Monday, April 05, 2004

Once again, Mitchell has props. Actually, when I got here this morning, I realized that I forgot a couple at home.

Just a reminder…we have three free days starting Wednesday. At 6:30 in the morning I will be somewhere between here and probably Iowa heading for the Caribbean. I had a great time this past weekend in Boston. I didn’t get any Boston baked beans and I didn’t get any Boston crème pie.

[Did you get any lobster?]

I did get lobster; and it was so good. Has anyone ever heard of Legal Seafood? It’s a restaurant owned by a Jewish family. They’re on the eastern seaboard. They didn’t really start up in Boston, but the have quite a few of them in Boston. And everyone was saying, “Oh, you’ve got to go there.” Here’s there slogan, “If it ain’t perfect, it ain’t legal.” Or something like that. Well, anyway, it was a wonderful seafood restaurant. And many people recommended it.

[Was it Kosher?]

I don’t think lobster will ever be Kosher, because Jews don’t eat shell fish at all. It was a company that was in the fishing business that decided to open up a restaurant. So on their menu they say, “We’re not a restaurant company that decided to serve fish; we’re a fish company that decided to be in the restaurant business.” And they think that’s a what…between them and their competition?

[Oh, a differentiation.]

And what that shows me is good marketing.

Promotion

All right, we’re going to talk more about promotion today. And we’re also going to talk about communications. And we’re going to do a communication model. And we might look at a couple of overheads if we have enough time.

We were in the airport, and I said to my wife, “There is a very good example of a bad advertising.” And she said, “What?” And I said, “That’s a good example of bad advertising.” What the hell is it? What do they sell? What do they do? How do I take action? And she said, “Well, there’s a Web site there…” But there was no phone number, no address, and what if I don’t want to go to their Web site? So this was a good example of bad advertising. The company was called Excensure, but what the hell is Excensure? What do they do? I don’t have a clue? Does anyone know? I just saw their building in downtown Minneapolis; it’s beautiful. I looked at their sign on their building and I said, “Wow, I’m here at American Express, and it’s a beautiful building.” The tour guide pointed it out while it was under construction, and now that it’s done, we talked about the beautiful marble façade, and then here’s this building next door to it, which equally impressive. I know what American Express does, but what the hell is Excensure? Nobody knows…this is a stupid company. This is a company with executives in promotion and marketing that, in my opinion, are idiots. If one of them comes and straightens me out, ok, I’ll swallow some crow, and maybe take it all back. And maybe they have a brilliant plan, and I just don’t get it. But since I saw their corporate headquarters, of which has a huge sign out front, and it says Excensure. Well, it’s like, ok, what is this?

And I thought, well, it’s a building, and they want it to look clean and crisp, and they are presenting an image aren’t they? That’s a part of their communication process, and they are presenting an image. And it really is beautiful building. Well, when I looked at their ad, the imagery for their ad is making a connection, Excensure and quality. But it doesn’t say what they do. I mean, I could look at that and go, well, ok, they think they are a quality company. But how do I take action? Remember when we went through the AIDA formula. This is critical, isn’t it? How am I going to take action? Well, they must be in the computer or software business, or telemarketing or networking, or something. If Excensure is a business that sells phone services, they would have had a 1-800 number, right. But on the ad there was nothing. Well, then I saw another ad while I was in flight. I was looking through the Northwest magazine, which by the way it a great way for Northwest Airlines to make some extra dollars. And if you want to reach executives and people who travel, that’s a good thing. So if I want to reach people with my Signs For Sail business concept, that’s a magazine that I might want to be in, right, especially if I fly exclusively with Northwest, and where I’m likely to meet people.

Yesterday on the airplane I met a wonderful employee from 3M who was in Boston checking out venders. We talked about 3M and about the pharmacy division she worked in. Anyway, that would be a good place for me to advertise. I thought that at least one of you would know what Excensure. But the mystery continues.

                                                Media List

Well, when I was at the airport and I saw that, what media would that have been? Where would we have classified what I saw?

[like outdoor?]

Ok, you guys are close but there’s a technical term for this classification. And outdoor is separate. Outdoor is the billboards on the freeway. And it’s only the billboards on the freeway; it’s not signage on a property, which is a separate category. What would it be if I were at the airport and I see an ad? Or, how about if I see it on a bus or a bus station, or a taxicab or in a taxi station? By the way, one of the cheapest cost per thousand, cost per M…which takes your total cost; art charges, media charges, and after it’s all added up, then you divide by however many people see it. So if my sailboat goes to Boston…this is incredible, this is the fact finding that I did when I went to Boston. I took the trolley tours and learned a lot and had fun. I went to Bunker Hill, and, of course, the U.S.S. Constitution. But what day will 500,000 people be in Boston?

[July the fourth]

Yeah, July the fourth. Those are just the visitors. By the way, the Democratic convention will be in Boston this summer. And they will be there on July 12^th, through the 14^th. Will many of those people come early for the 4^th of July? This summer, Boston might be a place to avoid, but for my Signs For Sale business, should I be there this summer? I don’t have an account, yet, to do it with. But at some point down the road, the Republicans will have there convention there, right, because it’s town and has a lot of history. Maybe the Independent Party will have their convention there someday as well. But these are just the visitors that will come. Is that a good place for me to have my Signs For Sale that day with Coca-Cola, or Johnny Walker Red, or Old Navy, or whoever my client is? Wouldn’t they want three or four boats there that day? Yeah, so I scoped that out; I spent two or three days checking that out.

But that’s just the visitors. The tour guide told me, “Oh, if you really want to not fight the traffic…” And basically what he said was that if you want to get the best place, you need to be there four days in advance and camp out. And I said, “Well, I’m going to come with my sailboat…” And he said, “That’s the best way to do it, man; the fireworks go off right over your head.” He said that the ships cannons are firing their blank loads. And so he showed me where to park the boat, which is where the U.S.S. Constitution gets moved to. But during the fourth, the flags are flying, the cannons are going off, and on the shore the Boston Pops are playing along with the shore cannon battery. But he said that you have to go on July 3^rd, because they have a practice rehearsal, and that’s when all the locals come, and there’s 300,000 people there on that day. So does that sound like a good deal?

