How to Get Into the News Media and Pull Big Bloggers Like Guy Kawasaki With 
Is Your Viral Marketing Campaign A Bloody Mary Without the Tabasco?
Several summers ago, about 20 of my closest friends started a road trip from San Diego to Zion National Park. We were headed for Angels' Landing. Angels' landing is one of the most breathtaking places on earth. After a 5 hour near 40% incline hike, you climb beyond where eagles fly to reach Angel's Landing. When you get there, the peak features straight vertical faces and small plaques that say, "In memory of our loving son Matthew."
But it wasn't here that I first saw my clearest case study on how to raise my website sales by 400%. It was on the way there.
Half a day's drive away from Angels' Landing, our caravan met up with Jerome, another close friend of ours. He took us on 30 minute detour up a gorgeous mountain road. At the end of the road was a hole in the ground. We walked up to this hole. About 8 stories down was a glowing blue-green pool. Jerome took off his shirt and jumped in like it was just another bathtub. All 20 of us were more scared than excited.
"Jump in! It's amazing down here!"
"Jump in! It's amazing down h..."
"Jump in! It's amazing d..."
Jerome's voice echoed more times than he prodded at us to join him. Finally, he swam away then climbed back up at another point to meet us.
The only people within our clients' industries are their competitors
From the top level, Jerome started to urge and prod again. Nobody budged. The more he urged, the more scared we got. Eventually, he physically tried to push a couple of us over the edge into the dark hole. None of us liked that. Most of us climbed back down to a landing we had passed along the way to eat lunch. A few of us remained. I left.
After we had finished lunch we apprehensively ascended back up to the big hole in the earth. We nervously joked about seeing our friends smeared along the sides of the hole. Arriving at the hole, our fears transmuted into pure panic. None of the few friends we had left behind were there.
We looked over at each other. Kelly, a guy Kelly, slowly shuffled his feet toward the edge of the hole. We stood behind monitoring his facial expressions. He started laughing from relief. Somehow, Jerome successfully pursuaded the stay-behinds into taking that leap.
Now, instead of just one distant friend, it was several close friends taunting the dry-landers into jumping. Still we didn't budge. Nothing they said could get us to take off our shirts and take that leap. We couldn't understand how Jerome got our friends to jump as much as our wet friends could figure out how to get us to follow suit.
Then, we did it. All of us jumped down the black hole. But it wasn't from jeering, cajoling, prodding, tempting, or pushing. One of the guys down in the blue-green pool was Kelly's best friend. He swam away and reemerged from a far corner of the hole. He walked up to us, smiled, and just jumped. Kelly took his shirt off and immediately followed. I did too. I was afraid I was going to land on Kelly.
Everyone then jumped in like Lemmings - Even Kelley, the girl Kelley, got topless and jumped in.
They featured regular looking actors (in the beginning) who were easy to relate to actually taking the dive and eating their burgers
It wasn't until last night that I realized that this moment in time was all I needed to understand the mechanics of how to increase website sales by 400% in 72 hours.
If you've ever launched a marketing initiative that didn't make a single person "jump in," you've probably wondered, "what's the missing Tabasco in my marketing Bloody Mary?
Last night, I attended the Seattle Creative Tweetup at the Hard Rock. @CoolGuyGreg hosted. I'm going to attend every single Seattle Creative Tweetup from now on. Everyone who was important showed up. What I learned from picking @CoolGuyGreg's brain for 30 minutes was a gold mine. We talked about the biggest yet simplest mistakes that cripple your sales volume.
I was a creative director for several ad agencies with an art school and communications background. In my mind, advertising was always about branding a product. And branding was always about branding a company or product. None of it was designed to actually sell a product.
If I did a stellar job branding a product or a company, everyone would have fond emotional associations to that product. That way, when the salesman knocked at your door, you'd be more likely to try it out. My job at my ad agency was not ever designed to sell a product. If anything, it was designed to win awards making our agency look good and it was designed to draw attention to our clients from within their industries.
Talking with Greg, in retrospect, I realize that was stupid. The only people within our clients' industries are their competitors. So again, none of it was designed to actually sell a product.
Some of it was designed to help their sales force break the ice, but really, how many companies even have a gum-shoe sales force anymore?
Greg, being the marketing strategy consultant that he is, explained the single biggest fatal advertising failure this way, "Not too long ago, Burger King launched a glamour shot campaign. They did food porn. The got the most beautiful upclose and panning shots of their burgers anyone had ever seen. It was beautiful. But it was Carl's Jr. that increased their sales by 400% by making one tiny tweak in their "messy" campaign. Carl's Jr. actually showed people eating their burgers.
'If it doesn't get all over the place, it doesn't belong in your face,' Greg chanted.
He continued to explain the behind the scenes mechanics, "to do a glamour shot of food, you can't eat it. It's fake. So if you want to show someone eating your burger, it's gotta be a real burger without all the laquer and autobody paint. No self-respecting creative director at some ad agency is going to want to film that kind of ugliness.
(If we were all hermetically sealed aluminum bottles, close ups of other aluminum bottles would be exciting)
But that kind of ugliness is what sells. Carl's Jr. sales jumped 400% since taking that leap of faith. Now, their ads are graphic, innovative and international. Most importantly, their ads sell product. They featured regular looking actors (in the beginning) who were easy to relate to actually taking the dive and eating their burgers.
The missing Tabasco in the Old Spice Viral Ads was that nobody was shown actually using the product. AXE, on the other hand, is all about showing users using AXE.
Looking back, it's amazing how effective it was to see Kelly's best friend physically strip down, smile, and jump than just hearing him tell us how badly we were missing out.
If You want to speak with Bob Wan Kim about Your Marketing and Moving Your Work to the Next Level, He's ten digits away. Just call 310 598 1606
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