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| Can you hum the blues riff from
Summit Ridge Drive?
February 22 2010:
Your faithful reporter was an underage clarinetist
and jazz freak in the late 40s, sneaking into joints at the beach in California
to see the last of the greats. And to prove my credentials I ask a simple
question. Can you hum the blues riff in Artie Shaw's "Summit Ridge Drive?"
Author Tom Nolan calls the number "a masterpiece of small-combo jazz." If
you've heard it you've never forgotten it. And now Nolan's new book on Shaw
links this marvelous little piece to the start of the rock 'n' roll revolution.
Here's how Nolan tells it: Shaw and Benny Goodman were the clarinet stars
of the era, and both had pulled together small combos from their big bands.
Shaw's "Gramercy 5" included drummer Nick Fatool, trumpeter Billy Butterfield
and pianist Johnny Guarnieri. The night before they recorded their first
set of records, Shaw asked Guarnieri if he could play the harpsichord. He
couldn't, but after practicing into the night and the next morning, he learned
it. When the combo recorded "Summit Ridge Drive," written by Shaw, Nolan
says the winning combination of clarinet, trumpet and harpsichord proved
to be a classic that sold millions. And here's Nolan quoting legendary Memphis
record producer Sam Phillips, whose sessions with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis
and Johnny Cash helped launch rock: "The best music gives us a unique and
timeless solace. Listen to 'Summit Ridge Drive' by Artie Shaw." P.S. Nolan's
book is "Three Chords for Beauty's Sake: The Life of Artie Shaw." I'd buy
it. |
| The Super Bowl ads, embarrassing as usual
February 11 2010:
Lots of funny commercials in the Super Bowl.
But funny advertising is like froth on the head of tap beer. You like it,
then it's gone and forgotten. David Ogilvy, the best ad man who ever lived,
called such commercials "A curse on the ad business." More like a curse on
sponsors who pay two tabs--one to the ad agency, one to the network. The
Super Bowl invariably produces the worst advertising of the year--if you
prefer your ads to actually sell something stronger than froth. Okay then--on
with the annual guessing game. If you remember even one of the sponsors of
these throwaways, you win: (1) Two kids fly around on broomsticks, laughing
and shouting. A flying monster appears and things get a bit dicey--but they
elude him and fly on happily (2) Giant metal claws snatch any human within
range. Monsters lurk in the background. One guy rides a claw, waves his arms
and cheers (3) A couple (the man played by Chevvy Chase) makes hotel
reservations, goes on vacation and has a terrible time. The parking lot attendant
kicks their car and they're charged for "complimentary water" when they check
out (4) Two guys in a pickup speed across an ocean pier with a live whale
in the truck bed. The driver slams on the brakes and the pickup spins, ejecting
the whale, who lands in the water and swims away. (5) The Bonus Commercial
(you might get this one). NFL players in game uniforms sing a dumb song and
embarrass themselves trying to dance. Coach Mike Ditka shouts a few words
in a bit part. (Sponsor names lurk below.)
(1) Universal
Orlando Resort (2) Vizio Internet Apps (3) HomeAway.com (4) Bridgestone (5)
Boost Mobile |
| Few can recall sponsors of Super Bowl TV spots
February 1 2010:
The Romero "Guess the Sponsor" contest is now
in its 10th year. If you're in charge of advertising at any casino on earth
(or even if you just grind out ads for another type of business) here's the
deal. First, watch the Super Bowl's allegedly miraculous but mostly hopeless
commercials. Then check this space on Feb. 11, and play "Guess the Sponsor."
I write four or five descriptions of Super Bowl commercials, you read them,
then try to remember who sponsored them. Sounds easy, right? You'll be lucky
to get even one. This really is a contest for ad directors and creatives
who think they know how to sell. But if their ad sponsors can't be recalled
a day or so later, what good were the ads? Sounds absurd, but most viewers
laugh when they see the invariably nonsensical spots but forget the sponsors
in mere seconds. This is not the sort of advertising that sells anything,
but sponsors seem to love it because it's funny. The ad agencies, of course,
love it because they get commissions on spots that cost from 2.5 to 2.8 million
for 30 seconds--and can't be tracked for effectiveness. Love--it's wonderful.
P.S. Take the test on Feb. 11. |
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| Quality of the list saves casino
mail
January 22 2010:
(Continued from Jan. 11) Fact was, casino direct
mail succeeded mostly because of the quality of our lists. If you send the
right offer to the right list you can misspell every other word and get results.
So casinos assumed a format based on "originality" was fine. But imagine
the uptick in response if you had not only the right offer and right list,
but the high touch, personal approach as well. But I seldom see it in today's
casino mail. The writers don't understand the more adjectives they use the
more they weaken their argument. And many have never learned the difference
between features and benefits and how to exploit the difference. Too bad.
A growing expression of high tech over high touch is Email. In online magazines
the writers chortle when postage costs go up or direct mail takes a phony
hit from environmental activists. They predict the imminent demise of mail
and a massive switch to Email. That happens--but not if you're trying to
sell a product, a service or a package deal in Las Vegas. If you take a close
look at our industry, what kind of advertising has been salvation for the
casinos that know how to use it?. Not general advertising, not Email, not
viral, not mobile and not the social networks . Direct mail still does the
job. |
| Originality an enemy to productive mail
January 11 2010:
(Continued from Jan. 11) What I didn't realize
in those early days of direct mail was that the casino business would embrace
high tech but not "high touch," as John Naisbitt called it in Megatrends.
As mail became the most productive casino advertising medium, technology
overpowered salesmanship; graphics overpowered words. The enemy turned out
to be originality. In general advertising, originality is everything. The
more goofy and confusing ideas you have, the more you get paid. In direct
marketing we step back and draw our swords when clients ask us to get original.
The word is anathema. As David Ogilvy stated so bluntly, "originality" to
direct marketers means untested and untried. Let me elaborate. It means playing
hunches; it means guessing; it means the cool beats the proven; it means
the dazzling trounces the comprehensive; it means the indirect trumps the
direct. With so many direct mail tactics proven to work by thousands of consumer
mailings, why experiment? But no. We turned out tons of good-looking but
irrelevant mail. Instead of talking about the customer (high touch) it talked
about the casino. Instead of playing to direct mail's strength we played
to its weakness. (To be concluded in my posting of Jan. 22). |
| OK if players guess, but not the casino
January 1 2010:
One day in the late 60's a guy named Charlie
Tarr opened a Las Vegas lettershop. "Addressing & Mailing, Inc.," I think
he named it. I still remember Charlie dashing into my office at the Sahara
Las Vegas and telling me he could actually give me selected zip codes. For
a guy laboring 40 years ago in the uncertain beginnings of casino direct
mail, it was heady stuff. The options! The possibilities! The sheer power!
The precise targeting! Okay, so I overdid that a little. But from that day
forward I relegated traditional advertising to a secondary position behind
direct marketing. I knew I had a winner. I loved direct marketing in general
(and direct mail in particular) because it was so scientific, so clinical.
There was no mystique about it, no gut emotion that made advertisers part
with their money on faith alone. It either delivered or you knew the reason
why. For a whole industry like ours sustained by a slight mathematical advantage,
it was perfect. I laughed my head off the first time I ever heard the old
quote, "I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half."
With direct response advertising you knew what every penny did for you. How
embarrassing, I thought, for a general advertiser to be so blatantly uninformed
that he brags about his ignorance. What rational casino advertiser would
put up with that? Hey, the players are supposed to guess--not the casino.
(To be continued in my posting of Jan. 11). |
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| Why social networks will never
lure me
December 22 2009:
The headline on Elizabeth Bernstein's Wall
Street Journal story read, "The dark side of Webtribution." The story told
of a young woman who discovered dozens of her MySpace friends had received
anonymous email calling her a tramp and a home wrecker. Family members questioned
her morals. Co-workers whispered behind her back. Some friends cut her off
entirely. She endured this for months while denying the charges...when another
woman found her husband cheating she logged onto his FaceBook account, deleted
his privacy settings and let him have it...a Florida woman, says Bernstein,
won an $11.3 million decision against another woman who used the Internet
to vent about her and her company...the Associated Press revealed a quarter
of young people have been involved in "Sexting," sharing sexually explicit
photos and videos via cell phone and online..in two cases, writes Libby Quaid
of the AP, "Sexting" has been linked to suicides of teenage girls--an 18-year-old
in Cincinnati and a 13-year-old in Florida. Both hung themselves...the Iranian
government monitors Iranian students worldwide who use Facebook, Twitter
and YouTube to criticize the regime and often threatens their family members,
says the Journal...I'm out of space but there's plenty more. I respect the
social networks but I'll never join one. |
| Carry guns on campus? Students vote yes, 21-3
December 11 2009:
Full disclosure. I'm an NRA member. I've shot
in tournaments. I'm a strong proponent for gun safety. Have you read about
the dust-up between students at Colorado State University and CSU's Board
of Governors over the right to carry concealed weapons on campus? CSU is
one of two US universities to allow those (21 or older) with concealed carry
permits to bring guns to school. Michigan State has allowed it since last
June (and a Utah law bars state colleges from banning guns on campus). The
Associated Students of the CSU Senate voted 21-3 to retain the right of concealed
carry that's been around since 2003. The CSU Board of Governors voted 9-0
for a gun ban. The students campaigned for the right to defend themselves,
citing the mass murders at Virginia Tech two years ago. A Denver Post editorial
sided with the Board, citing the chances of an accidental shooting or "other
problems." A final decision is due next year but the students will lose.
The "enlightened" side will win, even though Virginia Tech, Denver's Columbine
High and every other US school that has suffered killings on campus all had
gun bans. I'm with the students. (Thanks to Monte Whaley and Joey Bunch who
broke the story for the Post.) |
| Growing up in Vegas: caricature of a town
December 1 2009:
I've written approximately 288 opinion pieces
like this one since I opened my Web site in 2000, and not a damn one of them
has been about Las Vegas. I don't mean modern Las Vegas. I'm talking about
the city I found when I went to work there in the 50s, right out of college,
as sports editor of the Review-Journal. That city has vanished, along with
many of my friends, and I have mixed memories of it. But if you tell a story
about old Las Vegas, people smile and say, "I wish I'd been there." Well,
maybe. The telephones in the 50s had four numbers, and if you wanted to make
a call you put the receiver to your ear, fell into a chair and waited. Sometimes
it took ten minutes before the operator said "Number please." I remember
a rumor about a man who died of a heart attack while his wife waited for
the operator. None of us at the newspaper ever tracked it down, but it sure
as hell was a conversation starter. The big intersections had no traffic
lights--just stop signs. Drive north or south from downtown and you'd hit
dirt roads. The attitude, though, was carefree. I remember thinking how lucky
I'd been to discover this little caricature of a town where everyone stayed
up all night and I could have more fun in a couple of hours than I'd had
in my entire life. So I stuck around, and damned if I didn't grow up with
the place. By 1980, old Las Vegas was gone, and so was I. |
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| Noodling at G2E with Gary Harris
November 22 2009:
There's just one time and one place where everyone
in the gaming business meets to find out how the other guys do it. That would
be G2E at the Las Vegas Convention Center. I started at the old IGWB show
in Atlantic City in the last century, where some of the talks drew four or
five listeners. But the show is a monster now and very well done, from the
leadup exhortations right through to the "thank you" E-mail that hits your
screen a day after the show ends. Impressive. I walked the exhibits, swapped
stories with old friends, and bumped into old pal Gary Harris. The man designs
slots these days and I hear he's a star. But every time I think of Gary my
mind drifts back to the mid-80s when he worked for Universal Slots and I
did the company's advertising. Gary and I discussed all the ads in advance,
and one day he laid five ideas on me. All were well ahead of their time,
but one absolutely fascinated me. The guy invented ticket in, ticket out.
