Big-Time Marketing
On a Small-Time Budget
"Give a child an ordinary gummy, mushy, squishy ball of playdough and watch what happens."
These simple words launched one of the most talked about radio advertisements of 1998. By setting the scene with classical music and vivid imagery, La Petite Academy took its listeners on a delightful tour through what it would be like to be a child attending one of the nation's largest childcare and preschool providers.
While this advertising campaign has been deemed brilliant by industry experts for its ability to capture and captivate audiences, its true brilliance lies not in the actual ad, but in its design. By spending a few minutes analyzing the making of La Petite's 1998 fall advertising campaign, business owners can learn some powerful and important lessons about marketing and sales.
Big results don't always need big budgets
The La Petite radio ad was the essence of simplicity itself. A single voice and a piano. That's it. No expensive photo shoot, no TV studio, no printing costs, no computer animation, no artwork. None of the typical expenses you would expect when producing an ad for one of the nation's top-rated childcare and preschool centers. And yet it grabbed the listener's ear, brought a tear to the eye, and most importantly, dramatically increased La Petite Academy's fall enrollment.
La Petite Academy capitalized upon its strengths and scored big using simple and inexpensive marketing and sales techniques.
Three basic concepts formed the foundation
of its success:
- Good Market Research
- Customer Involvement via Focus Groups
- "Show, Don't Tell"
Market Research
Market research has gotten a bad rap. Most of us consider it to be boring, redundant, and expensive. We know what we are selling, why, to whom and for how much. Research only serves to confirm what we already know, right? Wrong. Market research, if done correctly, can be incredibly valuable and inexpensive. On the other hand, failure to properly assess the market can be very expensive and may lead to disaster.
Costly Mistakes
Before we talk about what La Petite Academy has done right, let's examine three companies who made costly mistakes which could easily have been avoided with a little bit of market research:
Remember when Chevrolet tried to sell the immensely popular Chevy Nova south of the border? Imagine the embarrassment when they learned that dismal sales were because "Nova" meant "No Go" in Spanish. Was this the kind of mistake that only a manufacturer could make?
Hardly. Consider this story about one of the nation's top advertising firms as told by a Colorado rancher returning home from the National Cattleman's Association's annual meeting in Las Vegas. He had just spent a week in the nation's wildest city with cattlemen from around the country. They spent the week talking about beef ("It's What's For Dinner") and complaining about chicken ("It's What's Taking Over What's For Dinner"). The week culminated with a grand banquet and sales presentation organized by the new marketing director from a fancy PR firm. It was a prestigious event marred by one single flaw -"Damned if they didn't serve us chicken," said the rancher. "At first we thought it was some sort of joke," he said, "But they just kept wheeling it out. then we realized it was for real." What happened to the new marketing director? "I think she was fired before the banquet ended," he said. "I'll tell ya, there were some pretty upset people that night."
Marketing baby products can be just as precarious. The Shake It Up bottle by Umix, Inc. made its first appearance in specialty stores in 1996. It did something no other baby bottle could do-through a patented two-chamber design, it kept formula and water separate, which meant parents no longer had to hassle with the mess of trying to mix formula and water on the go. But, despite an ingenious design (CEO Jim Holley, the bottle's inventor, was an aerospace engineer with Boeing prior to changing careers), the bottle managed only mediocre sales. Then, after a year of advertising, sales actually dropped. What was wrong? Everyone agreed the product was good, well-priced, and unique. But it lacked a clear message. Umix was trying to sell the bottle based on convenience-which seemed to make sense. It was more convenient than carrying water and powder separately, but it was the safety factor that put Umix on the map.
One year later the company had changed all of its packaging and adopted a simple logo-"Formula Won't Spoil" which now graces the front of every box sold. Umix aligned itself with the new guidelines on formula feeding that were coming out from the USDA and the FDA. It started to promote safe formula feeding under the banner "Always Serve Fresh.For Baby's Sake" with press releases, coupons, and through a public service web page-"baby-safe.com." Almost immediately, the company started to make money. On February 3, 1999, Umix shipped its one millionth bottle.
To what did Umix credit this transformation? "The creative consultation group," says Holley, "it turned us around." Holley had started a creative consultation group which met at the Umix office every other Wednesday night. He challenged them to look at everything Umix was doing-its ads, its packaging, its message - everything. What they had to say was startling. Like most, the members of the group liked the product and said they would buy one themselves, but they didn't identify with the message or the packaging. Both focused too much on convenience and not enough on safety. In addition to keeping formula separate from water, the bottle did one other thing that made it a "must buy" for the group. The bottle had a patented "safety seal" which made it possible for parents to prepare formula at home, "safety seal" it before sending it to daycare, then rest assured all day that their child was receiving fresh, safe formula.
The creative consultation group gave Umix what it needed - a new perspective and a new message. Convenience was important, but safety was essential. "Parents, by nature, worry when they send their children to childcare centers," says Holley. The Shake It Up bottle by Umix, Inc. does away with the worry and lowers the liability of the childcare center as well.
Customer Involvement
In each of these cases a simple, inexpensive market test would have saved the day. Market research doesn't have to be complicated. When most of us think about market research, we think about stacks of statistics, high-tech market studies, expensive surveys and fancy reports. In most cases this is overkill. Market research just needs to answer a few key questions. The simpler, the better.
