Ken Gullette's Media Marketing

How to Use an Upsell to Boost Your Company's Profits

Occasionally, I crave Long John Silvers fish. I've been a customer since the early Seventies, and that's almost 40 years. Lately, I cringe when I approach the drive-through because I know they're going to upsell me to the point of anger. Irritating your customers is never a good idea, but they're turning it into an art form.

The person on the intercom asked if I wanted to try their daily special. I said no, I just wanted two pieces of fish and a small root beer. "That's all," I added.

Then came the first upsell -- "Do you want the combo for (price)?"

"No thanks," I replied, rolling my eyes.

"Would you like to add (another product) for (price)?" he continued.

"No thanks, just two pieces of fish and a small root beer," I said through gritted teeth.

"Would you like to add a corn on the cob for 79 cents?" he asked.

"No." Now I was getting steamed.

"Is that all?" he asked, even though I had made it clear that this was all.

"THAT'S ALL!" 

When I got around to the window, I told him that the upsells were becoming very annoying.

"Yeah, I know," he laughed. "But that's what they want me to say."

This is another example of how Corporate doesn't understand the customer.

McDonald's perfected the upsell. Many years ago, just by adding one question - "Do you want fries with that?" -- they saw a jump in profits. The practice caught on.

If you sell items online, when someone buys an item, you can have a popup window appear, thanking them for the purchase, and offering another item at a special discount. Some online merchants have seen up to 60% of customers say yes to the additional item -- an incredibly inexpensive way to see profits jump. It's an effective upsell.

Amazon.com does this, too. If you're looking at a book, for example, amazon will show you a special discount if you add a closely related book to the purchase. It works. It's a great example of an effective upsell.

Here are a couple of tips on using the upsell effectively:

1. The item you're upselling must make sense. It must be related to the original item being purchased.

2. The upsell should have a discount attached to it. The customer should get a price break if they say yes. An upsell is far less annoying if the customer perceives value to it, even if they say no.

3. The upsell must be limited to one offer. Badgering a customer with more upselling after they say no is a good way to lose customer.

The least effective upsell that I've seen is at Walgreens. When you go to the cashier at Walgreens, sometime in the last year or so I noticed that they started asking, "Would you like a candy bar?" They pointed to a basket full of Snickers or another candy bar next to the cash register.

Now, don't you think it's dumb for a drug store to offer candy to its customers? This means someone who is purchasing a prescription for diabetes is going to be accosted with an offer for a candy bar. Obese people will be offered a candy bar. This is DUMB marketing. And it's blind. It doesn't differentiate between customers and what they want. It makes no sense.

Walgreens doesn't always offer candy. The other day I was buying something and the cashier said, "Would you like to buy some batteries?" She pointed to a basket of AA batteries on the counter. I simply laughed and said, "No thanks."

This is Walgreens' way of asking, "Do you want fries with that?" It's as if very little thought was given to the customer, although I have to admit that batteries make more sense than candy bars. One day, I said to the cashier, "It's a shame they make you say that." The cashier complained that she didn't like it, either. "Corporate idiots," I said, and she agreed. Not only does this practice irritate the customer, it humiliates the employees, and that's bad corporate policy, too.

Don't kill the goose that laid the golden egg. An upsell can boost your profits. But not if you anger your customers, as Long John Silvers is doing. Or, if you're at Walgreens and your upsell doesn't make sense.

Tiger Woods -- a Case Study in Marketing and Advertising

Like a lot of people, when the Tiger Woods story broke my reaction was, "I don't need to hear about his personal life."

As the story unfolded, and the number of women started reaching 10...11...maybe 12....it became a much different matter. He had destroyed his reputation and with it, millions of dollars that companies like Accenture, Buick, Nike and others had spent tying their brand with his.

I used to work at a company that produced one of two college admissions exams used by high schoolers in this country. We were always shocked at the research, showing that more college-bound high school students expected to enter some type of show business than engineering, medicine, or other professions that required brains, advanced study, and carried the likelihood of higher salaries and success. We live in a culture obsessed with celebrity. Everyone thinks they should star in their own reality series.