Maybe there were others at work on it, but Gary had the whole plan in his
mind. His closing line to me was, "The machine prints you a check." Another
idea was a machine that let the player win on every play or get his token
back. How does the house make money? They sell the player the tokens and
redeem them at 85 percent. |
| BlackBerry branding, a deliberate obscurity
November 11 2009:
What's the purpose of advertising? To sell
something, you say? We're on the same page. What's the single most important
part of any ad? The headline, you say? Again we agree. The best headlines
are like newspaper headlines because they alert the reader to the offer and
its benefits. They give you a vest pocket summary--and if you have a need
or even a yen for the product or service, they draw you into the ad. But
what about headlines like this one from a recent edition of the Wall Street
Journal: "Don't just like." It gives you no benefits, no promises, no offer
and no reason to read the ad. Welcome to "branding," a form of advertising
that relies on "creativity" to lure you into copy that inevitably deals in
obscurity and seldom mentions the name of the product or service. So under
"Don't just like." we find "Like is watered down love. Like is mediocre.
Like is wishy-washy. Artists don't suffer for the like of art. Love. Now
that's powerful stuff." Okay, had enough? This is a full page ad, in color,
for Blackberry. It's followed by a second full page, also in color, that
mentions features, not benefits, and tells you, "The new BlackBerry is a
result of loving what we do." Pure flapdoodle. |
| Adult move to Socials causes younkers to flee
November 1 2009:
Are you sick of Twitter? I mean, do you shout
unspeakable curses and launch a virtual kick at the computer when even the
sports pages mention it? Do you care about some 300-pound lineman who Twitters
or Tweets or whatever they do every day? And do you throw up your hands when
you see Twitter in the Wall Street Journal? The Wall Street Journal, for
gosh sake. The last barrier has been breached. But there's hope. The Guardian
says the latest research from the UK's Ofcom shows a drop-off of 5% in 15
to 24-year-olds using social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.
This social disaster has been caused, says Ofcom, by 25 to 34 year-olds who
now comprise 46% of Facebook and about the same on MySpace. The Guardian
says parents and teachers are moving in fast, causing the "adolescent exodus."
The main point, says James Thickett, director of market research at Ofcom,
"is the profile of social networking users is getting older." As for Twitter,
the editor of DM News has written of a Harvard Business School study that
found "a majority of Tweeters (90%) aren't tweeting." We can only hope the
25-34 group which has moved onto Twitter will come to its senses and take
up handball or bass fishing. After all, these are adults. |
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| G.A.Wright picks G2E to throw
a casino party
October 22 2009:
Party time at G2E and you're invited. Yes,
when the former casino pros who've matriculated to Denver's G. A. Wright
Marketing see an opportunity to party with casino marketing and advertising
people (and old pals) they do it right. I'm talking lunch, cocktails, copies
of Secrets of Casino Marketing signed by your faithful reporter, Las Vegas
funnyman Louie Anderson, and probably three or four things I haven't heard
about. Come on Wednesday, Nov. 18, anytime from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. and you'll
find them in Room N236 in the Las Vegas Convention Center. near the exhibit
hall. And let me tell you, these people are loaded with insight. Ask them
a question about casino marketing and they do a club date. You want to know
the most profitable ways to use the "new media?" They have a guy. You want
the latest news on systems or security or the front desk. They have a guy.
You want the inside on Atlantic City? They have a guy. You want some classy
ad writing? They have a girl. You want knockout art and design for the casino
business? They have...well, you know what I mean. Now lets talk about Louie
and me for a second. I start signing and handing out "Secrets" at 2 p.m.
Louie roars in at 3:30. Hell of a show. Hope I see you there. |
| A compulsive's friend, Wexler is still at it
October 11 2009:
I met Arnie Wexler four years ago at the annual
Casino Marketing Conference in Las Vegas. He's as nice a guy as you'd ever
want to know and one of the most dedicated men I've ever met. I asked him
to keep in touch and he's sent me at least one E-mail message a month ever
since. You may not know who Arnie is because he doesn't promote himself.
But for more than 38 years he's been on the same relentless quest to help
and then reform compulsive gamblers. When I came into the gaming business
in the 60's no programs existed to help such gamblers. But by the early 70s,
Wexler and others like him began to press their cases--and casinos took note.
Arnie was the executive director of the Council on Compulsive Gaming of New
Jersey for eight years; he appeared on Oprah, Nightline, 48 Hours and other
top shows to spread his message; he presented workshops and training seminars
for Fortune 500 corporations and opened a nationwide hot line for problem
gamblers at 888-Last-Bet. Along the way the gaming business fell in line
behind him and the casinos spawned a line of Wexlerites who became just as
dedicated as Arnie. Did he retire? Of course not. Arnie and Sheila Wexler
Associates (she's his wife) are busy to this day presenting workshops and
seminars on compulsive gambling addiction. I know because I read his E-mails.
Thank you, my friend, and carry on. |
| Sub-Machinegun better than cash?
October 1 2009:
Before casinos caught on that the best floor
promotions pay nothing but cash or (more recently) free slot play to winners,
the business gave away some truly dippy stuff. I offered $100,000 in cash
in the Super Sahara Celebration at Del Webb's Sahara in the 60s. But rival
casinos, caught unaware by the first big floor promotion on the Strip, fought
us the following year with promotion prizes that included toasters, frying
pans and luggage as leaders. I should have sent them all thank-you notes.
But in the 70s, one casino (The Mint in downtown Las Vegas) got my attention
with a first prize almost as good as cash. My good friend Larry Close was
the Mint GM, and first prize in one of his promotions was a Thompson
Sub-Machinegun. You might remember this stubby, drum-fed gun as a favorite
of G-Men and gangsters in the 30s. And there it was--every man's dream--up
for grabs. Larry told me the Mint fielded calls about the gun every day.
Hell, federal law prohibited civilians (except gangsters) from owning
machineguns, so I don't know how Larry handled it. All I know was every time
I went down to the Mint, a crowd had gathered around the glass locker that
held the Thompson. All men, staring at that baby like it was gold. I never
found out who won it. Probably a gangster. |
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| Wanna make a bet on Fantasy Football?
September 22 2009:
Our youngest son, Troy, has been playing Fantasy
Football for years. He runs a neighborhood league and has played in his
fraternity league since graduation from college. So you'd think I would
have--even accidentally--discovered the lure of a game that has 13 million
players who spend a billion a year on it. And I didn't make up those figures.
They're from the Associated Press. Naturally, casinos are into it with both
feet, er, cleats. The "Fantasy Football Superdraft" in Las Vegas, Aug. 27-30,
involved half the casinos on the Strip (I counted 12) and they all offered
special deals for players. You could buy the Platinum Package for $99 and
get three VIP parties, a tailgate party, a Draft Room and "Pool Festivities."
Buy the upgrade and get a private Draft Suite. I mean, how could you draft
without a private suite? The Superdraft was created by Brand Interaction
Group and Bookem Danno Productions (cute). Meanwhile, says AP, Station Casinos
Inc., the country's fifth largest sports book, was the first to release a
betting line and take wagers based on the projected stats of Fantasy Football
players. The story says a Las Vegas bettor can wager, for example, that Reggie
Bush will finish with more than 16 fantasy points, or that Peyton Manning
might be under 21. A 24-player lineup changes each week. My only question
is, where does anyone find the time to play such a game? |
| The Beatles are back, for a hefty $249 tab
September 11 2009:
The Beatles, says the Wall Street Journal,
are projected to be among the top-selling video games this year. Video games?
Viacom Inc.'s MTV Games, says the Journal, is relying on the appeal of just
one band with the release of "The Beatles: Rock Band." Hey, I remember these
guys from 1964 when Stan Irwin booked them for one of their first US appearances
at the Sahara--right under the noses of every other entertainment director
on the Strip. I also remember the near riot at the Las Vegas Convention Center
when they appeared. I met the boys at the plane (we sneaked them in through
the old McCarran Field) and rode with them to the Sahara where a mob of teens
(all girls) awaited. Nice guys and funny, too. Who knew they'd own the world
one day? Meanwhile, they're standing in line in London to buy the Beatles'
remastered CDs and the MTV game. And guess who's at the top of the charts
in Blighty? Same four guys--minus one. MTV expects big sales, but I had to
gulp when I read the price. The game and controller bundles cost $99.99 for
Guitar Hero 5, but MTV wants $249.99 for "The Beatles: Rock Band." But what
the hell. The administration says the recession is ending. |
| Is gambling still alive in Moscow subways?
September 1 2009:
Does anyone know how gambling is getting along
in Russia these days? You may remember the state closed all casinos and slot
halls in late June, but in a grand gesture opened up four new regions of
the country where gambling will be permitted. Of course, all four regions
are at least 1,000 kilometers from Moscow in places you never heard of. Still,
it's okay to set up shop in Kaliningrad on the Azov Sea. Surely you know
where that is. Another of the gambling regions is in the Altai area of Siberia.
Two more are near North Korea and Japan. Now, the latter makes some sense.
The Japanese love to gamble, Maybe they could take the ferry over--if there
was a ferry. Personally, I lost faith in Russian gaming when my friend Ed
Fishman came back from a trip to Moscow and told me how overeager the tax
collectors were. Apparently they work in twos, are usually armed with AK-47s
and waste little time arguing the amount of cash they're supposed to collect.
They were particularly unpopular in Moscow, which had to close more than
500 casinos and slot joints. Well, it's okay. If they want to gamble they
can fly here. Or because gamblers are such a hearty bunch they might set
up slots in the Moscow subway. I wish them luck. Or perhaps "survival" would
be a better word. |
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| Had a heart attack? Pass the chocolate
August 22 2009:
Many, if not all, of the big casinos in the
US turn down the beds of important customers and place a small bit of chocolate
on the pillows. Now comes word that they could actually be saving lives.
