PR 101

Six words that should never be uttered in any planning meeting are the following: “You know what would be cool?” I suspect that’s how the current debacle started for my hometown Milwaukee Brewers. What I am sure someone thought was a cool promotion instead made the Brewers the target of a lot of angry fans and the subject of a lot of jokes.

What the Brewers did and didn’t do is also a lesson for any marketer who has an idea that seems to be a surefire winner. I am willing to bet no one in planning the promotion that backfired asked “what if … goes wrong.” Until you think something through from every angle, you are asking for trouble. As the Chinese military thinker Sun Tzu said: “The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand.”

Here’s what happened to the Brewers. As a promotion, the team placed 1,400 statues of mascot Bernie Brewer across Wisconsin parks early Tuesday morning. Some of the statues had a prize attached, including ticket vouchers, player autographs, and merchandise.

The idea was Bernie would tweet clues to the location of each statue so fans could find them. Under the rules, the contest was to begin at 7 a.m. People were supposed to take only one of the statutes. It didn’t work out that way.

Instead, people were grabbing as many as possible. There were reports of people sleeping in their cars overnight near parks where the statutes were to be placed. One woman tweeted she had taken over three dozen. People were trying to sell the statutes on EBay and Craigslist. This caused a lot of angry comments from people who tried to follow the rules.

Clearly no one at the Brewers thought this thing through. This is a clear case I feel of “you know what would be cool?” No one in the meeting asked the “what if fans get greedy and take more than one” question.  It’s a cliché, but it’s true: “hope for the best, but plan for the worst.”

There are hundreds of comments on social media sites posted by angry fans. The story went viral. I read a lot of the comments. People are really angry or laughing at the Brewers. Neither is good. The fact that the Brewers insisted that promotion went mostly okay shows me they don’t understand the power of social media.

Where the Brewers failed was not taking human nature into account. You announce you are giving away for free something people want they are going to find ways to game the system. Once the idea of the giveaway was decided on, the next topic of discussion should have been how to prevent the hoarding.

Brewers spokesman said the promotion went well with the exception of “some isolated” incidents. Wrong. They should have apologized profusely. That’s crisis communications 101.

What should the Brewers have done, or more accurately what would I have done?

First, there would have been no actual tickets, merchandise or autographed items in the statues if I were running things. What there would have been were vouchers for those items. Stamped on each voucher would be the words “One Prize Per Address or Family.” No, it wouldn’t have completely stopped the hoarding. But it would have cut down on it.

Second, I would have implanted a locator chip in each Bernie statue. Once I saw that more than Bernie was in one location, I would have noted the IDs on the chips (yes, the technology exists.) Whoever brought any of those hoarded statues in for redemption would have been disqualified automatically.

Third, to prevent anyone from selling the statutes on EBay or Craigslist, I would make it very public that the statutes can be purchased from the Brewers for $48. That would kill that market.

Fourth, I would have made those statues a heck of lot harder to find. Scavenger hunts are not supposed to be easy.

Now it is true that the people who thought they would corner the Bernie Brewer statue market are not particularly ethical or honest. But that’s human nature.

The failure was with the Brewers and their planning. You have to think these things through. It is why the first thing JJC Communications LLC does with a new client is an analysis what could go right and what could wrong. If you only do one of those, you end up with a lot of angry fans and people laughing at you.

If you want to learn more about how to such an analysis, let me know.

The other day I was on the receiving end of a very smart micro-marketing effort. It impressed me and I do this for a living, so not many campaigns do that. However, many small companies can learn to use micromarketing from this effort. I suspect it didn’t cost much money and I think it will increase business.

What is micro-marketing? According to Answers.com, it’s “Designing, creating, and manufacturing products, marketing, and advertising campaigns for the benefit of very specific geographic, demographic, or psychographic segments of the consumer market.”

In other words, micromarketing means selling to your neighbors.

My exposure to micromarketing began when I came home the other day to find a plastic bag on the front steps. That’s not unusual – somebody is always leaving phone books or fliers or something else on the steps. Most of the time the bag avoids the house completely on its trip to the recycling bin in the garage.

This time the bag contained a dog food sample and two dog biscuits. As Chester the Wonder Dog has a voracious appetite, I always appreciate free food. Biscuits are good, too. He is more cooperative when he knows there’s a reward when I expect him to something.