Can I, by the way, get excited and get one of my clients excited? And when I’m doing that, am I selling? I’m communicating, right. I’m saying, hey, this is where you need to be for your company. Do you want to reach with a positive message? So does that sound exciting. Although, if they put there thing on my sailboat, we’ll make sure that they know how to get there, right. So if we do Legal Sea Foods, if that’s what the sign is for that day in the harbor, they’ll be a phone number there for them to call, because they actually have multiple restaurants.

[So what kind of media is it?]

Yeah, transit…didn’t I tell you that? Didn’t somebody figure that out? Is my Signs For Sale transit? No…

[But you were in the airport…]

Yeah, and the airport is transit; the bus is transit; the taxicab is transit. And I thought that Signs For Sale would be outdoor; that’s what it seemed like to me; it’s a floating billboard, right. But, no, it’s not a billboard, because a billboard is stationary and it’s on a highway or a city street. It’s a completely closed and separate category. You can not mess with these, people. But, no, you’re in the special event category. And I said, “I teach advertising, and you say that I’m in the special event category?” And they said that indeed I was, and I need to go and see our director of special events. Are there buyers in each of the big firms to buy this stuff? Is there one person who buys for TV, and one for radio? Yeah, so you have to know which ones to see. And, obviously, if you’re a company wanting to advertise, you want to call these reps. So if you go to a trade show about media, and you see a sailboat with 26 feet of mast, you need to talk to that sales rep. And that sales rep will tell you who there audience is, how does their target market, or their audience, match with your customer profile, right. So if you don’t know your customer profile, if you don’t know your segmentation, they can’t really help you, right. That’s why you have to have it in your marketing plan.

This is my market segmentation, or these are the market segments that I’m going after… and so you match those up. And you match those up for a certain dollar amount. But what I saw at the airport was a good example of bad transit advertising. By the way, when you’re at the airport, what do you have to do when you get there the required two hours early? We actually got there two hours and forty minutes early. First baggage on, last baggage off, and sure enough, mine was the last one to come down the thing. But you’ve got all that time on your hands, and what do you do with all of that time? And many times, people don’t want to sit, because they’re going to be sitting on the plane, so they want to wonder around. So is that a good place and a good time to get your message across. It’s like buying a magazine that’s designed for travelers, executives, and people who can afford to travel. So you match those things up.

Anyway, I didn’t like that particular ad. When I am at the airport on Wednesday morning, I will see if they have an Excensure ad there, and I’ll start asking people if they know what it is. Business people probably know what Excensure is, right. It probably doesn’t pertain to any of us, because we’re not its target market.

[So you never found out…]

Well, I’m guessing that it’s some sort of Web technology, because all they had was a Web site.

By the way, do we suffer from information overload in the 21^st century? Absolutely, and it’s not going to get better, it’s going to get worse. And when you’re in advertising, you have to break through that. You have to reach through and grab people. And that’s why we use humor and babies. But information overload has been a problem. The reason Fallen and McGill, one of Minnesota’ best ad agencies, had chickens dropping out of airplanes with parachutes was for that exact reason. The company Golden Plump was trying to sell chickens. Well, nobody knew who Golden Plump was before Fallen and McGill started doing that ad. By the way, can you change the total direction of your firm through a good ad agent? Well, no one knew who Golden Plump was. I mean, they had been the biggest producer of chickens, eggs, and poultry from the St. Cloud area for a long time. And I had worked up in St. Cloud for awhile, and I knew about their whole operation. And I’m seeing this ad and thinking, “Wow, I never thought that Golden Plump would advertise…this is amazing.” I thought they had a pretty good business as it was. Well, you can take a good business and make it much better with a good ad. So they hired Fallen and McGill and they took little chickens, dressed them up, put them on little model airplanes, pretended they were parachuting out of airplanes, and the people would remember it. So when people go to the store, they go, “Oh, I recognize this product.” And they make the purchase. Does it work? Yeah, and what happened to their sales? They went way up.

So this is our communications model. Good communication is essential. We talked the other day about good retailing and good wholesaling, and good logistics, and good distribution. And now, good communication is essential. Ok, now, I’m going to give you a quick quiz. Which is the most expensive, or which category of expense would you say that many businesses put the most amount of money into? Is it (a) the cost of production…so what does it cost for Gillette to manufacture a razor blade, or what does it cost for Coke to produce a can of pop. Is it (b) their factory and overhead; is it (c) their office building and architecture. Is it their management and employee salaries? Or is it their promotion? For a lot of company’s the biggest single expense category is promotion. And some businesses are more labor intense. Now, Northwest has a huge promotion budget, don’t they. They probably spend a little more on promotion than they do on salaries each month. It would be interesting to look at. This would be a wonderful PhD thesis to write. I don’t know that it’s ever been done. But Northwest has to spend a lot of money on their hub, and they have to spend a lot of money on trucks and planes. So if you were to look at the dollars that go out at Northwest, my guess is that promotion probably wouldn’t be the first. But for Coca-Cola, we know it’s first. And for all Proctor & Gamble products, we know it’s the first. Proctor & Gamble is the world’s largest advertiser. They spend hundreds and hundreds of millions, actually, their advertising budget is in the billions. Now, I don’t know what the cost of running their facilities is; I don’t know what their cost is for employee base. And for many businesses the cost of your personnel is the biggest expense, right. But promotion is probably going to be the next biggest thing.

Well, the thing is that those employee expenses are spread out over a lot of people. There may be a few employees here and there, not to mention the big salaries that we read about CEOs getting. Promotion goes to fewer players, doesn’t it. Yeah, it goes to the media, it goes to the marketing executives, and, yes, they get a part of the profit. It goes to people like my dad who sold ad specialties. He got a big percentage of Cennex’s promotional budget every year. He was the number one media that they chose other than their own newspaper, which they created themselves. But in terms of external media, did it make sense for Cennex to buy TV? No, they didn’t need to advertise on TV or radio. They mostly needed ad specialties and gifts for their board members. Their trade show is the single biggest event that they do every year. And his booth was at the trade show, but also when you came to the trade show, one of the reasons you came was because you knew that you were going to get some cool Cennex stuff when you register. So a prize for registering at a trade show is premiums, incentives, and promotions. Anyway, figuring out how all of that plays out is critical. And we’ll finish our media list, here, in a minute.

