Rewarding your best customers while boosting your sales

Nowadays sports fans have a multitude of options available to them for following their favourite team. Online game-trackers providing real time play-by-play, HD television and internet radio feeds. Sports franchises themselves are probably most worried about the emergence of HDTV because the product is so good that it is almost like being in reasonable seats at the game. That means they need to find a way to make the game experience that much better to encourage fans to continue to buy tickets for the real deal.

Like a franchise rewards their top players with long-term contracts, they also need to look at ways to reward their best customers, season ticket holders.

A football/soccer team in Italy has come up with a brilliant way to thank their best fans while at the same time probably create a large rush for merchandise. Recently Parma Football Club revealed their kits (or uniforms as us North Americans call them) for the upcoming 2012/13 season.




 

See those faint grey lines on the white part of the jersey? Those are the names of every single season ticket holder. Genius. What better way to thank your fans than having your players wear their name in games. I guarantee they will sell quite a few jerseys, especially to the season ticket holders. 

Confusing your customers

To write, direct, and produce a 30 second television commercial is expensive, then you get into placing it on television and the costs continue to rise higher and higher.

So why would you waste your companies advertising dollars on something that doesn't explain a competitive advantage of yours, or even really explain what your offering your customers.

Exhibit A: Ramada worldwide




At least there is an offer in the second ad that may help explain what the advertisement is for. What is their message supposed to be though? "Do your thing"
Do you get a lot of scottish kilt wearing business people that like to ride bulls as guests at your hotel? Is that the niche market your targeting with these ads? Because to me you seem to be advertising to just-graduated frat college people that are starting out in the business world and want somewhere they can crash after a party. If that is the message, well then I guess well done. But to me instead of making a couple of crappy 15 second ads, why not create a full 30 second ad that will actually grab peoples attention and tell them why they should stay at your hotel.

Compare that to the Holiday Inn Express commercials, which use the same sort of angle in their ads of not talking about the hotel but rather the person that would stay in it. However, Holiday Inn Express does a lot better job of getting across the message of why or who would stay at their hotels - Smart people. They are telling their audience that their hotel is a no brainer.



The Holiday Inn Express team obviously spends a lot more money on creating their commercials but they are getting a lot more return on their investment than Ramada is in my opinion.

Crying wolf

How often do you see a car advertisement that doesn't tout "Best Deals of the Year", "Sale on Now" or "Now is the time to buy". In fact, there is even a radio ad playing right now that i've heard multiple times that goes a little something like this:

"Sometimes with all the car ads saying "Now is the time to buy" it can be tough to know when the best time is to buy. But this time we mean it, now is the time to get to your Mazda dealer!"

Really? That's what you came up with?

People are completely numb and dull to these car advertising tactics nowadays - they are old and played out. The car companies have cried wolf one too many times and the consumer is onto their tactics. Maybe these have worked in the past but if a company like GM or Chrysler want to actually start gaining traction in the market place maybe they should take a drastic look at their marketing/promotions ideas and come up with something creative for once instead of the tired, old status quo.

The new age consumer is much more cogniscent of marketing, especially old school tactics that companies have been running out for decades. I can't wait for the follow up commercial that touts "Employee pricing on now".

"But people come to our lots when we say sale"

Well maybe you should start from the bottom up and start creating better cars that people enjoy, don't get frustrated with, and will tell all their friends about. Create a long term sales, marketing and production strategy instead of letting your production/design fully determine the marketing strategy.

Just a thought. But what do I know, i'm only a consumer.

Lamp post on steroids

This is what happens when your lamp post stops playing by the rules and starts shoving needles into it's ass.

Although in this case the shot of choice seems to be caffeine. It's a great creative example from the folks at Cossette West in Vancouver. You have to give credit to whoever thought up this idea, because this is definately thinking way outside the traditional box. A quick google image search didn't return any other examples of using lamp posts in such a way, and it also told me that I was way behind on this story as the image had been used in at least a dozen other blogs. Hmm maybe that's why no one reads my blog. Anyways kudos to the creatives that came up with this idea and Kudos to Vancouver for allowing it to be done. I'm sure it was very effective for passersby, but I wonder if it worked as well on people driving by. I live in the area and drive by that corner once a week, for the life of me I can't remember seeing it. Props to Vancity Buzz blog for the post.

GM to turn tides from Blue to Green?

Let me start by saying this isn't confirmed, nor does it sound like its anywhere near officially occuring for GM, but according to Marketing News a source has told them that GM is considering switching the blue background of their logo to green.

Firstly, I think this is a bad idea because I don't see GM being able to back up this change, which would in essence symbolize the movement to a greener, more efficient car company. There is a scene in the hilarious tv sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Dennis attempts to become an environmentalist by showing up at a dump in a cashmere sweater and Range Rover to help people recycle products that have been thrown away. He is immediately called out by the environmentalists as a part-time enviro and ridiculed.

That is how I see that GM experiment working. Everyone would see right through the plan and they would be further ridiculed for trying to talk the talk without walking the walk.

Now, that being said, if GM were to switch their logo to green and then immediately back it up by putting the Volt and other seemingly green cars on the market then I think they would stand a better chance of pulling it off.

Check out It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia if you haven't already, definately better than another GM blog post from yours truly.

Hope floats

Reading through the various FastCompany postings and came across Barack Obama doing some more marketing work. Check out the new logo that will be floating around the U.S. and stamped on anything that is part of their stimulus package.

As strong as marketing is, apparently the new logo leant no help to the financial markets which dipped lower again today. Damn those financial people and their numbers! Come on! They've got a new logo, what more do you want?