The bag came from a local pet store called Hounds Around Town. Along with the food, there were two fliers inside the bag. On one there was an eight-paragraph explanation of the food – how it was made locally without any artificial ingredients. There were also a couple of paragraphs about Hounds Around Town, including an invitation to bring my dog whenever I wanted.

Also in the packet was a sheet from a group called the 3/50 project. This really caught my attention. I went to the group’s website and found this explanation from Consumer Reports:

“The 3/50 Project is a campaign to support local merchants. The concept has spread to communities nationwide, and its premise is simple: First, choose three local independent brick-and-mortar businesses—clothing shops, food stores and restaurants, and for the home, independent appliance retailers, hardware stores, and garden centers—that you find essential and want to keep from going under during the recession. During tight times like these, independent retailers suffer since budget-minded consumers are more inclined to shop at chain stores and big-box behemoths.

Then spend $50 or more among those places each month. If enough people in a town make the pledge, the theory goes, the pooled-together funds will prop up mom-and-pop enterprises and help sustain local business districts.”

The sheet quoted the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in noting that if just half the U.S. working population spent $50 each month in locally owned businesses, more than $42.6 billion in revenue would be generated. It also said that for every $100 spent in independently owned stories, $68 returns to the community through taxes, payroll and other expenditures. When a purchase is made from a national chain, $43 stays in a local community. When an online purchase is made nothing stays behind.

Powerful arguments on both counts. In fact, it affected me and that doesn’t usually happen. After all, marketing is what I do for a living. I have seen every kind of campaign that’s ever been done. Most either make me cringe or yawn.

However, this campaign made me think. I do like to shop locally as much as possible and I like products to buy that are made locally. I firmly believe that the only way we are going to dig ourselves out of this recession is to support each other. I have no faith that the politicians who spread all this rhetoric are going to do anything that will actually solve the problem.

In this case, if Chester likes the dog food the odds are good I will shop at Hounds Around Town. This a dog who likes to eat squirrels, rabbits and other small animals, so I don’t think his palate is that discerning.

It is also an instructive example of for small businesses. Many small retailers just don’t have the budget to advertise or do much marketing. Buying a newspaper ad or producing a television commercial can be expensive. Plus, those efforts are more of a shotgun approach. A microcampaign such as the one Hounds Around Town ran can be much more effective because the market is very targeted. It is a very good idea.

So  I was scratching my head, trying to decide what I was going to rant about. I am about to throw up my hands when I stumbled across a survey on personal products as I am going to a favorite website. It is survey on personal products. It wants to know whether or not I will buy a certain deodorant because its maker sponsors rock concerts.

I have to say that as criteria for buying a personal hygiene product, knowing that the manufacturer  sponsors concerts is not even on the list. I tend to select the brands that perform the best according to my needs.

As I was taking the survey, I started thinking about companies that sponsor concerts or buy stadium-naming rights or plaster their names all over race cars. I know the theory is that potential customers will buy a product because of the company sponsorship. Frankly, I don’t buy it – figuratively or literally.

As an aside, I have to again laud my Green Bay Packers. They have played in Lambeau Field since 1957. They still play in Lambeau Field. There is no Lambeau Field sponsored by Acme Meatpacking. The Packers will not allow their stadium to be sullied by some company seeking to market its products. Ditto for the New York Yankees.

I think social media has changed consumers’ attitudes. Companies have, for the most part, learned they have to sell a quality product. If they don’t, the Internet will rise up and slap them down. It doesn’t matter whether the logo is plastered on the side of a race car.

I think the companies who spend some of their money on sponsorships are, for the most part, wasting their money.

There is an exception to that though. If I see a company supporting a cause I agree with, I am more likely to consider their product. My wife and I back a number of charitable organizations, including the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. If I see a company contributing to those organizations, I will take a look at what they are selling.

Even then, I will take the time to check the company out. There are companies that will make charitable contributions as a way to hide their real image. Tobacco companies, as an example, can make all the contributions they want, I will never buy their products.

Which brings me to another point. I will sometimes not buy a product because of something the company has endorsed. I am not going to discuss my beliefs here. But if a company endorses something I feel is morally wrong, I am not going to buy their product.

Frankly, I think it would be a lot smarter if companies used their endorsement dollars to make products. They would probably make a lot more money that way.