Get To The Grapes

The bar at Crush 29

Eating out at a nice restaurant goes beyond the food.  It’s about the service, the wine list, the table, the chairs, and most importantly, the toilets.  Yes, the toilets.  The bathrooms at a restaurant tell me more about the place than almost anything else.   Fine dining, for me anyway, is about the overall experience.  The experience that will position that brand in my mind.   So many restaurants are so concerned with advertising and leather-bound menus that they forget the most imporant thing – the overall experience.  If you create an expectation, you need to deliver what you promise.  Want a good dining experience? Visit Crush 29 in Roseville, CA.  Clean, warm, welcoming and beautifully designed.  And that’s just the bathrooms.

Phelps celebrating more gold in the 4x100 relay.

I was driving home from San Francisco with a couple of Merlot team members and got in a conversation about Michael Phelps.  One of them mentioned the 100 relay (that I wanted to watch, but missed) and said it was amazing.  She said that everything from Jason Lezak, who literally seemed to add a motor to his feet in the last leg of the race, to watching every muscle in Michael Phelps’ body ripple with intense excitement from the win, was an incredible event that I just had to see.  So, she emailed me the link  (You’re welcome. Enjoy!), and yes, she was right, it was seriously one of the most exciting things I have ever watched. I have watched it at least three or four times.  The athleticism, the intensity, the overall excitement of American’s seizing the win was absolutely amazing!  So something that would be inaccessible after the event to most, is now accessible to all.  And whatever endorsements Michael Phelps would have had in previous years of TV-only coverage, should and will be ten-fold given the power of the Web.  Blogs, Twitter, the entire realm of social media is here to stay.  We as marketers need to embrace it, use it, and capitalize on it, because change provides us the opportunity to evolve.  And evolve we must, especially as marketers, in order to capitalize on all the opportunity that lies at our fingertips, literally.  We have had clients that question social media and their need to participate, and although true, not every company should, they are few and far between.  If you have something worth talking about, you better start talking.  I mean, blogging, Twittering… 

Chevrolet got quite a bit of attention with a billboard covered in cash.  To celebrate the launch of its new Aveo, Chevy covered a billboard in one-pence coins.  The billboard was unveiled in London’s New Oxford Street and caused quite a commotion.  Within 30 minutes, all 750,000+ pence (equaling the price of the car–’sort of…’) were gone. One Web site noted that 20,000 pence works out to a little less than $400 at today’s exchange rate, so even if a single person picked the entire billboard clean, it wouldn’t quite provide enough cash to actually buy one of the cars.  Interesting, yes.  Effective? I think that is still to be seen.  It was creative and did break through some clutter, but the real question of success depends on the objectives.  Was it press coverage, to simply build brand awareness in general, or to sell the car itself? 

Given that Chevrolet’s Les Turton said that “There have been some great car adverts before, but none that has stopped traffic and actually put money back into the motorist’s pocket so this is certainly a first.  We’re glad we’ve topped up lots of people’s wallets, purses and, in some cases, rucksacks, but it would have been nice for the billboard to last a little longer than 30 minutes.” 

My question is… is that a good thing or a bad thing?  If a billboard lasts for only 30 minutes, the cost of a car and the billboard space is quite an investment.  If the creative itself can’t stand alone (and if you take a look, it isn’t all that compelling), then once the pence is gone, what’s left?  A picture of a car that, with all due respect, resembles an upgraded Pinto, and certainly won’t stop traffic — pun intended– may not be the best PR and/or marketing strategy. 

Every promotion needs a goal, objective, strategy, tactics and most importantly, measurement.  They got some attention, but did it sell?  There is nothing more exhilarating as a marketing professional than to see creativity at work – to see it generate results.  However, agencies bringing home Clio’s, don’t always ’bring home sales.’ 

Therefore, if the strategy was press coverage, it got 30 minutes plus or minus (plus life on the Web which is where I found it); however, if it was for consumers to run out and buy the car, let’s just say I haven’t read about those successful results as of yet. Reaching the consumer is great, but which consumer and when, where, how and what action you are prompting them to take are paramount if you want the ROI most companies are looking to achieve.  So although I applaud the concept, I still question the return. 

I visited Disneyland this weekend (yes, you read that right, this weekend).  I know it is the worst time to visit any amusement park, especially Disneyland, but it was a ’visit the family’ trip, so the weekend it is…

For a company who’s mission statement is “To Make People Happy,” the ride attendants should try a little harder.  Let’s just say they weren’t the ‘happiest people,’ period.  Now the charactors (Mickey, Minnie, Goofy), were a different story all togehter – now those things are happy!

But for a company who preaches a “fanatical attention to detail,” it really needs to transcend the rides and decor. The rides made me ‘happy.’ The decor made me ‘happy.’  The people on the other hand… It needs to translate down to the people.  They simply weren’t all that friendly.  And when you promise the customer that you’re going to ‘make them happy,’ it has to be at every touch point, not just the joy of the ‘ride.’  The attendants at California Screamin’ were more interested in each other than any of their passengers.  And the woman who was screaming her script into the microphone while we were on our boat safari, was simply annoying.  She was loud, shrieking and obnoxious. Again, a company needs to live its brand promise.  And I doubt their brand promise includes annoyingly loud 20-somethings screaming into microphones with a scripted laugh that was anything but natural. 

Now for the real ‘dirt.’  To be honest, there really wasn’t that much of it.  There were thousands and thousands of people at Disneyland, and I don’t think I saw one piece of trash on the ground.  They really kept the park amazingly clean.  For a company that caters to kids (big and small alike), you have to put the parents at ease.  And a clean park, makes you feel as though it’s a safe park.  And for parents (me being a new parent of a four month old), safety is paramount. So, if they would spend as much time training their ‘cast’ as they do their janitors, I think we would have truly enjoyed what really should be the ‘happiest place on earth.’