"Chocolate Slashes Death Rate in Heart Attack Survivors," screamed a NewsMax
bulletin that showed up on my screen. Hey, I'm always telling casinos to
advertise benefits, not features, and here comes a perfect example. Can you
see the headline? "Razzmatazz Casino announces an end to guest heart attacks."
I am not kidding about this. The story says chocolate "cuts the rate of
heart-related mortality in healthy older men and post-menopausal women."
That about covers it. Of course, you have to survive a heart attack before
chocolate works, which adds a little chance to the occasion. But let's look
on the positive side. The Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and the Karolinska
Institute in Stockholm collaborated to discover the good news. (Why do so
many medical breakthroughs occur in Sweden?). Well, no matter. But if you
never get your bed turned down, be sure to pack some extra chocolate. Like
the world in Woody Allen's "Sleeper," everything you thought was bad for
you became good for you. |
| Germans hate the CFL, rush to hoard old bulbs
August 11 2009:
Did you read about Germans rushing to the stores
to buy every light bulb in sight. Size? Not a problem. They snap up anything
on the shelf. Bulb makers are working their factories overtime and they still
can't keep up. Some consumers have hundreds of bulbs stashed in their basements.
One boasted of a 20-year supply. I know it sounds crazy, but you and I may
be doing the same thing in a few years. The new Compact Florescent Light
bulb (CFL) is upon us and the Germans don't like it one damn bit. Too bad.
The government says "You vill use it." The standard incandescent bulb they've
used for decades is kaput. And we'll face the same fate, because our own
government has issued a similar edict. Yeah, yeah, I know the CFL will save
a little energy. But I don't like the thing. It's weak, its colder and its
high frequency flickering can cause headaches. If it drops and breaks in
your home it spills Mercury. The Germans say it's another example of EU
bureaucracy gone wild. Some have named it "light bulb socialism." It's a
sad day for Germany and America when governments can force us to buy a product
we don't like, for a higher price, and one that's loaded with Mercury. But
it's coming. |
| Terms and Conditions: worst copy ever written
August 1 2009:
Every few months I set aside some time to study
the tiny messages called "Terms and Conditions" that stare out from the bottoms
of brochures and letters mailed to me by casinos or by friends who just like
to aggravate me. They haven't changed much since the 80s. If anything, they're
longer and more convoluted. Read some of these things and you'll roll your
eyes. Here's one I picked from a casino mailing to my home, and this is
word-for-word: This invitation and a photo I,D. must be presented at the
front desk at check-in. Offer valid for one or two consecutive nights thru
Dec. 22. No Saturday arrivals. Excludes holidays. Subject to availability.
Advanced (cq) reservations required. No additional invitations or coupons
will be issued. These offers cannot be used in conjunction with any other
promotion. The dates of this offer cannot be extended or altered at any time.
Management reserves the right to revoke, change, or alter any or all parts
of this promotion. Must be 21 or older to redeem. Sounds like a State
Department bulletin aimed at terrorists, right? Yet there it was in a casino
invitation. The dismaying truth here is that the casino printed it in eight-point
type, 7 1/2 inches wide, without ever thinking how many customers it might
alienate. The people who published this legal brief obviously have declared
war against every scammer, low-life and scofflaw to walk the earth. They're
going to get every last one of them even if it drives away their best
customers--and it may. |
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| Twitter not popular with the media
elite
July 22 2009:
When the so-called "Media Elite" met a week
ago in Sun Valley, Idaho, one of the first sessions focused on how to capitalize
on Digital media. Twitter became a focal point, and stars such as media boss
Barry Diller and cable TV executive John Malone said they didn't think it
was a "natural" advertising medium. Both predicted it will be hard for Twitter
to sell advertising without alienating its users. Others wondered how Twitter
expects to pay its bills when its $55 Million in Venture capital runs out.
Meanwhile, the editor of DM News, Cara Wood, wrote of a recent study from
the Harvard Business School that found a majority of "Tweeters" (90%) aren't
tweeting. "As someone who has been skeptical of the merit of the medium,"
Wood wrote, "I'm feeling pretty smug. DM News has been investigating the
purported value of the micro-blogging site since its launch (3 years ago)
and while many have told us they've built buzz, I've yet to hear marketers
tie it to hard and fast ROI." Social Media Strategist Dirk Shaw of Vignette,
said "Twitter is great for buzz, for driving traffic and managing brand
perception, but companies must be relevant or else they'll be ignored." |
| Bet limits rise to $100 in Colorado's casinos
July 11 2009:
Colorado hit the casino big time, sort of,
on July 2, when betting limits went from $5 to $100, Roulette and Craps became
legal and closing time went from 2 a.m. to never. Thirty six casinos in Black
Hawk, Central City and Cripple Creek went completely nuts. Okay, so a $100
limit is nothing special in Las Vegas. But in Colorado it's like being let
out of jail. The Denver Post unleashed three front page stories. Radio stations
sent newsmen for first hand accounts. A movie star threw out the first pair
of dice at one casino, and a reporter at another breathlessly announced that
for the first time, casino restaurants would be serving breakfast. One of
the larger casinos offered $5 in cash to new player club signups. Central
City relaxed its building height requirements that allowed no casinos taller
than 53 feet--the exact height of the revered Teller House Hotel. Another
casino offered a new Jeep as first prize in a drawing, and gave its players
an entry for every 10 points they scored (unheard of in the days of card
swipes). On an odd note, worries about cheaters abounded. Casinos hired more
security, brought in more cameras (1,500 between the Gilpin and the Lodge)
and one hired an expert from Harrah's Las Vegas whose specialty is catching
cheaters. In the last two years, said the Post, just two of 13 cheating
complaints led to arrests. |
| Credit card massacre a big hit on YouTube
July 1 2009:
A couple of interesting stories you probably
didn't see unless you take the Wall Street Journal: Fred Willharm, described
by the Journal as a real- estate investor from Franklin, Tenn., made his
TV debut on YouTube with a video he named "The Tennessee Credit Card Massacre."
Incensed when card-issuers jacked up his interest rate, Mr. Willharm "sliced,
drilled and shredded" his credit cards, then regretted that he couldn't blow
up the cards instead. He's one of dozens, says the Journal, who have posted
online videos of a "plasectomy," a term coined by Fox radio talk show host
Dave Ramsey...the advertising industry, meanwhile, is furious over the Family
Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act that gives the FDA power to control
the marketing and advertising of smokes. No giveaways of non-tobacco items
with the purchase of a tobacco product, and no outdoor ads within a thousand
yards of schools and playgrounds. The ad industry says it's the most restrictive
advertising bill ever passed for a legal product. Magazines will be particularly
hurt says the Journal. Those with large readerships under the age of 18 won't
be allowed tobacco ads in color--just black and white ads the business calls
a "tombstone." In the first quarter of 2009, ad spending dropped 21%. How
do you like the new regulations flowing out of Washington now? |
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| Bally's now the
last home for showgirls and dancers
June 22 2009: I
remember when every major resort casino on the Las Vegas Strip had a "line"
of beautiful girls that opened every main room show. Their routines lasted
as long as 15 minutes as they showed off their impossible bodies and remarkable
dancing skills. But one by one, casinos eliminated the lines of Las Vegas.
Now there remains only a single Las Vegas show populated by beautiful dancers
and showgirls. It's Jubilee! at Bally's Las Vegas. Really kind of sad to
see such a stunning tradition melt away. Showgirls usually stood 5-8 and
up, and at least one famous director required his girls to be 6-feet in heels.
These tall young beauties were carefully scrutinized for imperfections. One
director took no one unless her ears laid flat alongside her head. Arms,
legs and breasts had to be near perfect. And finally, showgirls had to be
graceful. The qualifications for dancers were quite different. Most saw dancing
as a career, and the Strip and Lake Tahoe used to pay well for the best ones.
While showgirls exposed their breasts in production numbers, dancers never
did. And their workload far exceeded that of showgirls. I knew both, of course,
in my 18 years at Del Webb's Sahara. Our dancers had to master all sorts
of odd routines--one in which they maneuvered their way about the stage atop
5-foot-high wooden balls. One day I met a dancer from the Sahara at Lake
Tahoe--a young beauty who has never changed in 37 years of marriage. I consider
myself very, very, very lucky. |
| Your faithful
reporter to speak in Las Vegas
June 11 2009:
I'm speaking at the 5th annual Casino Marketing
Conference, July 20-22, at Paris Las Vegas. And while the topic is direct
mail, it's unlike any speech I've ever given about this most effective of
all casino marketing techniques. Casino direct mail has changed so much since
I wrote my first "personal letter" in 1965 that it's virtually unrecognizable.
And direct response advertising has vanished. Personal letters once were
mainstays. Now you seldom see them. Oh, you find copy in almost every casino
mailing. But it's short copy, all features and claims--the kind used by general
ad agencies that believe no one reads anymore. And the copy is about the
casino, not about the customer. When direct marketing surged in the 80s,
generalists soon called for the "integrated agency," in which direct and
general were to be equals. And the integrated agency happened, but traditional
direct marketers soon became second class citizens in the casino business.
What caused it? I'll cover several factors in my talk, but here's one. Direct
marketing art directors always enhanced the long copy typical of its writers.
They studied reading comprehension and type styles, and frequently used coupon
offers. Generalists continued with the hard-to-read reverse-outs, indirect
headlines and puzzling illustrations and pictures they preferred. And their
art directors won the battle because so many clients never understood the
difference. |
| Max Factor dead
here, but it's buck in Russia
June 1 2009:
Change is unrelenting. But who ever thought
it would happen to Max Factor cosmetics? Procter & Gamble said it was
not only taking Max Factor off the shelves, it was taking it out of America.
The brand still does well in the UK and it's buck in Russia, but it's finished
here. Max worked as a beautician for Russian royalty, the Romanovs, writes
Fred Basten in his The Man Who Changed the Faces of the World. But in 1904
he escaped to the US and opened a cosmetics store in Los Angeles. Nice women,
in those days, never wore makeup. You couldn't even say the word in polite
society until Max hit America and designed faces for Katharine Hepburn, Rita
Hayworth, Bette Davis and comparable knockouts. He created makeup for silent
films, then for talkies and finally for color motion pictures. If you like
to watch the old black and white movies, you'll always see his name in the
credits. Same for color until Max died in 1938. My parents were vaudevillians
and my mother refused to use anything but Max Factor makeup--and no wonder.
Basten's book says Max created "firsts" in false eyelashes, lip gloss,
foundation, eye shadow, the eyebrow pencil, water-resistant mascara,
water-resistant makeup, color harmony and celebrity-endorsed cosmetics. |
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| History Channel to show your reporter's
UFO case
May 22 2009: It
came from outer space. Really. In 1976, as marketing director at Del Webb's
Sahara Las Vegas, I investigated UFO reports in my spare time. And the strangest
came from entertainer Johnny Sands. On a dark January night, Sands' car stalled
on the Blue Diamond road outside Las Vegas. When he stepped outside and opened
the hood, a huge, silent craft appeared overhead. It looked like a blimp,
only longer, Sands said. The craft disappeared behind a hill and two human-like
creatures approached Sands. They stood about 5-7, and seemed proportioned
like humans. Their eyes were set close together under large, hairless heads.