But let’s look at this communications model. What is the goal of communications. We’ve got our receiver here, and we have our sender here. What’s the goal? How many of you have had a communications class? No one? By the way, if you liked this chapter and these chapters and you like this stuff, you have to take an advertising class. I mean, that’s a logical step. You have to take a sales class; you need to take an advertising class, and you absolutely have to take a communications class. If you’re going to be in the world of marketing, you’ll probably have to have a couple of communications classes, right.

By the way, I was in Boston this past week. And in the city of Boston is what is called the Metroplex, where the subways serve 22 colleges. Included in there are some of the most respected colleges on Earth: MIT, Harvard, etc. It’s pretty amazing. If you were to draw a 40-mile ring around the Boston area, there would be seventy colleges. Now, our tour guide has been saying, ever since I’ve been working for the company, that the State of Minnesota has more colleges than any other state when you combine the public and the private colleges together. And that might actually be true, because if you were to take… Well, the commonwealth of Massachusetts isn’t that big is it. So that forty-mile range might include some of Connecticut and some of those other New England states. But it is their second biggest economic indicator. This summer, tourism will probably rank up there, because of the democratic convention. But is that a big deal. For Minnesota, we don’t know how that plays out. I’ve never seen a statistic…we should know. And, again, here’s another PhD research project. That’s why we need all these students, right, because professors keep thinking of new things that need to be looked at.

Well, what do think, for the community of Boston is the number one economic industry?

{Hotels?}

Well, hotels would be a part of the tourism industry.

[Well, with all of those schools, you’d think education.]

The tour guides were saying that it was either two or three, so something is above that. There’s something in Massachusetts that is better known and brings more money into the state. And those students come from all over the world, don’t they. What does it cost, if you’re a Saudi girl and your daddy sends you to Harvard, and you stay there for eight years? You’re going to need a lot of money at Harvard. And usually some of the wealthiest families go there. Although some our private schools get that business, as well. But the number one industry in Massachusetts is the medical industry. All of those schools have teaching hospitals, don’t they. So medicine is the biggest single thing.

Anyway, back to our model... But what’s the goal of communication?

[To send and receive a message, how about that?]

Well, we’re going to send a message, and the sender has to do that. This is our feedback loop, here. What’s the goal of good communication? It’s something that professor do all over the country. I’m communicating, right now, right. What am I hoping will happen here today? You’ll develop a better what?

[Understanding?

Yeah, a better understanding of marketing and advertising. The goal of good communication is understanding. So if I’m creating a good radio ad, I want you to understand my message. If I’m creating a transit ad, I want you to understand my message. That didn’t happen when I saw that Excensure ad, did it. I looked at it, and I didn’t get it. If people look at your ad and you give your ad to someone and they’re proofing it, and they’re going, “I don’t get it.” You didn’t score, did you. So understanding is the goal. And that’s why in a communications class, they talk about how important paraphrasing is, right. And in a way, when you take your tests and hand them in to me, you are parroting back to me what you have learned from the lectures and the book, right. When I talk, how much are you going to remember? You might understand at the moment what I’m talking about. But two days later, how much will you remember?

So the goal of good advertising is not only to have you understand, but to have you remember it three days later. I remember this—amazing! /Northwest Orient…/Gong! /Airrrrrliiiines/ That’s a radio ad that I heard growing up as a little kid. Are they still getting their money’s worth out of that? They paid an orchestra, they paid guy to bring in his big oriental gong, which is a piece of Northwest history, now. And when they hit that gong, that was a sound that you couldn’t forget. I thought I was going to China every time I heard it. That was pretty smart on their part, right. County Seat did, “/just direct your feet to the County Seat/” I still remember that. “Ford…it’s a better idea.” Is that a one liner that you remember? Yeah. So good communication is what this is all about. Do you know the difference, when you are proofing an ad, between good communication and bad communication? I don’t think that the people at Excensure do. Maybe they do…maybe I don’t get it, but I’m going to pick on them for a little while.

Do you understand, and do the people understand. So when this sender sends out a message, the receiver has to be turned on and tuned in. That’s what this is all about, right. This is our on/off button. So the first thing is that the receiver has to be turned on. Now, today, I have all of my best students here, except for one. Buy the way, if you go to Harvard, not only will they pick on you, but they’ll pick on you incessantly and purposefully. And they will call you out by name and it’s intense. So typically in law school, the instructor has you seating via seating chart, and he’ll look at you and go, “Mr. O’Rourke, on page 37 of your text today, you were supposed to know what?”

[Wow, that was all the way back in chapter one…my God.]

You’d better have the answer. But does he force you to come prepared for class? Now, if I did that, I wouldn’t have any students; you’d all leave, right.

But in this case, he knows that Kevin knows. And will Kevin probably remember that, because he was scared to death at the time. And you would have had to stand up and face your peers.

[Tom Van Horn used to do that in his legal research class; he used to do that.]

Oh, yeah, it’s proven methodology. Now, with radio, TV, and billboard, I can’t necessarily do that, but I can pre-test it, right? I can run a TV ad and go, yeah, you understood, you remembered. I’ve got little Golden Retrievers wiggling their little butts all over the place, and then they knock down a potted plant and get dirt all over the floor. Then you clean it up with your what?

{Your vacuum cleaner.}

But which brand of vacuum?

{Dirt Devil.}

The Dirt Devil…absolutely. And because he’s consistent in using Golden Retrievers in ads, is the man brilliant? Not only is he brilliant, but rich. He’s way richer, now that he’s tying in Golden Retrievers. And I like that, because everyone who is using Golden Retrievers is promoting my business without my spending any money. And when we have Golden Retriever pups this fall, they’ll all be sold; I won’t have to work that hard at it. Well, I might have to a little bit. I’ll probably put up some posters and place an ad in the paper. Hopefully, I’ll have half of them pre-sold. So is that ad good communication? They package it, they test it, they determine that it’s good, and the psychology behind it is good. And they send it out.