Let's put aside the media aspects of this. Is it a story that Walter Cronkite or Huntley/Brinkley would have put on the air? No. But the news media is different now -- corporate owned, downsizing, and reaching for every ratings point it can. So that's the reality we face.

This story -- now that it IS a story -- is a case study for marketing and advertising, and celebrity endorsements. Some people think that isn't important. They say, "I never buy anything because a celebrity endorsed it." Even I thought that. But then I realized that when I was in college, and Sean Connery became the "face" of Jim Beam bourbon in magazine ads, I switched immediately to Jim Beam and it's still my bourbon of choice today, 35 years later. All because of a celebrity endorsement. Sometimes when I think of Jim Beam, I remember that great photo of James Bond with a glass of Jim Beam on the rocks.

A company like Accenture, which dropped Tiger this weekend, had seen its visibility increase dramatically after Tiger tied his image with theirs. When I think of Buick, I often think of Tiger Woods. I'm not alone. It's psychology and it works.

Polls show that negative thoughts about Tiger have skyrocketed as this story has developed -- especially among women. If you are Buick, and people think about Tiger's obvious morality issues when they see your logo, that's the last thing you need after working so long to establish a brand of dependability and quality. And if you've spent millions of dollars for the privilege of being tied to his image, you have to feel as if you've taken a body blow.

You don't see Lindsay Lohan advertising Buick or Accenture. You don't see Kanye West being used in Tag Hauer ads. If you do bad things, there are some sponsors who can't use you. It's not personal -- it's all about the brand, and Tiger's brand may never be the same.

You can bet he doesn't think his extra-marital activity was worth it now.

As an addendum to this post, I might add that this is also a case study that points out what you do behind the scenes is important to your brand. Look at Wal-mart and the recent settlement -- around 40 million dollars -- being paid to employees that it abused. Wal-mart has a smiley-face as a logo and a "lowest price" guarantee. They don't have the lowest prices for no reason. They have it by abusing their employees, apparently, making them revise their time sheets to reduce their hours, lockiing them in the building overnight and making them work off the clock. How damaging is it to the brand when -- behind the scenes -- a company or a spokesperson acts in destructive ways?

It's only damaging when you get caught, but the business lesson is -- the image you want has got to be supported by actions in everything you do, both inside and outside the company, and even in your personal life.

 

Another Newspaper Bites the Dust

The Washington Times was established by the Unification Church more than 20 years ago to be a conservative voice in our nation's capital. 

As a media relations person for a national education company, I didn't worry too much about getting coverage in the Washington Times, although we did appear there sometimes. I was more interested in getting ink in the Washington Post.

Now, the Times is becoming a free paper, slashing staff, and taking more of its coverage online. It's another sign of the trouble that hangs over our nation's newspapers. Read about it here.

Even though the Washington Times was incredibly biased in its coverage, I don't like to see any newspaper collapse. It's bad for all of us.

Leggo My PR -- Deadly Bacteria Kept Quiet at Eggo

When is the right time for a company to deliver really bad news to the public? For the folks at Eggo, maker of the frozen waffles, the answer to that question is: just wait a while.

Despite the discovery by health inspectors of lethal listeria in its Atlanta plant, Eggo didn't warn or even inform the public, instead blaming the shutdown of the plant to recent flooding.

Read an article about the situation here.

There is a cardinal rule in PR -- get the bad news out there and, especially if public health or safety is involved, get it out quickly and let the public know you're dealing with it.

The public will forgive mistakes, but not if you hide mistakes that could be deadly.

After reading reports of this debacle, I've decided to no longer buy Eggo waffles. All the advertising and the brand-building the company has done for decades is ruined by one negligent act of corporate arrogance and self-interest.

And that could be the best lesson that CEOs and managers can take from this. You can devote many years to building a brand, but as soon as you fail to act in the interest of your customers you can waste all that effort.

Public Relations never sleeps. You can't just hide a problem like listeria in the pantry with your cupcakes (thanks, Paul Simon).

And now that they've been found out, consumers are angry at Eggo, and rightfully so.

