risky, get us outside our comfort zone, and often appear unworkable at first. Heck, that’s one way you know it might be good.
As Mike Sassone puts it in his blog, Coverstations where I discovered this quote by Albert Camus, “All great ideas and all great thoughts have a ridiculous beginning.” Mike continues, “They thought Twitter was a joke. They thought Disney was nuts. That Beatrix Potter was beside herself. They thought Columbus was drunk. If they tell you “That’s ridiculous!” – just smile and say, “I was hoping you would say that.”
And going from the sublime (Camus) to well, someone else, here is what Tom Rothman, co-chairman of Fox Films, had to say on a similar subject: “The lesson for us is that different and original is always hard and always a risk but has great upside.”
So yes, ideas are easy. But good, original, wow! thoughts——once you get over your initial panic——are what it is all about.
Most of us would agree with the thought in the post title, which is a version of what I keep telling my daughters, “If you have a job you love you will never work a day in your life.” A European company has brought the sentiment brilliantly to life.
Creativecriminals, where I found the ads, says jobsintown is a German online recruitment company. (I believe them, though I don’t understand German, which is the language the site is in. But I do understand good ideas. Which these surely are.)
This link will get you to the site to see some wonderful examples of what they have been doing to visualize appalling jobs. And no, none are the cliché coal miners, or rodeo clowns. They simply, and brilliantly, attached posters to the sides of vending machines, so it appeared that someone was literally inside the piece of equipment doing whatever the machine was designed to do.
In the example below, a worker is pictured crammed inside a machine, preparing coffee to fit the specifications of the customer who pushed the button.
I’m sure you can think of many more, but the prize goes to the person who originated the good idea. As I often say to those who are eager to show off their creativity and create the campaign extensions, “Where were you when the page was blank?”
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