Now, to give you an example of a radio ad that was powerful…and radio is a neat media, because it’s not very expensive. And you can experiment with some stuff. And if your ad works well on the radio, then you can take it the next level of higher production costs and make a TV ad out of it, right. So you can do some tests and experiments, and you can buy coverage from one station in just one part of the Twin Cities, or one station that reaches just the Latino community or black community or the jazz listening community. Or the old farts like me, who listen to oldie goldie stations. My daughter calls them moldy goldies. But you can segment your market.

To give you a good example of a good communication process where this worked very well. When Kinney Shoes launched its Foot Locker specialty retail division, they had an ad. And it didn’t any music with it. It had a voice over, and so the voice over was saying, “There’s a new store in town at the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth, so come on down and check it out. We want you to see for yourselves that we have every kind of specialty shoe that you can think of. We’ve got running shoes; we’ve got basketball shoes; we’ve got boxing shoes. And, we’re called the Foot Locker. And you’ll know our store, because our store has employees dressed like referees. What ever your sport, come to the Foot Locker for shoes.” Well, ok, I might and I might not remember that, but in the background they had a doink, doink, doink, sound going. What is that? It’s the sound of a ball bouncing. And I’m sitting there…the first time I heard it I thought, “This is pretty good stuff.” I was thinking that it was the sound of a racquetball, because I’m a racquetball player. Because when you sit in a racquetball court, you sit and bounce the ball. First the ball would hit the floor, then hit the wall, then it would come back to you. And that’s the repeated sound, right. Now, people who played handball were convinced it was a handball, and there’s not that much difference between the two. But people who play tennis would practice tennis indoors, while they wait for their court to open up. And it also sounds just like that. So a lot of different people thought that it was their sport’s ball. And a lot of people tried to figure out what kind of ball it really was. And no one from Kinney’s Shoes would ever say what kind of ball it really was. To this day I’m convinced that it was a racquetball, and that they had done the recording in a quality racquetball court, because there was a real good reverberation to it.

By the way this week in Boston, we went to the “Mapotorium,” and when I do my Signs For Sale business, I will rent the Mapotorium to do an opening piece. There’s this little land bridge, where you’re inside this globe. And it’s a perfect sphere. It exactly replicates in proportion the world. So, you’re standing there and your going, “Wow, the Pacific Ocean is so big, and the Atlantic is pretty small… Wow, North America is actually pretty small… Look how big South America is.” Then you look down and go, “Wow, the South Pole…Antarctica. Whoa! Look how big Africa is!” Well, anyway, when you’re in there, it echoes. So imagine my voice…I mean I’m loud and, my wife said, “Shhh-shhh, when they all leave, you can come back.” And the lady let me come back so I went, “Testing…one, two, three…” And I thought this was pretty cool. But I’ll have a little video for my Signs For Sail showing where we’re going to have franchises all around the world. And the map will light up where they program it to. So it might cost me $10,000 to rent that for a night to do my video, but I’m going to do that. Is that a part of why you travel…to learn new things and to get ideas? Absolutely. And when you come back, you’re invigorated to move things forward.

If that captures your attention, and if that captures your imagination, is that good promotion? Yeah. Well, anyway, in the case of the radio ad for Kinney Shoes and their Foot Locker stores, they encoded a good message. We were able to decode that message very simply and very easily. And each person decoded it differently. Now, is that brilliant? Yes it is; because each person took out of that message what he or she wanted. Now, the words about the Miller Hill Mall and the Foot Locker and your sport, whether it’s tennis, football or boxing, that’s pretty standardized as to how you picture this in your head. But to get back to the point, I didn’t even have to hear the ad, I could run it on my tape, right. That’s brilliant, and that’s good communication. So not only did they encode the message properly, but they got it into the receiver, and we were turned on and tuned in. And sometimes when I drive, I’m not tuned in, right. And that’s a wasted message. I paid for that delivery; I paid for that audience, but they didn’t hear it.

How many of you are going to the bathroom while there’s a commercial going on during the Super Bowel? And, actually, do you know how they determine how many people are not in front of the TV during Super Bowel commercials? They measure the sewer flowage from every city in America. And during every commercial break, what happens to this flowage? It goes up dramatically. As a matter of fact, in some places, maybe like Boston, if they are involved in the game, and in certain areas where there is high population concentrations, they can actually experience sewer problems, because there’s too many people flushing all at the same time.

So you want to measure how many people hear or see your ad, but in the case of the Foot Locker ad, they got the message out there, we were turned on, tuned in, we saw it and we heard it; and the feed back comes back in unit sales, doesn’t it. The feedback comes back in terms of the people who show up during the grand opening. And primarily they run that ad to get established in a community. Once you know you’re going to come back regularly… these guys really know their shit, don’t they…they know what they’re talking about. Why should I go to Dayton’s to buy my athletic shoes, when I can go to the store next door, where they really know what they’re talking about, and where they have my exact size? So they didn’t have to repeat all of that advertising, they just had to get the momentum going.

And in the case of this example, it turns out that my old manager from the Southdale store, which was the most profitable Kinney’s store when I was there, which was nice because I got to share in some of the bonus parties and some of the good things that they did to reward their employees. But his name was Lawsey. And I had a student call and write to Foot Locker to find out about the success of this ad because I was curious. And what I got was a phone number with a name, and I looked at this name and I remembered this guy Lawsey. So I called, and sure enough, and he told me that they were a division of Kenny shoe. I didn’t know that, because they’re not going to tell the public that they were a division of Kenny Shoes…they don’t want to lower their image by associating Foot Locker with Kenny Shoes, even though they do have a pretty good reputation. But I recognized the name, and I called them, and I asked, “Well, how did that go?” And he said that that single radio ad made my job. And I could have failed in this, but because we chose a good ad agency, and because we chose and approved a good ad, it was a huge success. He said that immediately from the time that the first ad was aired, he knew it worked, because people came to the grand opening. They got the desired feedback that they were looking for, the consumer got the process, they had the understanding. So that’s what It’s all about, and you want to be able to do that well.

When my dad would talk to me as a little kid, as a teenager, and sometimes as an adult, I was turned on, and I was looking at him, but I wasn’t tuned in. What do we say about an employee when information goes in one ear and out the other? What are they? They’re tuned out, right. So you want to make sure that people are tuned in, and you use humor; you use babies, or sex, or whatever it might be to get them to do that. Can we test that in a controlled environment?

