story

Crocodiles and free pizza

January 23, 2010 | 8 Comments

“With every drink order, you get a free pizza.”

It sounds crazy. Or at least backwards.

But that’s the deal at Crocodile Lounge in the Gramercy / East Village neighborhood of New York City. With every single drink order, you get a ticket for a free pizza. All the time.

It’s not just a story, it’s a story that spreads. Friends tell friends. Friends bring friends.

They tweet about it.

They Yelp about it.

They blog about it. A lot. Photo credit by Smack Factor.

They check in on Foursquare.
.

Crocodile Lounge isn’t even active in social media themselves. They gave their fans a story that is easy to explain and fun to tell and the fans are carrying the message in person and online.

People are incredulous when you tell them about the free pizza per drink deal. “That’s impossible?! How do they make any money?”.

This only helps the story to spread, of course.

For you spreadsheet and ROI jockeys (I used to be one) here is my take on the short version of how it works (I’ll guess conservatively on the #’s):

Costs
The two guys who make pizzas all night probably make $10 / hour plus tips. Call it 10 hours per day * $10 / hour * two guys = $200.
Dough is cheap. The raw materials to make all the pizzas in a night probably costs about $200.

So, being conservative, the incremental cost of Crocodile offering free pizza is $400 per night.

Revenue
A tap beer is about $5.
Cost to the bar = less than $1.

So at a profit of $4 per beer, once the free pizza gimmick brings in an incremental 100 drinks per night, it’s now making money, at a very high profit margin.

Plus all the word of mouth, social mentions and positive press.

Once you do the math, it’s no longer crazy. It’s not backwards. It’s brilliant.

[NB: They also have two skee ball lanes in back. Here's the throwdown. I can beat any of my readers in skee ball. If I lose, I'll buy you a pizza.]

What crazy and backwards idea can think up for your business? What story can you give your fans to tell?

That's some strong cheddar

January 21, 2010 | 2 Comments

One video, two lessons.

1) Never give up. (Which is different than strategic quitting, as outlined in The Dip.)
2) If you’re going to make ads, don’t drone on about your features, low price or celebrity endorsers. Tell a story. Make us laugh. Make it memorable and remarkable so we want to tell others (like I just did).

How many car commercials have you seen where the car winds up a curvy mountain road while displaying the latest price. Hundreds? Thousands?

Contrast that with this. It’s impossible to watch this video and not smile, laugh AND remember the brand message.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go order some Nolan’s Cheddar.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Precious Moments

January 9, 2010 | 6 Comments

At the end of a long day, you’re heading back to your hotel room. Alone in the elevator, you push the button for floor 26 and want nothing more than room service and maybe a shower before working a few more hours. Before the elevator door closes, a hand slices past the sensor and the doors reopen.

Richard Branson gets on and clicks floor 27.

What do you say?

(Replace Branson with Steve Jobs, Marissa Mayer, Russell Simmons or the person you would most like to meet, either professionally or personally.)

This used to be called having your elevator pitch ready. The truth is, most people don’t want to be pitched, although Sir Richard may be the exception.

Still, it’s important to be able to make the most of this precious moment.

How do you introduce yourself? What do you say after that? Is it a statement or a question? Do you praise them? Talk about yourself? Ask them an interesting question? Tell a joke?

The doors just closed. What do you say?

Add your thoughts in the comments. I’m really interested in what you all think on this one. Don’t forget to include who you would want to meet.

photo credit: Chris Heuer

50 Extraordinary Billboards

October 17, 2009 | 1 Comment

Interruption marketing rarely works. Permission marketing is always better.

I honestly believe that most people can’t remember a single billboard they saw in the last week.

Can you?

What if you saw these billboards? Whether you want to buy the product or not, would you at least point it out to anyone else in your vehicle? Would you tell your friends?

[I think some are probably Photoshopped but most are real.]

Full list of all 50 on Johnson Koh’s blog here.

Pantene's Extraordinary Ad

October 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Three more magazines folded last week, including Gourmet, one of my favorites.

Traditional advertising is dying.

This isn’t traditional advertising.

How easy do you make it?

October 11, 2009 | 3 Comments

Equinox, a national chain of health clubs, understands that that thrilled members help spread their story.

The economics of health clubs is fairly simple. The many paying members who belong but don’t frequent the clubs subsidize the few that go often. Just like airlines oversell flights, health clubs oversell workouts. If even half the members of any given health club showed up at the same time, gridlock would ensue.

To compete, top health clubs invest heavily in flashy marketing and fancy club amenities designed to sell as many memberships as possible but beyond that, don’t go out of their way to encourage usage.

Enter Equinox. Instead of offering better soap in the locker rooms, Equinox proactively invested in the development of a super slick iPhone app and a mobile website that allows members to:

Equinox not only made it easy for customers to use their clubs, they gave members a story to tell and made it easy for them to tell it. Brilliant.

How easy do you make it for your customers to use your product or service or tell your story?