A Pennsylvania Restaurant Gets It ALL Wrong

So you're a restaurant owner or manager and a couple comes in for dinner. The service they receive from the waitress is so bad, they refuse to pay the mandatory tip. The couple is having dinner with friends, and they have to get their own refills, napkins and silverware while the waitress goes out for a cigarette break. 

As the manager, what do you do when the couple refuses to pay the mandatory 22% tip?

If you're a manager at the Lehigh Pub in Bethelehem, you have the couple arrested.

Read about it here.

Marshall Field, the successful retailer, once said, "the customer is always right."

Lehigh Pub's management apparently hasn't heard of that concept.

The PR backlash on this could be tremendous. If you're running a pub in a state that's already suffering from unemployment and a bad economy, imagine getting national publicity that your service is so bad, customers refuse to pay the tip. Then imagine getting national publicity that you have your customers arrested.

I heard a few people talking about this, and every one of them was outraged that there was a mandatory tip. "No wonder the waitress wasn't working hard," was the typical comment. A mandatory tip is a bad idea.

Successful businesses work hard to keep their customers happy. In this instance, the waitress should have been either fired or at least made to forfeit the tip. The manager should have apologized to the couple and given them and their friends coupons for free dinners to make up for their bad experience. Consider for a moment the good feelings that might have resulted and the negative publicity that could have been avoided. Consider the customers that will be lost because the image of Lehigh Pub has forever been damaged. The "brand" is now one of a waitress on a smoke break and the police slapping cuffs on customers. Not a place I want to go with my wife.

If I were the manager of a competitor, you can bet I would push a marketing campaign immediately promising "no mandatory tip" and "we promise not to arrest our customers."

Sometimes, you wonder what's wrong with people.

A Creative Guerrilla Marketing Tactic by a Small Business

A new Thai restaurant opened up a couple of blocks from my house. My wife told me it was there but I drove by and couldn't see it. That was a few weeks ago. They finally got a sign up and I spotted the restaurant as I drove by one day.

But I had seen nothing about them. I didn't know they existed for weeks after they opened and I only lived two blocks away.

Last night, Nancy and I went there to eat for the first time. The manager came over and asked if everything was okay. It was great and we liked it, so I asked him why I hadn't heard about the place.

"Are you advertising?" I asked. "Have you done any direct mail in this area to let people know you're here?"

"Direct mail is expensive," he said. "It's about 600 dollars for 7,500 homes."

I didn't think that was too bad. Put a good coupon on some direct mail and put it in the hands of people in the neighborhood. Instead, he had spent $100 for a coupon in the Wednesday paper. We don't get the Wednesday paper so we didn't see it.

Sometimes, you get what you pay for.

But he did have a great idea on Halloween. He gave coupons to some kids. Each time they visited a house and got some candy, they gave a treat -- a coupon -- to the adult at the house. So the kids got candy and the grownups got a coupon for Thai food. I thought it was brilliant and a great example of guerrilla marketing.

Then I gave him a good guerrilla marketing idea. Since he's concerned about cost, I told him to print up a one-page flyer and pay some kids $50 each to put them in the storm doors of houses around the neighborhood. When I was in 4th grade (early 1963) my friend's father paid us to do that with flyers for his tire business. I made a few bucks and bought my very first record album (Rick Nelson's "Rick is 21"). It was a great way to earn some money and a cheap way for him to do some direct marketing in the neighborhood.

If you have a shop or restaurant that caters mainly to customers that live within a certain radius, don't waste your marketing dollars on a shotgun approach that targets everyone in the region. Work smarter. It's possible that a $600 investment in direct mail -- even Valpak -- to residents within a couple miles of the restaurant (providing the direct mail contained an attractive free offer like one entree free with the purchase of one) would produce regular customers and give the restaurant a boost from the start.

Starbucks Does it Right with New Product

Starbucks has unveiled instant coffee -- yeah, scary, right? 

Instant coffee. I've never had good instant coffee and now Starbucks is threatening the brand?

Take a look at this page. Scroll down and watch the video. It made me want to try a cup.

This is how to do web video. Support the product, make it interesting, and make the product appealing. The Starbucks PR and marketing folks deserve a salute for this.

Are you doing this on your website?