Now, here’s an example of some advertising that came from my hotel room. “In the heavenly beds of the Westin Hotel…” They advertise about there heavenly bed. When I told the cab driver, “Take me to the Westin.” He said, “Oh, how are the heavenly beds?” And I said, “What are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, they’re always advertising about their heavenly beds.” And I said, “Well, I’m on the 36^th floor, I’ll talk to God tonight, what do you want me to say?” Anyway, here’s an ad, “Chris Rock…” Now, doesn’t that just scream at you? I didn’t watch this video, because how much does it cost to watch a video at that hotel? It costs eighteen bucks. I’m not going to pay eighteen bucks for that movie. Is this communication? Yeah, that’s an ad specialty. I used to sell tons of those. How about this? This was in the room… Is that an example of communication? This is what my glass was on in the bathroom. That’s a communication tool. Let’s pass those around.

Now, this is how I got there. I had called the Boston Business Visitors Bureau, which supports the tourism trade for the whole state, and they sent me this. This is how I decided where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see. Is this full of ads? Yeah. If you’re the Boston Trolley Company, which I chose, or if you are the Radisson, you need to be in here. What do you think it costs to make something like that?

And when we talk about mass communications, we won’t talk about printing, but printing is one of the vehicles, isn’t it. What do you suppose it cost to make that?

[How many?]

Well let’s say they make a million and a half. What’s the per unit cost on those likely to run? My guess is that it costs somewhere between 70 and 75 cents to print. Is there a major commitment of some community dollars for that? But all of those advertisers are going to pay for the cost of that production, right. So it’s a good deal. So you have to determine in your promotion, or marketing, budget how much are you willing to spend per customer to get them into the door. Is Northwest Orient Airlines only willing to spend a dollar to get you in? Well, they’d better spend more than that. So how much are you going to spend per customer? This is the question that I always ask people, and they’re like, I don’t know. But you need to know. Does Gillette know? Does 3M know? Does Northwest Know? Of course they don’t. But they’ve been doing it for a while, so they have their previous costs to go by, and they know what works.

What we’re looking for in this media, here, is effectiveness and efficiency. So is my message effective? What’s the efficiency and effectiveness rating? And advertising professionals will help you with this. Now, here’s a ballpoint pen that says Westin on it. I stole it…it’s actually mine, because they wanted me to take it, didn’t they. It doesn’t tell me a whole lot. But how effective is that? If it’s got a phone number on it, I can call, because it’s in my brief case, and I can use it to make a reservation. Or, I could be writing on my little Westin notepad, and the number is right here, as well. So ad specialties is one of these. Well, ad specialties is the lasting media. That ballpoint pen might be around for a long time, right. I was going to bring in today a Frisbee, which I thought was not a very good example of copy. But the Frisbee said USPA, United Serape Palsy Association, and it actually had the name of the town or community on it. What we were at was the national convention. And we met the past national president, who runs a dating service for people with serape palsy. And she books cruises and stuff like that. But how long will this Frisbee last? Well, until the dog eats it or until it lands on the roof, and that’s what I always used to tell my clients, and all remembered that. Frisbees last forever. You can back over it with your car and it’s still good. And if it lands on the roof, eventually it’s going to come down, and you’ll see it again. And maybe along the way, a helicopter pilot looking at your wife or daughter sunbathing in the back. By the way, do they remember that image when I though out? There’s some images that I through out there that I probably shouldn’t. But why do I do that. To get your attention.

Every now and then when I see a head down, a four lettered word will come out of my mouth, and my mother’s ears are probably ringing; and my dad is on my shoulder going, “Yeah, you woke them up…” And my great grandmother, who was anti potty mouth, is probably all upset. But, you know, you do it to get attention, right. If it’s good advertising…. This particular thing, the Frisbee, I didn’t think was a very good use of ad specialties, but we created some pretty good ones for County Seat. For Green Giant, we didn’t need to come up with any words; we just had the Green Giant, didn’t it. It didn’t need to say anything.

What you have to determine, here, is what your goal is. The only purpose there was for that Green Giant Frisbee was to get brand recognition. By the way, who are the hardest to eat vegetables? Kids, so when I went and made the pitch, and the Jolly Green Giant is now owned by Pillsbury, but at the time you used to have to go to La Suer. When I went to La Suer to make the pitch, it was like, who do most want to think positively about your product? And kids love the Jolly Green Giant, that’s a brand character that people associated with. And the graphics turned out really really nice. By the way, my factory did the spec sample for free. Do you know why? They wanted to put it in their catalog, so they could show it as an example of a good Frisbee. And that worked; it was a nice order. By the way, the artwork that I generated…even though they didn’t buy as many I hoped they would, and then used it as a premium item, so you send in a certain number of can labels to get your free Frisbee. But they used it for a few meetings and a few corn roasts, and they did some events. But I didn’t sell that many. But that artwork and the whole program was sold to County Seat. And County Seat was opening 400 new stores a year. How many Frisbees do they need for each store? My pitch was that you had to ship at least a thousand to each store.

So this is the integrated media communications, the IMC, and the radio ad says, “Come on down to County Seat, we’re opening up in the Miller Mall in Duluth. We’ve got every Levis product available. It’s a wonderful store, so come on down. And the first 1,000 participants to come into our store are going to get a free Frisbee!” And free Frisbee sounds good doesn’t it. You’re going to remember that. I said, “Yeah, you can give away book covers, and book covers are cool, but they’re only really good in the fall. A free book cover…that sounds pretty good, but a free Frisbee sounds even better. Did the president of the company get was talking about? Did I get my message across? Did he understand what I was saying? Yeah, and so he bought the Frisbees and they were a huge success. By the way, who was the first customer who ever bought a Frisbee from me? Dick Schultz. What do I do every time I drive by there new headquarters building? I go, “Yeah, I helped to build that baby.” I just heard that Best Buy is either number two or number three on the most successful companies list. Target is number one. By the way, I helped Target get started too, I didn’t help them in the same way as I did with Dick Schultz, but when I had an account with Target, the biggest thing that I sold to them were the golf balls for their tournaments. Who played golf with those golf balls? This is a good question? It was executives and investors. So the ability for them to go out and do golf tournaments…and now, it’s a public service thing that they do, right. But back then, they were going around and they were inviting people to play golf who had a lot of money. And, of course, when they played golf, what did they get? They got Target golf club covers, and that was pretty cool. So it had just the target logo on it. So every time that man goes to play golf, and we’re not talking about cheap balls, here, these were the best executive balls that you could get. Every time you go to play golf, you’re now playing with your Target balls. And by the way, they didn’t just get one, they got a box of a dozen. They got 4 sets of 3 in a box, and the box had the Target logo printed on it as well. Is that good promo? Is that good communication? Is that a good media, ad specialties? I think so.