Protruding from their neck were appendages Sands described as "gills." They
"spoke" to Sands, apparently by telepathy, and he was able to answer back.
But the two humanoids soon turned away and vanished. I arranged for Sands
to take a polygraph test, which showed no evidence of deception. The operator
said Sands was truthful in his answers. My story appeared in the Star tabloid
and various UFO newsletters. Now thirty-two years zip past. On May 4, came
a letter from Sands, whose case will appear on the History Channel's "UFO
Hunters" series. I sent producer Jonathan Walton all the information I had
kept on Sands. Can't wait to see the show. |
| Beleaguered SUV tows out the hybrids
May 11 2009: I
phoned my local Chevvy dealer yesterday to see if I could bring my 2003
Trailblazer in for service. "Sure," he said. "First come, first served starting
at 7 a.m." I was about to ask what he had in mind if GM files for bankruptcy,
but I thought better of it. No need to agitate the guy. I bought the car
in 2002 and paid it off in three years. The mechanics stare at it in wonderment
when they see it's been driven only 31,670 miles. "Just broken in, " one
of them told me. "Like new," said another. Listen, when you have a paid-off
car with low mileage you take care of it. So I'm not falling for the latest
government plan to buy back the "clunkers" and "gas guzzlers" for up to $4,500.
The last thing I need is another car payment. And to tell you the truth,
small cars and hybrids are not for me. They're terrific on mileage but not
so good when they get smacked. I've seen the wrecks on the evening news,
so I'll keep my Trailblazer. It's an SUV, but in Colorado I'm among friends.
You drive the Rockies in wintertime, you need an SUV. Period. I tow small
cars and hybrids out of the snow. That's as close as I'll ever get to one.I
phoned my local Chevvy dealer yesterday to see if I could bring my 2003
Trailblazer in for service. "Sure," he said. "First come, first served starting
at 7 a.m." I was about to ask what he had in mind if GM files for bankruptcy,
but I thought better of it. No need to agitate the guy. I bought the car
in 2002 and paid it off in three years. The mechanics stare at it in wonderment
when they see it's been driven only 31,670 miles. "Just broken in, " one
of them told me. "Like new," said another. Listen, when you have a paid-off
car with low mileage you take care of it. So I'm not falling for the latest
government plan to buy back the "clunkers" and "gas guzzlers" for up to $4,500.
The last thing I need is another car payment. And to tell you the truth,
small cars and hybrids are not for me. They're terrific on mileage but not
so good when they get smacked. I've seen the wrecks on the evening news,
so I'll keep my Trailblazer. It's an SUV, but in Colorado I'm among friends.
You drive the Rockies in wintertime, you need an SUV. Period. I tow small
cars and hybrids out of the snow. That's as close as I'll ever get to
one. |
| The merits of red wine: goes well with peanuts
May 1 2009:
Researchers at Northumbria University in the
UK have discovered red wine can make you a math genius. Another study from
Mt. Sanai School of Medicine showed red wine fights cancer, diabetes, obesity
and Alzheimer's Disease. Both attribute these miracles to ResveratroI, a
chemical found in red wine, blueberries, cranberries and peanuts. I don't
know why these kinds of studies always come out of schools no one has ever
heard of. In the Northumbria tests, half the subjects guzzled red wine and
the other half took placebos. Have you ever in your entire life met anyone
who couldn't tell the difference between red wine and a placebo? "Additional
tests,' said the story on NewsMax, "will seek to discover the optimal dose
needed for resveratrol's brain-boosting effects." Hey, I volunteer for the
additional tests. Where the hell is Northumbria? Of course, you can always
eat blueberries. Last time I looked, these little blue devils cost $4.99
for an 8-oz. box. So forget that and buy peanuts. A bag a day probably would
work. Believe me, they're really good with red wine. |
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| Rose makes it official; We're in a
depression
April 22 2009:
Professor I. Nelson Rose says we're in a
depression. So who dares to argue with the world's leading authority on gambling
law, a consultant and expert witness for governments and industry? Not me.
In his latest column, Rose says the difference between recession and depression
is like the difference between neurosis and psychosis, then adds the legal
gaming industry is facing a psychotic global economy. Rose says economic
depressions have immediate impacts on gaming law (some casinos have already
hired him to advise them on bankruptcy procedures) and deflation soon sets
in. He barrels through the gloomy statistics about casino companies that
no longer exist, about an Indian casino that put in Class II slots so it
wouldn't have to pay California 25% of its machine revenue, about the business
slumps in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, but does end his gaming litany with
hope. Some states actively seek gambling because they see it as a "painless
tax." Internet poker may come to California. The government is backing off
its opposition to Internet gaming. New Jersey may roll back its casino smoking
ban. I met Nelson in the mid-80s in Atlantic City, sat in one of his classes,
knew he'd be a winner. Hello, casinos? He's the best. |
| Consumers avoid bars; some drink in swings
April 11 2009:
Big trouble. Bar business has tailed off--the
first decline since 1995, says the Wall Street Journal. Total liquor sales
rose only 1.3% by volume last year, slowest rate in 10 years. Sales are down
in New York and Florida. The recession? Sure, but that's just part of the
problem. Horrified liquor companies have discovered more and more consumers
stay way from bars and entertain in their homes. On top of that, analysts
point out liquor is more expensive than beer and wine. But the big distilleries
are fighting back with pre-made drinks that are easy to serve on the kitchen
table. You can buy margaritas and wine in boxes now. Just slip them into
your refrigerator. The Journal says Brown-Forman, the maker of Jack Daniel's
whisky, is about to release prepared cocktails made with its Southern Comfort
whisky-flavored liqueur. And Diageo is about to flood the US with Smirnoff
Tuscan Lemonade and Captain Morgan Long Island iced tea. I hope this news
never reaches Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Too many bartenders are out of
work already. And come to think of it, my father-in-law and I used to drink
in bars. Now we do it in a swing on his front porch. This could get bad.
Real bad. |
| Worst decision of 1963; meet one of the judges
April 1 2009:
In one of my past careers I became a boxing
judge--and a pretty good one. I worked several world championship matches
and a whacking number of other pro and amateur matches in Las Vegas in the
early 60s. My title fights included Gene Fullmer versus Dick Tiger and Fullmer
against Benny "Kid" Paret; the third match between Emile Griffith and Luis
Rodriguez, and the Harold Johnson-Willie Pastrano lightheavyweight championship
bout--a truly memorable occasion. Willie's supporters jammed the Convention
Center, and even though I always tried to block out the crowd, I couldn't
help but be aware of the screaming at every move Willie made. But at the
end, I thought Johnson was a clear winner. I didn't hesitate to give him
my vote. I was astounded when the referee and the second judge voted the
other way. The press called it the worst decision of 1963--and it was. Talking
with my boxing expert friend Jimmy Jacobs a few years later, he told me that
to Harold, I became a hero. According to Jimmy, Harold said, "John Romero
is the only honest boxing judge in Las Vegas." Of course, judgment calls
produce boxing winners, and honesty has nothing to do with it. But I did
have quick eyes then. After that, whenever I went to NY or Philly, I tried
to find Harold. No luck. If you see him, pass along my regards. |
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| A search for good news ends with...good
news
March 22 2009:
Today, I'd really like to write about the
squabbling in Washington. Or about the $9.3 trillion debt that congressional
auditors say we may face for the next 10 years. Or about Democrat Majority
Leader Harry Reid's letter to the President asking for clarification of a
provision that restricts casinos from using federal stimulus funds. Or about
the Pentagon bracing for a steep reduction in military spending at a time
when China and Russia are racing to see who overtakes us first. Or how Detroit
automakers, in the words of Joseph White, "Went from Kings of the Road to
Roadkill." Or about Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman's letter to the President
that ended by asking "...you and members of Congress to refrain from calling
out individual cities or destinations, which serves no purpose and only
reinforces outdated stereotypes." Or about the neighbors who threatened
executives of AIG because they accepted bonuses that the company promised
them a year earlier. Or about Colorado casinos--now there's a story. In contrast
to most of the gaming industry, Colorado's 40 casinos are hiring, and in
February they reported $57.3 million in revenue compared to $57.9 the previous
February. I knew if I looked long enough I'd find good news. |
| Conrad's marketing book packed with good advice
March 11 2009:
As I read through Dennis Conrad's new book,
Conrad on Casino Marketing, I put a check mark by lines I thought were
particularly important to our business. I wound up with a book full of check
marks. I should have used invisible ink. But I expected it. Dennis rose from
Keno writer to casino executive to owning his own business, Raving Consulting
of Reno. The guy's mind is like a library. He just sits down, pulls out a
piece of information, and lays it on you. Here are some of the lines I checked.
"You start with the gaming customer and work back...when you give your customers
honest information on your games, they become confident, feeling less like
suckers, and will be likely to try a new game and play it longer...it may
surprise you that your customers don't mind losing if only they can win along
the way and play for awhile...the numerous examples of Indian casinos with
"no alcohol" or "limited alcohol" policies help to counteract (alcohol's)
negative image--and response to this issue is voluntary...why is customer
service training one of the first budget items to be cut when business
slows?...where possible, segregate the smoking and non-smoking areas in a
design-friendly way that tells your non-smoking customers, 'the air is different
in here'...the current model pushes casino hosts to become " independent
contractors" instead of cooperative members of a high-powered hosting team...the
GM should dedicate time to listening to live, breathing casino
customers." |
| Rather than slash prices, offer something of value
March 1 2009:
The mail industry, according to DM News, faces
"an uncertain future." The well-known USPS deficit of $2.8 billion seems
insurmountable, total mail volume has decreased by 9 billion, and rate hikes
are on the way. Meanwhile, says the magazine, the volume produced on digital
presses will grow as much as 3% a year to 2013. DM News didn't say casinos
are nervous, but I'm here to tell you they're not too happy about it. What
to do? We can all think of the obvious, but some solutions elude the mind.
Creating extra value at a small cost is one of them. When the competition
lowers room prices, it's tough to hold your ground. The instinct is to match
him, especially in today's marketplace. But there's an alternative--and it's
to hold the line on prices but do something special for your guests--something
to give you a memorable edge over the cut rate guy. When I was Marketing
Director of the Sahara Las Vegas, we telephoned guests only minutes after
they reached their rooms. After a warm welcome, the operators would say,
"The Sahara wants to send up a drink for you two, compliments of the house.
What will you have?" Ten minutes later two free drinks arrived at their door.