100 Guerrilla Marketing Techniques

One of the most important things you can have in your marketing arsenal is diversity. The rise of new technology has made marketing exciting and in many cases very inexpensive.

Please download this pdf document to look through 100 Guerrilla Marketing techniques. When you build a marketing plan, how many of these techniques can you work into the plan, and how can you coordinate them to leverage the power of the others?

Call or email me if you would like to brainstorm on any of your marketing and publicity challenges.

Download 100-Guerrilla-Marketing-Weapons

US Bank -- Clueless Marketing

The people who run US Bank think you are stupid. 

They think you are greedy, and they believe you have learned nothing from the financial meltdown of the past two years.

According to a report this week from the Associated Press, the worst is not over for our economy. The AP reports "Foreclosures will peak by the end of next year and unemployment will climb above 10 percent as the housing market and U.S. economy grapple with the aftermath of the recession, the Mortgage Bankers Association's chief economist said Tuesday."

The people who run US Bank believe you are still thinking like my old neighbors back in Tampa. They bought a nice home across the street from us for $240,000. It was appraised, of course, much higher -- over $300,000. So this nice couple -- convinced by the bank that they could use the house as their own ATM machine -- took out a loan for the full amount of appraisal, then went out and blew the cash on two white Hummers -- one for him and one for her.

Before we moved from Tampa, the guy lost his job and his wife's business (self-owned) wasn't doing well. Their son was graduating from high school. They moved out of the home because it was facing foreclosure. They moved to Orlando. Just before we left, one of the Hummers was parked in the front driveway of their now-empty home, sitting and waiting for the repo man to come pick it up. The house was no longer worth what they paid for it.

I'll never forget the evening the wife knocked on our door, asking if we were interested in buying the house. It was a great house with a pool -- very classy design -- but I had just lost my job and we were making plans to leave Florida and return to the Quad Cities. We told her this and she stood there shaking her head. "We're almost homeless," she said sadly. "We don't have any choice except to live in our car or move in with relatives."

This scene has been played out across the nation millions of times -- families decimated and futures ruined by greedy lending practices and shady home loans that put people in danger just to rake in a little more money. Americans agreed to gamble with their homes and believed that anytime they wanted a vacation or a new car, just get a second mortgage or re-finance the home and instant gratification could be yours!

How has that worked out for us?

That's why it is infuriating when a bank such as US Bank throws ethics out the window and pushes a TV ad campaign urging people to get a second mortgage or re-finance their homes so they can enjoy the good life now -- and the video shows people taking vacations, playing golf, on the beach in a wetsuit -- exactly the behavior that got everyone into trouble in the first place.

Someone -- or several people -- need to lose their jobs at US Bank. Anyone who approved this campaign should go. It's a slap across the face of a hurting nation at a time when more jobs are being lost because of the domino effect of the housing collapse. Every week, we hear of more layoffs in the community. I suppose US Bank would urge people to throw caution to the winds -- use your home as an ATM and go on vacation. You deserve a vacation!

I guess I'm a little steamed over this because there are good PR and marketing people who would give good advice to this company -- that caring about people and helping them in a time of deep community need and anxiety is a much better way to build a brand than encouraging people to continue gambling and living the fast life. I can't imagine that nobody objected to this TV campaign. If someone did object, that person should be leading the marketing for US Bank. 

If nobody objected because their VP or President likes the campaign and you dare not question the VP or President, they're in deeper trouble than any PR or marketing person can change. And if an ad agency came up with this, it would be the last time I used that agency. 

The best advertising and marketing is based on how you can help your customers. This unethical, blind-to-reality approach is the antithesis of what a community bank should be about. In the end, it's about gambling with your home.

Have we learned nothing from the past two years? Obviously, the folks who run US Bank have not. It's time for the creators of this campaign to spend some time in the unemployment line, worrying about making ends meet. Perhaps then they'll understand how insulting and insensitive this campaign truly is for the people watching it on TV.

EDGE! - A Leadership Story Every Manager and Leader Should Read and Adopt

After more than 30 years in the workforce, I have learned one inarguable truth. Management in the United States is often destructive to companies, and real leadership is hard to find.