By the way, just to show you, even our national parks have to advertise. Here’s a brochure about Bunker Hill. That’s a nice printed piece. This is my favorite, the “Cheers” one. Why did I take these home? My wife said “I can’t believe your bringing all that shit home.” And I said, “See…everyone used to call it shit.” People used to say, “Oh, your in the trinket business.” But is this communication for them? It sets the image in their restaurant right? What I wanted to write on, here, was “I sat in Norm’s chair.” That’s a souvenir. By the way, people become disappointed when they visit that bar, because they drive by in the cab or the trolley like I was and see the outside façade of the restaurant. And the driver says, “That’s where they shot Cheers.” Later on, if they walk in there, it doesn’t look anything like the TV show. Why? The TV show was shot in a studio out in California. So the film crew came and it took them two whole days to get those establishing shots of the outside. The weather had to be perfect and whatnot. Anyway, the outside looks just like on TV; the awnings are the same, and the stairway looks the same.

So the owner of the bar had upset tourist… “Where’s Norm’s chair? I want to have a beer in Norm’s chair.” Or “I want to sit in Cliff’s chair…” So he bought the Hollywood set when they closed the show. That was a pretty smart restaurant operator. He bought the Hollywood set. And now there’s a duplicate and an original Hollywood set. And, indeed, when I went in there was a little plaque that said, “Norm sat here the night we opened this restaurant.” And he sat in that same chair. My wife didn’t take a picture, because we didn’t bring a camera on that trip. That’s all a part of how you tie this together. By the way, does all of this communication stuff take creativity? Does it take imagination and understanding? Yeah.

This is a map of the town, and this is one of my favorites. We didn’t go here, but this almost sold me on going. I wanted to go to Salem. What famous about Salem?

{Witches.}

The Salem witch trials. Did you know those people were accused of being witches because they were acting really weird? The reason they were acting weird is because they were eating bad grain, which had spoiled in some way that would make people hallucinate. And because these women were hallucinating, the religious people at the time thought that the devil was in them. And they killed them. Anyway since I knew that little bit of history, I thought that would be fun to share. But when I asked the tour guide if it was worth the trouble going to Salem, he pulls out this brochure, and he says. “You’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Most people don’t understand. It’s a beautiful ride on the train. It takes forty minutes and it costs five dollars. You take the train along the coastline. He said that you get to see all of the coast. No one on the highway gets to see that. It’s beautiful, and you get to see it all the way up and all the way back for ten bucks. Well, it was cold and rainy and my wife didn’t want to go outside. In the summer, though, in July can you see doing that.

Now, who was selling that deal? The brochure started me, and then I asked a question. Ultimately, once I have the understanding, then I make the decision and buyer behavior took over. And then once I’m there, I spend what ever I need to get in.

Now, here’s something I thought was really cool, Old Iron Side. The cannon balls used to bounce off of that. And here’s one of the books that the chamber sent me, and circled one in there about a cruise where you go for a lobster lunch in a really fancy boat and you see the harbor. Other people did the ducks that go on land and in water, which was a really nice deal. The other guests that we traveled with did that. But it was too cold out. Is this advertising? This is my room key. Well, I know what hotel I’m in. It talks about and shows a picture of the heavenly beds. But if I’m in the cab, and somebody else sees me pull this out, or if I’m in the shuttle, and someone else see this, they might say, “Oh, you’re staying at the Westin.” Well, that’s an ad specialty kind of thing where you’re encouraging word of mouth, right. But, yeah, it’s all a part of your total communication package. This one was given to me yesterday morning at about 5 am. I get up early when I’m in a new town. I spend a lot of time and energy to get there, so I like to see stuff. So I went to the hotel next door for some coffee, because our hotel didn’t have it. And they were like, “Well, sir, you can have coffee in your room.” And I said, “Well, my wife’s sleeping in my room, and I don’t want to bother her.” So I had to go next door to the next hotel to have some of their coffee.

Well, I walked into the other hotel, I went, “Wow, this is a pretty interesting old hotel.” And the guy said, “Yes, sir, it was built in 1912; here’s the history.” So he gave me this booklet to read. Well, the next time that I’m there, I might want to stay in this hotel, because famous people like King Saud have stayed in that hotel. And I took the time to read the whole thing. I had spent a few bucks to see a few sites, but when you go see the U.S.S. Constitution and Bunker Hill, it’s free. It doesn’t cost a penny. So I got go on this. Well, this is the U.S.S Cassian Young; it’s a DD793 World War II destroyer. And it’s amazing how little space those guys had to work in. But it was really cool. I didn’t stay all that long, but this is a promotion piece. Well, if you want to go to Boston, and if you want to find out about stuff, can you write or call, and will they send you their brochure? Is that a part of their communication thing?

So how much money gets spent in printing…all of this stuff verses newspaper is general printing, maybe, a bigger deal? Well, how do we track it? How do we know if your company spends money on calling cards and flyers, and brochures? By the way, do Flyers need to be on this list? If you hand out a thousand flyers, that’s mass communication. This is from the mini bar, no that’s turner. This is from the table top from one of the restaurants. Is that effective advertising, to put that in my room?

{Did you take this from the restaurant?}

No, this is from the room. We cleaned out the room; there wasn’t anything left, including the soap and shampoos.

[Did you take the ashtrays? Oh, wait, they don’t have those anymore.]

No there weren’t any ashtrays. And we didn’t take the robes, because you will get billed. They had beautiful robes, though, just like in the movie Lost in Translation. I mean, it had a nice embroidered “Westin” on the collar, and a little fancy thing, here, that said, “Westin.” So you’d walk down to the pool going, “I feel like a rich dude.”