You'd be amazed how much talk this created, and how many firm friendships
it formed. P.S. We never cut prices. |
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| How to halt steroid use: just wipe out
their stats
February 22 2009:
I had to laugh. Some Representative wants to
get steroid-using baseball players up before Congress again. With the recession
and assorted international problems, can anyone tell me what purpose that
would serve except a picture of the Rep in the home town newspaper? In the
Rocky Mountain news, a sports columnist suggests Bud Selig, the baseball
commissioner, declare steroid-era numbers will no longer be compared to those
of the pre-steroid era. Why should steroid-era stats stay on the books at
all, says my wife Robin? She's come up with a common sense solution guaranteed
to solve the steroid problem in two seconds. The commissioner, she says,
should simply erase the stats that players piled up when they were on steroids.
For Alex Rodriguez, the stats for 2001, 2002 and 2003 would be wiped from
the books. All those home runs and RBIs, gone overnight. Other players in
the 104 who have admitted the use of steroids would also have their stats
removed--as would anyone in the future who gets caught. "If a child is hurting
himself by playing with a toy, you take it away," says Robin. Wow, would
she shake up baseball if they made her commissioner. Players live and die
with their stats. They're the clubs they use to hammer out those multi-million
dollar salaries. I agree with Robin. Nothing wrong with multi-million salaries,
but if the stats that helped earn all that dough came on steroids, wipe them
out. Comment, Mr. Rodriguez? |
| Same old Super Bowl junk; advertisers entertain again
February 11 2009:
I drove to Denver for a couple of appointments
the morning after the Super Bowl, radio blasting as I listened to the local
newsies pick their "favorite" TV ad. It's always kind of funny because the
radio people all believe the purpose of advertising is to entertain. Then
on came a local ad pro who praised the Super Bowl as "A celebration of
advertising." Unfortunately, he left out a word., He should have added "agencies"
to the quote, for they're the major beneficiaries. The unfortunate clients,
like the radio newsies, also believe ads are meant to entertain. So the agency
gets paid, NBC gets paid and the sponsors lose, oh, three million or so,
and no one remembers the company name. "Best-liked" was an unfunny Doritos
spot where a guy shatters a snack machine with a glass globe, then his partner
throws one and hits the boss in the crotch (a staple of "America's Funniest
Videos.") Otherwise, same old junk. Here are five ads. Can you name the sponsors?
(1) After introducing himself as a TV star, Alec Baldwin launches onto a
humorless diatribe against television (2) Humans look on in wonder as monkeys
service a car and one kisses his keeper (3) A boy using a bath towel as his
cape is followed by Spiderman, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Popeye (4) A boy
rescues a bowl of goldfish from a burning building and grows up to be a doctor
who has no trouble getting a car. (5) A huge moose head protrudes from a
bookcase, then the camera moves behind the bookcase and we see the rest of
the moose, watched over by a guy who would like to have a better job than
watching the hind end of a moose. In order, Hulu, Castrol Edge, Universal
Orlando Resort, Cars.Com, Monster.Com.. P.S. My wife liked the Clydesdale
fetch. |
| Ogilvy's masterful speech KO'd general advertising
February 1 2009:
The year 1986, was the breakout year for direct
marketing. Oh, it had been around for a while, but general advertising had
all the business then and most direct marketers seemed content to hunker
in the environs and make no trouble. A few of us were screaming our heads
off about direct's superiority--but the plain fact was nobody knew who in
the hell we were or what we could accomplish. But one day the late David
Ogilvy changed everything with a famous speech to French direct marketers
in Paris. "You generalists," he said, "are the glamor boys and girls of the
advertising community...you regard advertising as an art form and expect
your clients to finance expressions of your genius...in Direct, our clients
don't give a damn if we win awards...they pay us to sell their products--nothing
else...you pride yourselves on your originality, which is the most dangerous
word in advertising...when you write an advertisement you want everyone to
congratulate you on your creativity...when sales go up, you claim the credit,
and when sales go down you blame the product...your favorite music is the
applause of your own copywriters and art directors...our favorite music is
the ring of the cash register...we sell, or else." Can you imagine two full
pages of this sort of thing? The speech ran in all the ad magazines and
overnight, it seemed, general advertising had absorbed a grievous wound from
which it has been slow to recover. Thank you, Mr. Ogilvy. |
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| Super Bowl time again; you'll blow it
as usual
January 22 2009:
I know, I know. It's hardly fair. But every
year I warn you well in advance I'll be quizzing you about Super Bowl TV
spots, and every year you blow it. You recall the spot but not the sponsor.
Kind of embarrassing--not for you but for the rock-headed ad agencies and
clients who lay out all that dough and get zip for it. Fifty million people
see the spot and only 28 can remember the sponsor. Something wrong there.
As in past years, I'll pick five or six spots, write a short description
of each and ask you to name the sponsor. For example, here are two spots
I used last year: (1) A fancy new car speeds through the French countryside.
It halts when it reaches the French army, circa 1814, and Napoleon steps
out. (2) A gorgeous girl and a bunch of lizards hoof it to the original
choreography of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." One of the lizards looks like
Jackson. Ridiculous stuff, isn't it? And I know you have no idea that No.
1 was for Garmin, and No. 2 was for Life Water. So take notes if you want
to, but you have no chance. I win every year, which is a tribute to the good
old ad agency standby of "branding," in which the client loses his rear end
but loves the spot, and the agency throws a party and the writers laugh
themselves silly. . Under TIP OF THE WEEK: |
| The press takes a shot at a gloomy Las Vegas
January 11 2009:
: Las Vegas has been successful through all
sorts of problems including recessions, floods, bad movies and bad actors.
It's plowed through everything fate could throw at it, breathed fire at those
who maligned it, winked at the stock market and survived Howard Hughes. This
makes guys in the "mainstream press" hate us. It's not an overt hate, of
course, but in their busy minds, revenge quietly simmers. Why? Because of
all the stories the press grinds out, it's happiest covering the heroes-to-bums
angle. Gloom, doom, failure, catastrophe, fizzle, flop--they love it. So
I smiled when I saw the AP's Jan. 1 headline, "Slump Means Identity Crisis
for Las Vegas." In an effort to put down the whole city, they interviewed
three or four citizens who had fallen on bad times and tried to make them
represent the other million or so. The first guy came to town to be an Elvis
impersonator, made a lot of money, bought Graceland, and lost everything
when the foreclosure mess started. "I think it's become an unforgiving town,
" he said. "I feel sorry for the fool who comes here to try to make it."
The second subject was a 52-year-old woman who has worked on the Strip most
of her life and now says, "I don't know what happened . It's never been like
this." In a third interview we find a man who insists the recession "destroys
the illusion of prosperity." So what's with Las Vegas? Did they close the
place? Is there a happy soul anywhere on the Strip? Is a collapse imminent?
Hey, I was there the other day and it looked pretty damn successful. And
still a blast. |
| Newest portable urinal disguised as a golf club
January 1 2009:
Brian Clark of the Denver Ricky Mountain News
is one clever guy. He hordes weird (but true) sports stories--and just released
his favorite howlers for the lousy year we swept out on Dec. 31. His title,
"Oddballs 2008." And away we go: a 15-year-old Chicago high school sophomore
was told to remove her replica Cubs jersey because the dean thought the last
name on the back, Fukudome, sounded too much like a profanity...Tampa Bay
pitcher Andy Sonnanstine was treated for an ear infection after falling asleep
wearing in-ear iPod headphones...upset when the Italian soccer club Juventus
loaned him to a rival team, Tiago Mendes locked club president Giovanni Gigli
in the bathroom...when Kid Rock and John Daily teamed up in the Buick Open
pro-am, Daly borrowed a can of suds from the Kid and used it as a tee on
the seventh hole...Ultimate Fighting Championship participant Jon Koppenhaver
legally changed his name to War Machine...a Florida urologist invented the
UroClub, a portable urinal shaped like a golf club and equipped with a removable
golf towel as a privacy shield...in England, 13 golf balls were removed from
the stomach of as Labrador Retriever who often prowled the course...and the
wife of one of China's top TV sports anchors interrupted a Olympic media
event, grabbed a microphone and accused her husband of adultery. Thanks as
usual, Brian. |
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| New definition of success leaves out the
successful
December 22 2008:
Full disclosure: I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's
new book,"Outliers: The Story of Success." But I do have a full page review
from the Rocky Mountain News. And if the reviewer is correct in his analysis,
Gladwell believes "accomplishment relies, to a large part, on a cosmic lottery,
on the type of dumb luck that offers no explanation or justification." In
pursuit of this eccentric theory, Gladwell refers to the successes of everyone
from Bill Gates and J. Robert Oppenheimer to The Beatles, and the special
opportunities and advantages that made them legends. This finger in the eye
of an American dream that rewards hard work limits success only to those
who shake the world. But I thought of a man I knew who came to this country
penniless, a victim of the Mexican revolution that took his father's life
in 1913. He spoke no English, had no skills, worked to help support the family
instead of completing high school, and was the recipient of beatings from
Texas youths who disliked Mexicans. But this boy never turned and ran. He
met the "cosmic lottery" head on, had more bad luck than "dumb luck," but
refused to fail. Eventually he toured the world as a vaudevillian, opened
a flourishing real estate business, was named to the board of directors of
a savings and loan corporation, raised a family and amassed a sum of money
that, in its day, was impressive. Are not men such as my father "successful?"
There are countless others like him, Mr. Gladwell. Perhaps you hadn't
noticed. |
| One sweet explanation of the storytelling craft
December 11 2008:
I'm scanning my email when a subject line ("12
Copywriting Secrets") leaps out at me. No writer could resist such a declaration.
All of us want to see what the other guys are doing. So I opened Target Marketing
magazine's Tipline and read Robert Lerose's piece. The man is good. All twelve
are solid, proven tactics. But one in particular, "Tell a story," was as
sweet an explanation of the craft as I've ever seen. Because it's my favorite,
I've devoted entire columns to storytelling. I knew Bill Jayme, the master
of the story-as-sales-argument, and I have four or five examples of Martin
Conroy's classic Wall Street Journal control. But trying to explain storytelling
to clients isn't always easy. Here's how Robert summed it up: "Bad copy starts
with the product. Good copy starts with the prospect. Great copy starts with
the prospect's emotions. Do what method actors do when they take on a role.
Get in the skin of your prospects. See the world through their eyes. Figure
out what keeps them awake at night. Once you do that, it will be easier to
reach them on a gut level. Prospects buy with their emotions, then justify
it with their reason." You nailed it, Robert. robertler@optonline.net |
| G.A. Wright a hit at the G2E show
December 1 2008:
Was G2E at the Las Vegas Convention Center
down this year, or was it my imagination? In past shows I had to weave through
the crowds in the exhibit hall. This time I could walk the isles in a straight
line. But fun, nevertheless, and a terrific show. I spent most of my time
at G. A. Wright Marketing, just off the exhibit floor, signing my Secrets
of Casino Marketing and swapping casino stories with a steady stream of visitors.