Oh, we have plenty of managers and we have a lot of people who serve in leadership positions, but very few of them are trained to hire, motivate, and develop their people and lead their organizations from positions of truth, integrity, creativity, and their authentic selves. As a result, they alienate their employees, reward negative behavior, mirror the negative behavior they see from upper management, and cause good people to flee, costing the company valuable talent, experience, and recruiting costs. I've seen it happen many times and it has happened to me. I'm sure it has happened to you, too.

That's why I believe every manager--every person in a position of leadership--should read Bea Fields' wonderful book, EDGE! - A Leadership Story.

Bea Fields is the President of Bea Fields Companies, Inc. and the Founder of Five Star Leader Coaching and Training, a leadership consulting firm currently serving over 800 clients worldwide. I have heard her in action as I studied for certification as a Guerrilla Marketing Coach with Mitch Meyerson and I found her coaching style remarkably creative, intuitive, and inspirational.

EDGE! is the story of a leadership coach who takes on a reluctant CEO who has lost track of the values that would enable him to truly align his personal and professional goals and live a highly successful life. He thinks he's successful already, but his employees know something is missing, and he is losing key people to the competition. His employees like him, but he's unable to inspire, motivate, and engage them so that everyone reaches their potential.

The book takes you through the coaching process as Mitch, the CEO, learns how to unlock his own potential and lead his team by being authentic. It's inspirational and it rings very true, and it should be required reading for anyone in a management position. In fact, this type of leadership coaching should be required for every VP and CEO in the nation. 

A couple of years ago my wife turned to me one night and paid me the greatest compliment I've ever known. She said, "If there's one word I would use to describe you, Ken, it would be integrity." 

It meant a great deal to me. I always tried to take that into the workplace with me, too. As my career developed, I worked with very bad managers and very good ones. I tried to learn from both, and as a manager, I wanted more than anything to be creative, throw open the boundaries, help my employees to think creatively and take risks, and for God's sake, have fun and let the people around me laugh and be themselves. When the people on my team achieved something good, which they did regularly, I made sure upper management knew it by singling the employee out. I tried to help develop their skills so they could achieve their own goals in their career.

My values didn't always serve me well. I once was ordered to write a bad performance review for an employee. My boss--the VP--had a grudge out for this person, but the employee deserved a good review so I gave it. I was called on the carpet, the VP angry and asking why I didn't do as she had ordered. I let her know that I worked with the person every day and they deserved a good review. If I was to be fired over this, I was ready. Better to go down than to sacrifice my own personal values. What good is a six-figure job is you can't look at yourself in the mirror? 

At the same time I was always honest with my employees during their reviews and at other times during the year. I told them where they needed to improve--specifically--and then I tried to help them get there. I led by example, working hard, turning out out creative projects that pushed beyond "what had been done before," and in doing that, tried to pave the way. I had fun while I worked. There was a lot of laughter. Most of them got it, and they knew I wanted them to be successful. This certainly doesn't mean I was the perfect manager, but I believe I was my authentic self. I tried to be true to who I was. At age 13, I organized my friends to make spy movies with my 8mm film camera. Mitch, the CEO in the book, made comedy movies with his friends when he was a kid. I always tried to take that same creativity and passion into every job. Mitch is being coached in the book to recapture that passion and creativity--to manage from his heart and be himself, and to take that same quality home with him to the people he loved. 

I did end up leaving the company a few years after the performance review incident because of similar situations and because the culture from above was too negative. Each day, I felt the life being sucked from me the moment I sat down in my chair. I had led my team in taking this company to unprecedented success with publicity, and it felt as if, as each year passed, my contributions were less acknowledged or appreciated by upper management. It's interesting how you're an expert when you're hired, but within a few years you're a piece of furniture at far too many companies. I was eventually treated as a technician--as someone who was to be told what to do rather than allowed to let my creative vision work for the company as it had so well for so many years. What a waste for both of us. And that's what this book is about.

EDGE! is not only a good book, it's a workbook. At the end of each chapter there are questions related to the coaching that Mitch is going through. If you're honest with yourself and apply the lessons and ponder the valuable questions listed in the book, applying them to your own professional and personal situation, you will step up your game. You'll have a more successful career but even more importantly, a more successful life.