And I stole this too… “Best of Boston 99,” which was a spa and salon. And I met a gal whose full-time job was simply to do facials and makeup stuff. So these wealthy people come in, and she’s on call. She doesn’t work there necessarily every day or whatever. And she lives very close to where she works. So they would tell her when her appointments were. And sometimes it’s like, “Can you come right over to do one now, because this lady’s waiting.” But I thought that was kind of interesting. We ate, and this is kind of mucked up in the front, but this is America’s oldest continually operated restaurant, Ye Old Oyster Bar. When we were sitting in the Union Oyster Bar, I thought to myself, “Well, this is cool…” Well, then when I read this printed piece that they gave us, it talked about how that particular stall that we were sitting in was used by the wife’s of John Hancock, Paul Revere to sew bandages during the revolutionary war. They would meet everyday and bring their cloth stripes and their thread and needles and sew bandages. And I thought, “Well, that’s cool…” By the way, JFK had eaten dinner there many times as well.

And this is a presentation called “The whites of their eyes” Notice how big they make the phone number there for old guys like me. Are a lot of people who travel and do tourism stuff older? Yeah. Anyway, that was some pretty fun stuff that I thought I’d bring in.

This is a “Join our Cheers VIP Program Today.” And I got this from the restaurant, but they want you to join a club, so to speak, and they offer benefits, what you get and what you do. By the way, they promised you, if you went into the Trolley Store, where they sell tickets, they promise you a free souvenir gift. And what do you think the gift was, a hat or a t-shirt? They said we sell hats, t-shirts and whatnot. But what do you think your free souvenir gift is?

{_________________}

Yeah, my guess is that it’s a button. I didn’t go in and ask for it, but yeah…it’s probably something that didn’t cost much.

All right, what else do we need to put on the media list? We talked about radio; we talked about outdoor, we talked about transit; and the other day we talked about signage, and we talked about newspaper. The advantage of newspaper is that it’s fairly inexpensive. You can buy a regional addition. You can buy just for the southwest and the western suburbs. You don’t have to have their whole circulation.

{The Internet.}

Yes, the Internet…we put that up on the board the other day, because we ran out of time. But the Internet is huge and growing…and growing, and growing, and growing. And we’re still not sure how effective it is. But 3M will tell you that for many of their clients…and they’re selling to businesses who use their product, and their products, right. Business people are very good about the Internet, and they want a lot of information. Once you log on to the 3M site, and once you visit the pharmaceuticals section, we know that you’ve checked it out, and we know who you are. Will a salesman call? Sometimes, but at a minimum, they’re probably going to send you something in the mail.

So they use it as a way of doing what? It’s like pulling people out of the woodwork. So how much does that cost them? Sometimes, though, to put a Web site together can be expensive. My bother-in-law, who has a used tire business has a website and he does sell some things from his site. And some people find out about his used tire business through the website. But he said that he didn’t expect this to cover his costs. He said that he needs it at some point to cover most of his costs. But every year, it costs more and more. The first year, he spend $12,000, and the next year he spent $18,000; the next year he spend $22,000, and he’ll probably spend $28,000 this year. So he might make $10,000 in profit, and he gets a certain amount of exposure because of it. But he knows how many people hit his site.

Now, if calls them on the phone or if he sends them back, or if the system automatically sends something back to them…and we call that what, a donut, where it automatically sends them something back. But it’s hard to measure. It’s kind of like the ad specialties; how do I measure the value when I give you an Inver Hills pen. But if you give that pen to someone else, and they end up coming to Inver Hills because of that pen, that makes it a good value, but it’s hard to measure.

So some of these are easy to measure. Newspaper is easy to measure. If you run an ad, and if somebody calls that number, it worked. Let’s put the Yellow Pages up there. The beauty of the Yellow Pages is that I can put a number in the ad, and it’s only available in that ad for that phone book. So I could even see which one works best ATT or the Yellow Pages, which are big competitors now. Should I be in the Suburban Yellow Pages or should I be in the regular, or should I be in the business-to-business directory. Well, you can test this. And, indeed, they have case studies where those sales reps will prove that their media is effective. And there’s certain business that if your not in the Yellow Pages, you’re not in business, right. Being in the Yellow Pages for a lot of business is saying what? We’re open for business. Now, my wife’s business…she doesn’t even have an ad, she doesn’t even have a business phone. She has a personal line coming into her business, so she doesn’t get any listing. By the way, a business phone cost more, doesn’t it. But with that, you get a listing. It’s small, it’s very small, but at least your listed. Signs For Sail…if you were to look it up today, is there a phone number for it anywhere? No, I’m printing my card, and I’ve given my number out to a few people, but my business is legitimate when I have a legitimate phone and a listing. And that’s how some people will say, hey, when you are a legitimate business and you have a listing, then I’ll do business with you. But in the meantime, you’re just a guy who gave me a card and a phone number.

But the Yellow Pages for a retail business…if you’re a restaurant, you have to be everywhere, and anywhere a client might think to find your phone number. What does it cost to be in the Yellow Pages? A lot, it’s not cheap. So check out some costs on at least one or two media for your project. What would it cost; if I might think that I need to have a radio ad or a newspaper ad, at least find out one or two costs, so you can get an idea for what those costs are.

We talked about magazines the other day, but not in any detail. Magazines are wonderful, because we get full color, right. So this is an example of magazine quality. That’s a nice glossy paper. And by the way, they make this glossy paper in Duluth. The printing plant is just to the right as you come down the hill. But the Sunday paper inserts are made up at that plant, and that’s all they make. It’s a clay based paper that is kind of expensive. The advantage of a magazine is that they come out weekly, bimonthly, or monthly, and it stays. How many of you have ever been to a antique shop and have seen ads for companies that aren’t even in existence anymore in an old Post or Look magazine. So, there’s a lot of what we call pass-along readership. So you might advertise in a magazine with a circulation of only 100,000, but 10,000 of those are doctor’s offices, a lot of people are going to see that ad, aren’t they. So you have to think that all through. By the way, I love to give the Skyway magazine, because they always say what their circulation is. And I’ve watched those guys replace those issues every week. They might tell you that they circulated 118,000. But every week the ones that don’t get taken get put in the garbage. I’ve watched those guys put new ones out and throw the old ones away. And my ex-wife, who was ecologist, says they should be recycling. But they’re telling people that they circulate so many, but they really don’t circulate that many. Now, if some of those end up in the men’s sauna or on the bus seat, then there is some pass-along value, but they need to be very clear about that.