G. A. Wright Marketing, based in Denver, is composed of ex-casino executives
and direct marketers and has concentrated primarily on Native American casinos.
Counting clients, special arrangements and projects, they serve an astounding
24 Indian casinos. CEO Gary Wright, a West Pointer and ex-Army Ranger, is
personally involved in a burgeoning campaign to teach young Tribal prospects
the fundamentals of casino marketing. The five-month program also includes
Denver University's Business School. The agency currently runs a full page
profile each month in Indian Gaming magazine featuring Indian and G. A. Wright
gaming execs. The company is poised to enter Nevada and other US gaming areas.
They're good. |
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| Potawatomi Bingo Casino: the marvel in
Milwaukee
November 22 2008:
Can you imagine running a 74,000 sq. ft. casino
that's so big and so powerful and so well-liked that it had no competition
to speak of in the Metro Milwaukee area? And can you imagine this casino
loaded with Las Vegas table games, around 3,000 slots, poker, Bingo and Off
Track Betting? Plus a "working relationship" with 20 of the city's best hotels
and Inns, and its own shuttle system that picks up guests and sweeps them
into the casino? And with the nearest meaningful competition in Chicago,
about 95 miles away? Meet the Potawatomi Bingo Casino in downtown Milwaukee,
a Native American star that's pure Las Vegas. I had the pleasure of meeting
Cassie Rakoczy, the marketing director, and spending two days with her staff.
They're all damn good. The staff publishes Ante, a 26-page, 4-color magazine
every month for a players club named The Fire Keepers (which is the meaning
of Potawatomi). The casino offers free craps lessons, free slot tournaments,
and in July paid off 3,436 slot jackpots of $1,200 or more--including one
at $75,000. At the end of October they gave away $250,000 toward a new home.
And there's a semicircular theater, a private corporate meeting area and
the Tribal Room, with it's 50-foot-high glass windows overlooking the city.
Impressive. |
| Swamped by E-mail,he finally gets angry
November 11 2008:
Last month I wrote an opinion piece I named
"Everyone's a prospect to the big E-mailers." I took a few shots at the dumb
subject lines on the tons of E-Mail I've started to receive over the past
few months, had a little fun, and moved on. But a pal of mine also on AOL
phoned me. Said his E-Mail had tripled and he couldn't remember authorizing
any of it, and did I have the same problem? And as he was speaking I realized
I did. I'm getting stuff I wouldn't subscribe to in a hundred years, and
all of a sudden I'm mad about it. I began to pay more attention to the opt
out language, and much of it said they sent it because I had asked to be
put on their list. Would I ask to attend the University of Phoenix? Would
I sign up for a seniors dating service? Do I need a prepaid debit card? So
who put my name on all these ridiculous lists? All I can tell you is a lot
of them came with an opt out bulletin from AOL right under the opening logo.
That makes me suspicious--of AOL Could they have sold my name and address/
I'll never know. There's a new opt out procedure, too. You have to give your
E-mail address before they remove you. I'm suspicious of that, too. The only
answer is to change to a new service, get a new E-mail address, and start
over. And I'm damn close to that now. |
| Strolling the G2E show:I know what I'm doing
November 1 2008:
The world's largest gaming show, G2E, opens
a five-day run in Las Vegas on Nov. 16. Your faithful reporter will be there,
searching for my pals among the 10,247 booths in the Convention Center. All
right, so I exaggerated. But "The Show" really is big. You can search the
aisles for an hour and cover only half the room. No, I mean that. I used
to walk the floor with friends who knew where they were going. That was
fun--until they retired. So now I just wander until I accidentally find the
booth I'm looking for. It takes longer, but it actually looks like I know
what I'm doing. Sometimes I'll see friends looking for a certain booth number
and they'll ask if I know where it is. I just say, "Follow me," as if I could
stroll right to it, and I can if they want to follow me for two-three hours.
My wife says I'm directionally challenged. That's ridiculous. We live near
Denver, with the Rocky Mountains to the west, so I always know where I am.
Can you find west when you're inside the G2E show? Of course not. So if you
see me there, please say hello. But if you're looking for a certain booth,
your guess is as good as mine. |
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| Everyone's a prospect to the big E-mailers
October 22 2008:
If my daily load of E-mail is an example, the
people who send it seem to have the impression that anyone who's online is
a prospect. Talk about wasting money--I must get some of the silliest subject
lines in the business. As I move through the stack, killing almost everything
except notes from clients and friends, I actually stop now and then to marvel
at the junk I'm sent. Like "Quit your boring job--be a Google millionaire."
I mean, who are these people trying to reach? In today's economy you're lucky
if you have a job, even a boring job. As for the chances of Google making
you a millionaire, nil. Another worthless line is "Looking for a credit card?"
Oh, sure. Send me five or six. Then we find, "Many career possibilities in
crime scene investigation field." With three shows already on the tube, I
don't doubt that for a minute. A new one is "Bad news about toxins." You
mean there was good news about toxins and I missed it? All right, try this
one: "Borrowing has never been easier." So that's why the government just
handed out 700 billion to all those banks. And finally we have,"Explore the
world in 2009--2,500 savings." I had no idea so many people wanted to tour
the world during an international banking crisis. I knew all that stuff about
the trillions lost on the stock market was nonsense. |
| An insane baseball story; was it a hit, or an error?
October 11 2008:
The World Series looms and I haven't told my
annual insane but true baseball story. I know this one's true because I wasn't
lynched. It happened when I was official scorer for the old Class C Las Vegas
Wranglers. Pitcher Rollie Merrill starts against Mexicali. The first Mexicali
hitter grounds toward second. The ball bounces off a diving fielder's glove.
Base hit, I rule it. Even a perfect stop would have left the fielder flat
on his face, unable to throw to first. Boos from the Las Vegas fans, but
the six guys in the press box all like my call. The game reaches the fifth
inning and Merrill hasn't allowed another hit. Guys in the stands start to
yell at me. Three of the press box guys now think my call should have been
error, not hit. Seventh inning. Now even the players are furious. People
are shaking their fists at me. All the guys in the press box have turned
against me. I'm mortified. Ninth inning. Two outs. Now the entire stadium
is against me--the jerk who is about to cost the pitcher a no-hitter. Last
batter for Mexicali. Strike one, strike two. Here comes Merrill's curve for
the final out. The pinch hitter leaps back, the bat falls from his hands
and by accident strikes the ball, which loops into center field for a clean
hit. The crowd leaves without a word. The guys in the press box now agree
with my call. From then on, if the first hit in the game isn't a clean one,
I call it an error. I get booed for that, too. |
| The Amazing Kreskin; can he help the cops?
October 1 2008:
My pal, the Amazing Kreskin, is revving up
a new reality TV series called POI (Persons Of Interest). As producer Katy
Wallin says, "There are similarities with a new CBS show named 'The Mentalist,'
but there's one major difference. POI is not fiction. It stars the REAL
mentalist." In the pilot, Kreskin helps police solve the case of an Indiana
college student who disappeared in 2002. In the series, he'll do similar
work. Can Kreskin really help solve a case a week? Listen, this man can spot
a woman in his audience, ask her to stand, and tell her the numbers on her
driver's license. Is it a Minnesota license? Yes, it it. Does she have a
sister named Dorothy? Yes, she does. He could go on, but it might be
embarrassing. He can pick up a deck of cards, shuffle them one time and proclaim
one is missing. It is. In special engagements, he asks that his check be
hidden somewhere in the room or theater--and if he can't find it he'll forfeit
the money. Does he always find it? Of course. And for all I know, he wears
his Superman costume under his stage clothes. Do you think this man would
attempt a reality show like POI unless he knew he could come up with clues
and solutions? Watch for POI. |
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| Seen any casino widgets? Just give it
a few weeks
September 22 2008:
Seen any casino widgets lately? I haven't,
but I don't race around casino Web sites looking for them. But here's a
prediction: in about nothing flat, every casino site will have a cute little
widget, pushing the brand. Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research says, "Widgets
are great--if your objective is encouraging word of mouth." I agree with
him, but how do you track word of mouth for effectiveness? These little bits
of code have taken on a life of their own. DM News reports National Geographic
magazine, about the last publication you can think of to embrace these pint-sized
applications, has developed more than 15 of them for Facebook users and other
social networks. A National Geo executive says the objective is to "reach
key influencers who will interact with the brand." Interact how? Buy a magazine
subscription? I doubt it. Like viral and mobile, if you're not hip to the
teenage gadget mentality that drives digital media these days, you're just
out of touch with the world. DM News also says, " Leveraging social media
now goes far beyond simply having a Facebook page or a MySpace account."
National Geo--can you beat that? When I was a kid we used to sneak into
drugstores just to look at the pictures. |
| Casino player escapes 2-million-pound debt
September 11 2008:
When I was in the business full time at the
Sahara Las Vegas, the casino guys always worried about players who tried
to cheat the table games. They were pretty good at spotting them, too. But
as I recall, we never had many problems with guys who wouldn't pay their
markers. We had a full time collection office in Los Angeles, with a tough
guy named Mel Prell in charge. He was, shall we say, hard to refuse. So I
wonder how the old casino bosses and Mel himself would react to the guy in
England who just escaped a debt of two million pounds. A high court rejected
the Aspinall casino's attempt to collect the dough from Fouad al-Zayat because
the casino allowed him unlawful credit under the Gaming Act. Aspinall's said
al-Zayat drew four house check for $500,000 pounds each and lost the whole
works. But al-Zayat became furious when the house wouldn't change croupiers
as he requested, so he wouldn't pay back the money. But he apparently did
talk the casino into accepting his personal check for the two million pending
settlement of the dispute. The judge ruled this transaction was unlawful
credit, so al-Zayat is free and clear. Bet he won't get a comp at Aspinall's
next time. |
| The Beijing Olympics: wonderful or weird?
September 1 2008:
Maybe I'm wrong. But to me, the opening and
closing ceremonies in the Beijing Olympics were like a big budget science
fiction movie. Thousands of guys, all the same size and all with the same
faces, beating drums, shimmying up pagodas and flying around on wires. "Only
North Korea could have done it better," said the man in charge of the ceremonies.
"Their uniformity is unbelievable." I read newspaper stories afterwards that
praised China for opening up the country to the world. So how did I get the
opposite impression? Maybe it was because the Beijing police had three small
areas set aside for "Protests." The Chinese people who tried to use them
were arrested. Maybe it was because the government announced that all venues
were sold out, and you could see empty seats at every event. Turned out the
government mistrusted large crowds and simply held out large group of tickets.