La Petite Academy began the process of designing its fall '98 ads by asking a series of simple questions-for example,"What do parents look for in a preschool program?"They took a simple approach to answering these questions-they asked their customers. La Petite ran a number of focus groups across the country which consulted on the process, content, and final product. It learned from its customers that the "feel" of the ad was as important as the content. La Petite wanted to highlight its Journey® curriculum, which is designed to give children, at each stage of development, a beginning foundation for success in school and a lifelong love of learning. Journey® was centered on fun learning activities that built self-confidence, instilled self-esteem, encouraged self-expression, and developed social skills.
La Petite's program was different from others because of the commitment La Petite Academy placed on the program's development. With input from leading experts in the field of brain research and child development, La Petite designed programs which were not only fun for children, but which actually helped them to grow and develop. Through focus groups and advisory committees, La Petite Academy learned that parents were very interested in these issues, but quickly became turned off if it seemed too scientific or too clinical.
Market Research Tips
Use surveys for data and focus groups (facilitated discussion groups) for interpreting data and gaining depth. Surveys are wonderful for gathering demographics like age, gender, income, and purchasing habits. Use focus groups for more subjective issues like colors, textures, product use, impressions.
Know what you want to know. Ask specific questions. For example, don't ask "Do you like this crib?" Instead, ask "Tell me the five things you like best about this crib and two things you would change."
Inexpensive and effective focus groups can be created using temporary labor. Contact local temporary staffing agencies in your area and ask for eight to ten people (two or three won't show). Tell them what you are doing and specify gender and age.
Run focus groups yourself. For most projects there is no reason to use expensive advertising agencies to facilitate groups. Have a clear idea what you are trying to figure out and use interactive techniques to get a lively discussion going. For example, show the group five different ideas and give them the task of placing them in order. Interactivity is the secret to a good focus group. Make it into a game and create friendly conflict and debate. Have a "helper" in the room who takes notes while you are running the group.
Form a consumer advisory committee. Study your customers and find a half dozen who seem interested in your store. Ask them to join you once a month for lunch. Buy their meal and offer them a small consulting fee ($10.00 to $25.00) to help you make decisions. These decisions can be about anything-what products to buy, why some products don't sell when you thought they would, how to best set up your store. Most business owners are too close to their product and their industry to see things the way a customer would. (This includes friends and family.) A consumer advisory committee can be an inexpensive and eye-opening experience.
Show, Don't Tell, The most important lesson a writer can learn is summed up in three short words-"Show, Don't Tell." These three words are just as valuable in the world of sales and marketing. Good writers create a sense of "being there." They use words that "show" what is happening. They create a feeling - an emotional response. Good writers, like good marketing professionals, know that emotion sells. As rational as all of us believe we are, most of the major decisions we make in life are emotionally driven-what we choose to do for a living, where we live, what house to buy, whom to marry, whether to have children, what color and style car to buy.
La Petite picked a woman's voice which was gentle and at the same time authoritative. This gave listeners a sense of confidence and trust. Upbeat acoustic music in the background suggested an air of friendly sophistication.
The ad spoke directly to the listener, describing how a child "smashes the playdough on a table," and "rolls it into a long string, then turns it into a jump rope." "Then," the narrator says "with a few magical strokes of her fingers, it becomes a dolphin. And while this young girl is amusingly shaping and reshaping this simple piece of putty, do you know what really is happening?" She asks rhetorically. "She is learning. her imagination is expanding.her fingers are building strength so she can learn to write. At La Petite Academy we believe if you make learning fun, if you give a preschooler a chance to find answers on her own, she will always be excited about learning."
Notice the quick transition made between the child's behavior and the science that underlies child development. The imagery of children playing and laughing is skillfully blended into a colorful mosaic of knowledge and expertise. The radio ad ends with the following suggestion: "Take a tour of La Petite Academy and you will see a preschool environment that surrounds your child with encouragement and assurance all while filling every day with learning and laughter. La Petite fall enrollment is under way. Call for a tour, and don't be surprised if you see a dolphin or two." The ad ends with strong emotional imagery and leaves listeners a bit misty-eyed. Perfect.
How to Show, Not Tell
Use descriptive words, even if they are not real words. Check out how La Petite used words like-"gummy," "mushy," and "squishy," to grab the listener's attention and to cast the listener into the role of a child playing in a fun, friendly environment.
Use emotionally-charged words and phrases. "Surrounding your child with encouragement and assurance" has a completely different feel than "giving a child encouragement and assurance." Words like "smash," "magical," and "amusingly," all give texture and feeling to the story.
Edit, edit, edit. If you can say the same thing in ten words that you can say in twenty, do it. Then get it down to five. The simpler the better. People read in clusters or templates. The biggest mistake people make when trying their hand at advertising is using too many words. They have so much to say and want to say it all. Practice getting your point across in five words or less. Watch how sparingly TV and magazine ads use words. Sometimes they will use a full-page picture to create an image and title it with a single word. Learn to be brief.
The best campaigns don't always have the highest price tags, and sometimes big, expensive projects fall flat on their faces. Don't be fooled into using expensive marketing and PR firms when you don't need them. Do your own market research, involve your customers, and learn to show the world what you're about. It's easy, fun, and you'll save a lot more than just money.