Neagle, with their outdoor, can tell you exactly what their traffic is. I mean, they have the traffic counts for each road, right. Radio is a little fuzzy; I mean I was in radio for a fair amount of time, and I don’t hear any ads. I’m focused on driving. I hear noise. So I might be turned on, but I’m not tuned in. Magazines, though, are big. They are very expensive to run, and they require a long lead-time. I had a client who wanted to advertise in Playboy; we had to have all the graphics ready 3 months in advance. By the way, he wanted to be in the Minnesota regional issue of Playboy. So you don’t have to be in Playboy nationally for people to see your ad. But people will think that you’re advertising nationally. The client that I did the research for was Merrill’s For Men; he had a clothing store in the IDS Center. And he was trying to reach lawyers and people who worked downtown, and that made good sense for him.

Magazines can be segmented. Are there men’s magazines; are there women’s magazines, are there kid’s magazines, and magazines for flying, hobbies, and dogs. One of my former students who had a company in Eagan, sent out a news magazine to model airplane buffs who buy and build model airplanes. So he knew everyone and had a huge mailing list. So you can reach certain audiences via these segmentations.

What else do we have?

{Other.}

Yeah, and that would include what? It used to include ad specialties, but now it isn’t. How about Larry’s lights…the searchlights. How about advertising in the bathrooms. By the way, if I have men who are going to the john and they had too much to drink, and I have a cab company, do I want to communicate to them? Because maybe they’ve been to the john 3 times in the last twelve minutes, and maybe it’s time to get a cab ride home. And I’ve seen some pretty good ones over the years on that exact same subject. And some of them were done by whom? MADD, mother’s against drunk driving. In other words, you’re standing there relieving yourself, you’ve been drinking beer all night, and the ad is saying to you “Walk Home, Have the Bartender Call You a Cab, or if you cannot afford that, call us and we will pay your fare.” That’s pretty powerful. Some of these media, when they are properly done, can be pretty powerful.

By the way, we almost lost radio. Radio was born in the 1900s, and in 1948 what was born? TV, and when TV came out, all the advertisers who were doing radio ditched. So WCCO, which used to stand for Washburn Crosby Company. And they bought the airing rights from the F.C.C. to have a radio station. Well, Betty Crocker was talking to people on the radio wasn’t she. And that was a really smart thing for them to do. Anyway, when radio was big, we had all of these performers doing shows, and it was great. You could be on the Colgate Palmolive Theater Show; there was Amos and Andy, and there were all of these great shows. And what was that big Halloween prank that Orson Wells did? Oh, “War of the Worlds.” Well, anyway, when TV came out, all of those advertisers jumped ship, because TV is more powerful, right. Now, you can show a picture and an image and not just sound. And TV is more national, but somewhat local, because you can buy ads just on WCCO. So radio almost died. Well, what saved radio?

[Rock and Roll]

Yeah, rock and roll and my favorite James Brown, “I feel good/do do do/” Elvis did not create rock and roll, did he. Elvis stole rock and roll. But it was rock and roll who saved radio, because who listens to rock and roll? Kids do, and who has the most amount of spendable money in their pockets? If we were to find out how much money each of you have, I’ll bet you that each one of you have more cash on than I do. But high school kids are living at home and how much of their money do they spend? What comes in goes out, right. Those kids will spend 100% of almost all the money they get. However, some save for education and for other reasons, but typically those kids will spend a pretty high percentage of the money they have. So that’s a great audience. By the way, are there stations today that you guys listen to that I would never listen to? Yeah, and KQRS is probably one of them. My daughter listens to KDWB, and I like to find out what’s going on KDWB sometimes. When I was growing up, I listened to WDGY, and they were the big one. Then they went country; does anyone listen to country in here?

So radio is very segmentable, where you can reach a very specific audience. You can be on Hispanic stations and all that. I like radio, it’s kind of neat. And you can do it, actually, pretty cheap. By the way, what’s the biggest published magazine in America?

{National Geographic}

Actually, National Geographic is pretty limited. It’s very expensive. It’s the very wealthy who get it.

{The Enquirer?}

Actually, the Enquirer doesn’t really sell that many copies, which is good to know, because most people aren’t that dumb.

[Time or Newsweek?]

You might think Time or Newsweek, and their very big. And, of course Time and Newsweek have international divisions, don’t they, as do Playboy. And did you know that Hustler is printed in every language on Earth? No, actually, it’s Playboy that is printed in every language on Earth.

{Reader’s Digest}

Yep, it’s the Reader’s Digest, and has been and will continue to be number one for many many years to come. Because their stories are short, you can get in and out of it quickly. A lot of doctors subscribe to it. But they have the biggest circulation in America. Although Conde Nast rules the world in the magazine line.

By the way, if my daughter were to be in an ad in any one of these big magazines, it would be a big thing. She was going to get that Target ad, which was going to go into the newspaper supplements and magazine ads. And that would have been a big thing. And they spent a lot of money shooting those ads. So magazines can be pretty expensive.

Well, our list is almost complete, but what else can I put up here?

{Movies?}

Ok, we talked about event marketing and movies. But movies are a separate category, isn’t it. And in the old days, it was considered as a part of “other” but now that industry is huge, isn’t it. And it’s not just in America, is it. It’s global. So that’s a big one. I like those ads on the ski lifts. As you’re riding up the chair lift, you see an ad for Chap Stick, or for cars or trucks. I always thought that was kind of neat, but that falls under the other category.

{Signage on Buildings}

In the earlier days that’s how out door really got started. And, now, outdoor is just in a frame. And today, it’s either a painted bulletin made of vinyl which is lit inside. Neagle got out of the business, by the way, when he saw how much money he needed to upgrade his sign system. By the way, eventually my Signs For Sale business will be electronic. It won’t just be a printed sign, it will be electronic.

Are we passed time?