Maybe it was all the goose-stepping soldiers. But like I said, maybe I'm
wrong. I have a friend who took his wife and two young children to Beijing
and said they had a marvelous time. They went to the Great Wall, saw some
of the competition, and sent us dozens of beautiful pictures. And I have
to admit the track and swimming venues were the best I'd ever seen--and I've
been to three Olympics. Still, the weirdness remains. |
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| Okay, so our girls lost; just skip the
trash talk
August 22 2008:
When I see a newspaper story that makes me
grit my teeth, I can't hold back. I fire up my antique Mac and pound out
a letter to the editor. Because I spent several years in the business as
an editor, I'm particularly incensed when I see reporters jump on amateur
athletes as if making a mistake now and then was cause for mockery. So when
my favorite newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, hectored our Olympic girl
gymnasts for losing to China, here's the note I sent the sports editor: "Re
Clay Latimer's piece on US female gymnasts in the Olympics ("US women get
left at the falter") on Aug. 13. Pretty cute stuff, Clay. You really made
a bunch of teenage kids look bad. "Rattled," you wrote. "Stumbling, bumbling,
unraveled." A "meltdown" in which "several members wept." And "Flop house,"
what a neat headline. Any American who watched our girls lose to China was
disappointed, but you seemed to take it personally. These are not "women"
as the headline roared, but young girls who have trained for years, who have
sacrificed to make themselves into champions, who have on some nights been
the best in the world. But to you they were bums who couldn't get out of
their own way. Pro athletes who make millions are fair game. But kids who
have lived a dream, who have risen to the top of American sports, who have
made all of us so proud of them and of our country, and who managed 'only'
a silver medal, don't deserve to be ridiculed." P.S. The Rocky Mountain News
printed the letter, together with several similar letters from outraged readers.
Yes! |
| Newspapers, magazines confront end of the line
August 11 2008:
Can you imagine an America without newspapers?
And without magazines? Those who proclaimed it could never happen should
think again. Some experts see newspapers "bottoming out" in another three
or four years--and no one knows exactly how deep the bottom will be. And
when the Audit Bureau of Circulation gave its mid-year report a few days
ago, one magazine industry newsletter called the drop in revenue "unprecedented."
But newspapers appear to be in far deeper trouble. The New York Times reports
that ad sales are worst in California and Florida because problems in the
housing market have killed real estate ads. The San Francisco Chronicle,
according to Times reporter Richard Perez-Pena, is losing $1 million dollars
a week. Newspaper ad revenue fell 8% last year. This year it's already 12%
below that. One industry analyst says closures and bankruptcies are "inevitable."
Advertising has been flowing to the Internet for more than a decade, says
the Times, but the rush to digital picked up last year. Of course, some say
the Net will help newspapers by pulling in more readers. Maybe, but I wouldn't
bet on it. Get ready for a new society that gets its news via mobile phones--a
society where only squares read newspapers and magazines. |
| Dogs off the menu, but lousy air stays
August 1 2008:
The news from China was disappointing before
the Beijing Olympics even started. Can you believe the government struck
dog meat from the menu? The official Olympic restaurants were told to "patiently
suggest other options" if diners ordered "xiangrou," which is what they call
Bowser over there. Say what? No dog meat? Next thing you know they'll put
snails on the "Do Not Serve" list. I suppose calf brains, chocolate covered
ants and those 100-year-old moldy eggs are out, too. Wouldn't you know
it--everything I like. But on the hopeful side, all the factories have been
closed. This means the lower grandstand fans can actually see the athletes.
I think. I saw a photo on Drudge the other day and the bad air was still
hanging around, looking for victims. But at least you can feel safe at the
Games. I understand the Chinese army has moved three divisions into the city
and will shoot on sight if you even think of carrying a Dali Lama sign. I'm
really happy I gave my tickets away. I mean, the food and the air are lousy
to start, but with dog now off the menu, just imagine what they'll throw
in there to replace it. |
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| Do viral ads work? Not a chance, prof
July 22 2008:
Did you see the recent Associated Press story
on viral advertising? The headline called it, "A new frontier in marketing."
It's really kind of sick to learn that companies such as Anheuser-Busch spend
their money on such raunchy and demeaning Web-TV "entertainment." Viral
advertising started as word of mouth. Now you see it on such illustrious
sites as YouTube. If you ever doubted that the current youth culture is headed
for the bottom of the cesspool, one look at an Internet viral spot should
convince you. One of them named "Swear Jar" features a series of words that
would get any mainstream TV network closed in seconds. But the freedom of
the Internet allows creative minds to break down all the barriers--and as
the hearts of viewers harden, the spots become ever more scurrilous. As
advertising, viral is impossible to track for effectiveness. Yet the AP story
quotes a professor from St. Louis University as saying that viral ads "work"
because consumers share them. Wise up, prof. When advertising "works," direct
marketers know it for a fact because replies from ads go directly to them.
Viral isn't advertising. It's nonsense. |
| Text messaging gives new meaning to "blast"
July 11 2008:
If you're a fan of text messaging, look for
the strangest copy to show up on your phone when you get within 30 miles
of your bank, your favorite clothing store, or your favorite auto parts store.
The message will alert you to a sale, right now, today, this instant--provided
you stop whatever you're doing and get down to the store right away. How'd
they know I was so close to the bank before they sent the message, you might
ask? According to DM News, where I saw the story, the list is available by
geography. Therefore, a text blast can nail you if you're within 30 miles
of the sponsor. And Infinite Media, of White Plains, NY, says that response
rates from text messaging are "some of the best." Yes. my friend, with 25
million phone numbers and lifestyle data in their grasp, Infinite Media is
about to give new meaning to the term "blast." I understand that 150,000
victims, I mean prospects, is the smallest buy you can make. The only way
to escape is to turn off your phone. But who in today's society would ever
do that? And besides, the sale might be terrific. |
| "Invoice Enclosed" cost PM a renewal
July 1 2008:
Those of us who write direct mail do damn near
anything to make sure our letters get opened. And usually we'll add "teaser"
headlines that reveal the offer, a benefit, a promise or all three on the
front side of the envelope. When the teaser hits the self-interest of the
prospect or customer, the letters usually get opened. So when I picked up
my mail the other day and saw a teaser that read, "Invoice Enclosed," I frowned.
Then I noticed the piece came from "The Hearst Corporation Invoicing Bureau,"
and I frowned again. Maybe "scowled" would be a better word. Since I hadn't
ordered anything from anyone, I opened the letter. Sure enough, an invoice--with
a letter that read,, "Thank you for choosing to be part of our Continuous
Service Program. As we recently notified you, your renewal to Popular Mechanics
has been processed. Payment is now due. Please enclose your check with the
invoice below." I've seen some misleading tricks to get a subscriber to renew,
and this one is right in there. I didn't "choose" to be part of their "Continuous
Service Program," a phony name if I ever heard one. They didn't "notify"
me of anything. I never asked them to "process my renewal." Those are come-ons
to make the subscriber feel guilty, and they'll probably work. But they're
low class. And PM just lost me as a subscriber. |
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| Marketing stars gather for annual
conference
June 22 2008:
It's not your usual gaming conference. The
people strolling around are all casino marketers--among the best in the business.
You're invited to walk right up and ask them the marketing questions that
have been rumbling around in your mind for weeks. You get such an opportunity
only at Casino Marketing 2008, the National Conference, July 22-24 at Paris
Las Vegas. The show opens on July 22, with a day-long session on Player
Development. Then you're hit with some real heavyweights like Dr. Bill Eddington
of the University of Nevada, the No. 1 authority on worldwide commercial
gaming. Dave Zamarin, who pioneered gaming research. Steve Browne, Raving
Consulting's top guy on motivating middle managers. Al Bernstein, the TV
boxing analyst, tells you how to make sporting events pay off on the casino
floor. Richard Schuetz, speaks in the Player Development session. The Lifetime
Achievement Award goes to its first woman, Ginny Shanks, a pro for 25 years
with Harrah's. And the laugh-out-loud side of the conference is Keynote Luncheon
speaker Don McMillan. Then come the Romero Awards, named after your faithful
reporter. And Dennis Conrad ends the show with his annual nail-biter, "The
Best and Worst Casino Promotions of 2008." Sound good? Punch in
www.casinomarketing2008.com right now for all the details. Or register by
phoning Condor Registration at 256-852-4490. |
| Email wins the battle; letters now heirlooms
June 11 2008:
Remember when you'd walk to your mailbox and
find a personal letter from a sweetheart, or from a family member? You simply
couldn't wait to open it and read those delicious words that transported
you back through time and brought you face-to-face with the writer. Glorious
moments, many of them, just to see a loved-one's magic appear on the paper--line
after line of serried handwriting. Sad moments, too, when you discovered
a friend had gone west, as they used to say. They were more than letters.
They were pieces of the writer's soul, dedicated only to you. They were
heirlooms, keepsakes, treasures, works of art, masters of your memories.
And if you were away from home or in a foreign land or at war in desolate
and inhuman surroundings, they were doubly sweet. They announced love and
life, misery and death, the birth of a child, stunning good fortune and crushing
defeat. Remember them now, for their time has passed. They are obsolete,
worn out, finished, losers to hasty writing and halfway thought. Email is
the standard now and the experts say, "Keep it short." A recent study by
Habeas shows 67 percent of consumers prefer Email for personal communication--and
65 percent prefer it for business. My Mac offers me the world--but it will
never take the place of the personal letters I remember and revere. |
| Arnie Wexler's drive outlasted the NBA
June 1 2008:
You have to admire Arnie Wexler. He never gives
up. Day and night, seven days a week for all I know, the guy details the
repugnant cost of compulsive gambling. And he should know. He's in the recovery
stage now, and maybe for life. Meanwhile, Arnie know everyone in the casino
business. Well, almost. And once you get on his mailing list you're on for
life. The guy is a one-man company, doing everything he can to "out" compulsive
gambling for the sickness it is. And casinos, of course, want him to succeed.
In the year 2000, according to a recent story by John Canzano in the Oregonian,
the security staff of the National Basketball Association asked for Arnie's
help. He met with NBA officials for four hours, they told him they had a
problem, and asked for his help. Arnie and his wife were running an intensive
treatment program at the time. Sure, said Arnie., Three days later The NBA
called him back. This time they wanted to set up meetings with coaches, officials
and players from every team. It looked good, but nothing happened. Arnie
thinks someone in the NBA hierarchy killed it. End of story? Maybe. But with
the scandal of game official Tim Donaghy still fresh, you'd think the NBA
might take a second look. |
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| Saw a UFO, huh? Don't be an idiot
May 22 2008:
Unidentified flying objects, otherwise known
as UFOs, have been seen in the skies above Texas since the beginning of the
year. Hundreds have reported them, including a private pilot who has been
flying for 30 years. Unfortunately, all of these persons are idiots, dopes,
liars, or jokesters. They're unreliable, prone to fantasy, are easily confused
by Venus and other bright planets and stars, and have read way too much science
fiction. At least, that's the unspoken position taken by "science" and by
practically all of the nation's press. I'll give the scientists a little
break. Some of them have told me sotto voce that they believe UFOs are
interplanetary spaceships but they're afraid their careers will end if they
admit it. The press is another matter. They're the real idiots. The reporters
sometimes start to interview witnesses by asking, "Do you drink?" TV anchors
chuckle as they read the story, and wink a couple of times at the blondes
on their right. In a courtroom, eye witness testimony can send a man to prison.
