Category: Dan Kennedy

What Business Are You Really In?

From Dan Kennedy’s recent book No B.S. Marketing to the Affluent:

An excellent lesson in selling a gift of any kind comes from the mail-order jeweler Karets and Facets, which target-markets to the mass affluent. A page of outstanding sales copy from the company’s catalog… is headlined “Guaranteed Gasp or Your Money Refunded.” This company understands that it isn’t in the jewelry business, but in the gasp business.

I’m in the attention-rental business. How about you?

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Layaway Comes to Real Estate

Sometimes innovation means going backwards. And sometimes it means moving an old concept to a new industry.

Much has been made lately about the return of the layaway plan — a long-out-of-fashion retail program in which an item is kept at the store while the customer makes payments on it. Until recently, the layaway had been almost completely replaced by the credit card; customers preferred plastic because they could get instant gratification.

The credit crunch has made layaway popular again — Kmart, which never dropped it, is now putting renewed emphasis on the program. Parent company Sears Holdings recently brought it back to Sears after a 20 year absence.

Now, with mortgages difficult to come by, real estate companies and home builders are marketing the concept. According to Business Week,

K. Hovnanian Homes and Beazer Homes are offering contracts that let purchasers deposit downpayment installments in a no-interest escrow account. (Buyers who back out of such plans will lose whatever they’ve accumulated.)

This is a terrific example of what Dan Kennedy and Bill Glazer call “Swipe-and-Deploy” marketing. As a concept, layaway is nothing new. But by moving the concept from traditional retail to real estate, a couple of enterprising companies are generating publicity, interest, and buyers.

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Request your free copy of Phil Bernstein’s white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

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Precisely-Targeted Advertising — Exhibit A

In the Men’s Room on the 300 level of the Rose Garden Arena in Portland — over a urinal — is a sign with this headline:

“You’re Back Again.”

The ad is for Flowmax, a pharmaceutical product for men with prostate-related urinary symptoms.

Dan Kennedy calls this “message-to-market match.” If you’re Flowmax, the people you’ll pay the most to talk to are men who need to pee. To reach those people — and only those people — you can’t do much better than the Rose Garden Men’s Room.

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Beware the Dancing Bear

In a recent interview, marketing guru Dan Kennedy was asked about various techniques — online and offline — that marketers use to get people to pay attention. Here’s his take:

“You’ve got to put people on a track with borders on it, that keeps them from wandering off in any direction, and moves them from beginning to end to a sale. If you show ’em a dancing bear, and the dancing bear causes them to keep moving forward along the path to a sale, then the dancing bear is a good thing… If they’re so fascinated with the dancing bear that they stop moving forward in the sales presentation just to enjoy the bear, then the bear is a bad thing.”

The interview took place several months ago, but Kennedy’s sentiments are especially timely coming on the heels of the national dancing bear festival that played out in Super Bowl TV commercials. From Suburban’s Trunk Monkey to Career Builders’ job-jungle schtick to whatever the heck was happening in the Go Daddy spot, the commercials sought to entertain first, and sell later.

For an event like the Super Bowl, the case can be made that the normal rules should be suspended — it’s the one time that everyone drops their filters and pays close attention. Perhaps the water-cooler talk that a funny Super Bowl ad generates is more valuable than a coherent sales message. And Budweiser and Coke have earned a free pass with decades of relentless marketing: everyone already knows exactly what their products are and how to buy them.

Your advertising, on the other hand, needs to sell first and entertain later. Humor, sound effects, snazzy graphics and promotions are only appropriate if they help compel your customers to do business with you. Be careful with the dancing bear.