Anyone need a cape?

July 25, 2009 | 2 Comments

A great example of one store who really understands marketing.

The typography.

The store layout.

The consistent story.

The treatment of customers like the superheros.

The absence of fear of lawsuits claiming that their invisibility paint doesn’t really make you invisible.

The fact that the the store is a clever front for the non-profit (youth orientated) creative writing and tutoring center, 826NYC. To enter 826NYC, you actually have to go through a swinging bookcase in the BBS store. Proceeds from the BBS store fund 826NYC directly to help young people with their creative writing skills.

Awesome. I know where I’m buying my next cape.

Image credit: dels from a tribe called next.

Book Drips – What NASA didn't tell you

July 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Think your project is difficult?

Think your boss is demanding?

Think the deadlines you’ve been given are unrealistic?

Imagine working for NASA 41 years ago and John F. Kennedy telling you to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to earth.

Most of the 40th anniversary coverage has focused on the success and wonder of the historic event, and rightfully so, but in a new and thrilling book, Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon, author Craig Nelson outlines the full story, the good and the bad, of the space and missile race.

Some nuggets you may not have known: (directly from Rocket Men)

- The thirty-story-high Apollo 11-Saturn V spaceship had over 6 million parts, which meant that under NASA’s rigorous instance of 99.9% reliability, as many as 6,000 could fail.

- The nearly 1 million spectators who began gathering at Cape Kennedy for launch on July 16th, 1969, were kept at least 3.5 miles away from the pad because, in an explosion, hundred-pound chunks of shrapnel would be hurled in a 3-mile radius with 4/5 the power of an atomic bomb.

- When President Kennedy proposed a moon landing within a decade as the most effective way to take the lead in the space race after the shocking Soviet achievements of Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin’s first manned orbit, even NASA’s most zealous engineers were aghast.

- The astronauts’ final breakfast on earth was steak and eggs. Why? Low in fiber and low in waste.

- The lunar samples brought back to earth by the Apollo missions revealed the moon’s origins.

- NASA designers had neglected to place a handle on the Eagle’s outside door, which meant that Armstrong and Aldrin had to make sure to leave it open while they walked on the Moon.

- When Neil Armstrong was asked by a reporter what one extra item he would take with him, his dry humor shone through. “More fuel.”

These and more amazing details are revealed in Rocket Men as Craig Nelson takes the reader inside the journey that changed the world. I highly recommend this book to not only space geeks and history buffs but anyone who wants a deeper look into the story behind the first Moon landing.

[Disclosures: I know the author Craig Nelson well and consider him a good friend. The link above is an Amazon affiliate link.]

What you don't need

July 19, 2009 | 3 Comments

Don’t listen to all the people who tell you what you need.

You don’t need a million dollars in funding.

You don’t need a fancy building.

You don’t need a high-foot traffic spot on just the right corner.

You don’t need expensive ads.

You don’t need a celebrity spokesperson.

You don’t need neon signs.

Last night, on the recommendation of @JamesFowlkes, we went for some authentic Philly cheesesteaks at Dallesandro’s, the legendary dive located on a nondescript corner in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia.

The pictures below tell Allessandro’s story. They have all they need:

Service:
Polite but quick

Seating:
Seven barstools and some haphazard card tables and folding chairs (it was nice so we took our sandwiches to the grassy field across the street)

Product:
A delicious (oversized) cheesesteak.

The Zagat sign is from 2000-2001 but as we waiting for our order, we talked to the people in line next to us. The woman hadn’t been to Dallessandros for 40 years and was thrilled to be back.

They usually have a line out the door and make money hand over greasy fist. If they wanted to expand, they certainly could have but they decided to stay small, which is fine.

You don’t need much.

It’s OK to start small.

The important thing is to start.

Stacy's scraps

July 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Stacy Madison and Mark Andrus were fresh out of graduate school and wanted to open a restaurant in downtown Boston, but the zeroes on their student loan debt and a lack of capital put a hold on that dream.

So they bought and opened a food cart, serving healthy sandwiches on rolled up pita bread. The cart was popular and lines grew longer everyday.

THIS was the magic moment. And Stacy and Mark didn’t even know it at the time.

Stacy and Mark decided to find a way to keep the customers waiting in line happy. So they baked the fresh pita bread into different flavored chips. The customers loved the chips and convinced Stacy and Mark to sell them in stores.

Stacy’s Pita Chip company was born.

By 2006, Stacy’s was generating about $60 million dollars a year in revenue and was sold to PepsiCo.

We can all learn a lot from Stacy & Mark:
1) If there is a roadblock to your dreams, you can either jump over it, plow through it or change course.
2) Keep your customers happy. The million dollar business wasn’t in the pita sandwiches, it was in the simple chips they gave customers waiting in line.
3) Listen to your customers. They said the chips would sell in stores. They were right.
4) 100 true fans will get you 1,000. 1,000 true fans will get you a million.

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