Phil Bernstein – Page 30 – Phil Bernstein's Advertising, Marketing, and Sales Training Blog

Swipe-and-Deploy Marketing: Shelter Borrows From the Car Dealers

I’m one of those who’s come to the conclusion that there are no new ideas. Sometimes when you’re looking for a hook, the most “creative” thing you can do is move a technique from one industry to another.

Multnomah County Animal Services in Oregon, recognizing the fact that there is more demand for kittens than for full-grown cats, has come up with a nice little bit of swipe-and deploy: the “Certified Pre-Owned Cats” campaign.

With hundreds of cats crowding the Troutdale shelter, the county plans, effective immediately, to temporarily eliminate adoption fees for mature cats (over one year old). The “Certified Pre-Owned Cats” campaign aims to place as many cats in homes as possible in the upcoming summer months.

Multnomah County took the concept a step further with this inspired touch:

All Certified Pre-Owned Cats adopted from the shelter come with a free “multi-point inspection”: the cats have received a complete health exam, all their current vaccinations and a microchip, and have also been spayed or neutered.

There’s nothing particularly newsworthy about an overcrowded shelter; and because the older a cat gets, the less likely it is to be adopted, reduced-fee adoptions for older animals are fairly common. Meanwhile, certified pre-owned programs are a-dime-a-dozen in the car business.

But when an animal shelter borrows the certified pre-owned concept from the car business, it becomes a “man bites cat” story.

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Are You There, Holiday Inn? It’s Me — Phil

Most recent books on marketing and customer service recommend that companies monitor what’s being said about them on the Internet, and respond quickly to unhappy customers who express themselves there.

Some companies are doing a great job of this. Today I’m going to find out if Holiday Inn is one of them. This post is going up on Friday after noon — I will update it if I get a response. Here goes:

Dear Holiday Inn,

I just completed a stay at your Sioux Falls City Centre location, and I have a bone to pick with you. Here it is:

You promise free “high speed internet access”. In reality, there are two levels — “basic” access, in which the access is free, but is anything but high-speed — the connection is slower than dial-up. There is also a “premium level” that is supposed to be much faster.

On Thursday evening, I finally broke down, pulled out my credit card, and paid $8.95 for the “premium level.” It was just as slow as the free version. After 20 minutes on the phone with Ibahn Tech Support and another half hour of rebooting, I concluded that it wasn’t going to get any better, so I went down to the front desk to ask for my money back

There, your front desk people told me that:

1. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. We usually tell people not to pay for the upgrade.”

2. They didn’t know how to give me a refund.

3. The manager (no need to publicly embarrass him by naming him here, but his first name is Tom) wasn’t in, and they didn’t know when he was coming back. “He might be in tomorrow, but he might be on vacation. We don’t really know.” They suggested calling and leaving a voice mail.

That’s when it got really interesting. The manager’s outgoing message voice mail message said (I’m paraphrasing here)

Today is Thursday, and I’ll be out of the office this afternoon and evening. I’ll be back on Friday, so please don’t leave a message — just call back tomorrow.

I must admit, I’ve never heard that one before.

Rather than inconveniencing him by expecting him to call me back, I thought I’d try to reach someone who cared. Here’s what I’d like to suggest that you have your local managers do:

1. Empower your employees to make an $8.95 decision without having to seek help.

2. Have a manager available, or at least tell them when he/she will be back.

3. Take the trouble to accept messages, promise to call back, and do so. Don’t make your customers do all the work.

4. Either have decent free wi-fi, or skip the free stuff and just charge for a good connection. Don’t bait and switch.

And, Holiday Inn? One more thing:

I’d like my $8.95 back.

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Does Sports Talk Radio Work a Little Too Well?

I spent fifteen years selling radio advertising for a 7-station group that included a variety of formats. Although I was expected to sell all of them (and did, thank you very much), I came to believe that pound-for-pound, my two news/talk stations were much more effective advertising vehicles than my music stations.

The advertising agencies were more concerned with ratings, and buying the market at a certain cost-per point. But the clients who carefully measured response to their advertising found that they got results from news/talk that were well out-of-proportion to what Arbitron’s numbers would have predicted.

A look at why that might be comes from an English study of drivers done by the Transport Research Laboratory. According to the Telegraph, [hat tip to Radio-Info for bringing this to my attention] sports radio listeners’ reaction times behind the wheel were similar to those of drunk drivers.

Reactions can be slowed by up to 20 per cent scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) found – adding a six metre stopping time if a car is travelling at 70mph.

The report said: “To put this into context, this increase in distance travelled is 10 per cent further than the additional stopping distance when driving with a blood alcohol level at the UK legal limit (80mg/ml).

The number of incidents of hard breaking at the last minute almost doubled when motorists were listening to sports commentary.

Bad news for public safety, but great news for the format’s ad sales department — people are paying awfully close attention to what’s on.

I never had a sports station, but I did have a Progressive Talk station — the audience was relatively small but it was passionate, and the advertisers got great results. On the other side of the dial, Rush Limbaugh and Dr. Laura also really delivered. Agency buyers staring at rankers never understood that, but my results-measuring direct clients did.

The lesson for advertisers seems to be the same: people don’t put talk radio on in the background — if it’s on, they listen.

Sometimes, perhaps, a little too hard.

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An Advertising Sales Staff I Wouldn’t Want to Manage

Looking to break into the fast-paced, rewarding world of advertising sales? You could start your career — and probably finish it — with this new niche publication.

According to the New York Times, Al Qaeda has launched an English-language magazine.

A PDF of the magazine — the first known English-language publication thought to be produced by the Yemen-based terrorist group — began circulating on the Internet on Wednesday. The magazine’s goal is to recruit disaffected Muslims in the United States, Canada, Britain and other English-speaking countries.

To apply, send your resume and cover letter to www.fbi.gov.

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A Friendly Copywriting Reminder

If you only have one store, and your prospect is hearing your commercial on a radio 25 miles away…

You are not “conveniently located”.

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