In reports of UFOs, it counts for zip. I've studied and investigated UFO
sightings for decades. I've seen them on three occasions. Nobody knows were
they come from, but they're real. And they're here. Believe it. |
| Computer virus loosed by a ninth grade twerp
May 11 2008:
Maybe you saw the Associated Press story by
Anick Jesdanun late last year, It revealed how computer viruses were started
by a precocious ninth grader more than 25 years ago. Guy named Rich Skrenta
wrote a self-replicating virus he named "Elk Cloner." He loosed something
harmless (at the time) to trick his pals. Never mind why. Skrenta has cost
all of us hundreds of dollars buying software that changes every year, the
little twerp. But he's 40 now. Too late for a spanking. Besides, he became
a computer genius and made millions, which is another reason to dislike the
guy intensely. If it had stopped there, okay. But two brothers in Pakistan
wrote "Brain," which didn't cause much damage and displayed a phone nu,mber
to call for repairs. Nice of them. In 1988, "Morris" infected 6,000 computers,
and in 1999 "Melissa" sent copies of itself to the first 50 names in your
address book if you opened the attachment Then came "Love Bug," in 2000,
:"Code Red" in 2001, "Blaster in 2003, and "Sasser" in 2004, each one more
malicious than its predecessor. My advice? Get a Mac. |
| Colorado's no-smoking law causes a 15% revenue drop
May 1 2008:
Will a no-smoking law hurt the gambling business?
That's what Colorado legislators asked last year--before they extended a
statewide smoking ban to casinos. The answer is a 15 percent drop year-over-year
in March, but it may not all be due to the new law. Of course, smokers and
casino bosses filled the local prints with threats and doomsday predictions
before legislators made their move, but there are no real arguments on the
pro-smoking side. Even if it didn't affect the health of non-smokers, tobacco
smoke is a damn nuisance. Okay, so much for objectivity. I hate the stuff.
An executive of the Colorado Gaming Association said the group feels "pretty
confident:" that most of the drop is the fault of the smoking ban--not the
weather and not the economy. But a spokesman from Bronco Billy's in Cripple
Creek says he feels it's really 60 percent no smoking, 20 percent weather
and 20 percent economy. Meanwhile, the American Lung Association of Colorado
says the air inside casinos has gone from "unhealthy" to "good." When I ws
marketing director of the old Del Webb's Sahara in Las Vegas, I suggested
the GM set aside a no-smoking section. He looked at me like I was the nut
case. Times change, don't they. |
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| Slot Ambassadors ready to repel robot
invasion
April 22 2008:
Casinos are starting to look like old science
fiction movies--the kind where robots and weird machines do everything and
the humans walk around in out-of-style white coats and trousers trying to
find out what their jobs are. Some joints never send cash vouchers. They
just let the player know his money is in one of their cash machines--waiting
for him to come in and draw it out. At other places you get your comps and
drawing tickets from a kiosk. And ticket in-ticket out games are everywhere.
The human side is gone. You can spend a hour on the slot floors of some places
and never see a soul from the house. So when Dennis Conrad and Steve Browne
of Raving Consulting Company in Reno, came up with a program named "Slot
Ambassadors," I told them they should have named it "Rage Against the Machine."
When I got a good look at it I stopped kidding. It's personal service all
over again. "Slot Ambassadors" on the floor are like money in the bank. Raving
has a 4-step program and a tactical manual so big you could hurt your back
trying to lift it. I mean, these guys are thorough. They expect to get the
program going in several casinos this summer--which means the human side
is back. Get lost, Gort. |
| Cell phones dangerous, but is anyone listening?
April 11 2008:
The headline above the story by Sylvia Hubbard
on Newsmax.com read, "Cell Phones More Dangerous Then Cigarettes." Do you
know a single person who doesn't have a cell phone? of course you don't.
How could humanity survive without cell phones? I mean, what would you do
with your hands? How else could you take 30 calls a day--and make 45? And
now they're worse than cigarettes? Got to be a mistake somewhere. Let me
look at that story again. Hah! Here it is. The neurosurgeon who broke the
news is an Australian. Those people live on the underside of the earth. The
whole country stands on its head. What do they know about cell phones? And
the doctor's name is Vini Khurana. Let me hear you say that real fast a couple
of times. Okay. Going forward, as they say, we find that it's going to be
another four years before we actually see how bad cell phones are. Dr. Khurana
says by 2012, millions will have used cellphones for 10 years and he can
check on the rise of brain tumors. But already he knows that tumors usually
form on the "preferred ear." That leaves you with an out. Switch ears. You
might get 10 more years of life that way. As for quitting cell phones--let
me know if anyone you know actually does. |
| Fed up with junk TV? Hate junk radio, too?
April 1 2008:
USA Weekend is a feckless little preprint that
slips in among the catalogues and real estate sections in a large number
of Sunday newspapers. A headline on a recent edition caught my attention.
"Stopping junk mail," it read. It wasn't exactly a revelation because newspapers
routinely bust direct marketing over the head. They act like we purposely
send mail just to make people mad. No direct marketer does that--but we do
send to those whose profiles and buying histories indicate they may want
our product. Newspapers never mention that they send mail, too. The New York
Times is one of the worst offenders if you want to look at it that way--but
I'd never call their mail junk. It's well-written, as is most prospecting
mail. Yet it's always easy to find groups or individuals who hate almost
everything that shows up in their mailboxes--so the tern "junk mail" has
stuck. You never hear from the elderly, the shut-ins and the lonely because
many of them like to get mail, no matter who sends it. Maybe you can tell
that I'm trying to stay calm when only mail gets the "junk" treatment. I
mean, I'm sick of junk newspapers, junk TV, junk Internet, junk billboards,
junk telephone calls and junk radio? Have you ever felt that way? |
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| Kreskin and Kaplan; they're two of a
kind
March 22 2008:
My friend, The Amazing Kreskin, always writes
predictions for the coming year. I've taken market positions based on this
man--ever since the day in 1978 when he walked into my office at the Sahara
Las Vegas, looked at my pregnant wife and said, "What are you going to name
the boy?" Sure enough, three months later, a boy. A partial 2008 forecast
from Amazing (which really is his first name): (1) the outcome of the
presidential election will be decided within the last two weeks of the campaign
(2) no major attacks on the US homeland between now and election day (3)
the war on terror will last at least 30 more years (4) Michael Vick will
play pro football again (5) the next crime trend will be home invasions.
Not the cheeriest predictions I've ever heard him make, but there you are...This
next story is one of the reason I love marketing people. Marc Kaplan. marketing
director of the Taos Mountain Casino, Taos Pueblo, NM, reports that his casino
has its own radio booth. They broadcast three live shows a week, too. Kaplan,
also known as "Marketing Marc," writes the scripts for all of them. The shows
take calls, and since KTAO streams 24/7 on the internet, maybe you can catch
it. Hey, this Kaplan not only promotes the casino, he promotes the city,
too. What a guy. |
| Denver U, GA Wright offer tribal marketing
March 11 2008:
I admired Denver University long before I moved
to Colorado. I always thought of it as a no-nonsense school, where learning
was paramount and everything else ranked well behind (for example, they dropped
basketball when they had one of the best teams in the nation). So when my
friend Gary Wright, boss of G.A. Wright Marketing, hooked up with DU's Daniels
College of Business in a unique experiment, I knew it would be a winner.
They call the project TIME--for Tribal Institute for Marketing Education.
The brochure says it's a program that covers, "The full scope of casino marketing
concepts from terminology and strategy to tactical execution, advertising
and data analysis," The tribal students will get five intense three-day blocks
of instruction for five months. DU professors from the business college and
G.A. Wright experts teach the classes. Guest lecturers and casino industry
pros fill in. (Full disclosure: I'm on the TIME board of directors.) Some
of the lectures are held at nature settings in the Rocky Mountains. The classes
are designed for native Americans, but are open to any student recommended
by a casino or tribe. For information, 303-871-4565. |
| Obama secret weapon: it's mobile marketing
March 1 2008: I
seldom write about politics, but political tactics interest me and Barack
Obama's people have one that's a real beauty. After Super Tuesday, he was
reported to have raised more then seven million bucks in a week--all from
the Internet. Whoa, I said. Seven million from nickel and dime donors, and
so fast? Must have a monster list, I thought. Then I read Brian Quinton's
piece in the February issue of Direct magazine. When a December rally at
Columbia, SC, drew 30,000, the crowd was asked to text their cell phone numbers
to Obama headquarters and sign up for mobile messages. Then they were invited
to look at tickets they were handed as they entered. Each had a name and
phone number of four registered South Carolina Democrats. "Would they take
10 minutes right now to call these four people and urge them to vote for
Obama in the South Carolina primary in January?"writes Quinton. Then, probably
as astonished as I was when I read it, Quinton points out that Obama's campaign
found a way to data-mine a live event and then got people to make up to 120,000
campaign calls--and charge the calls to their own bills. Because Obama makes
a speech a day somewhere, you now have an idea how he's collected his list--and
his money. If, like me, you thought mobile marketing was still a few years
away, better take a closer look. Thank you, Direct magazine. |
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| He was a young drummer headed for jazz
immortality until the drug culture derailed Mike Romero's destiny
February 22 2008:
Daniel Rodriguez, a close friend of my brother
Michael, left me a message on Saturday, Jan. 26. It was just a short message
to call him, but his voice sounded scratchy and a little panicky. I phoned
back. Michael, my younger brother, had died of a massive heart attack. He
was 64. For the next couple of days I tried to keep busy calling the USC
Medical Center morgue, a couple of mortuaries and Mike's doctor. I got nowhere.
I screwed up everything. Then my wife stepped in. In two days she made all
the arrangements while I moped around and thought how Michael's death should
have stunned the jazz world. But I knew it wouldn't. Michael saw his first
drum set at the age of fourteen. From the minute he sat down and started
beating those things you knew he was going to be a good one. He started with
lessons. Within a few months he was better than the teacher. When he turned
16, my parents took him to the top jazz clubs in Los Angeles, and he'd be
invited to sit in. The other musicians would go crazy when Michael played.
They'd congratulate ME for being his brother. When he hit 18, the LA jazz
scene wise guys called him a genius. Then came engagements with Terry Gibbs
and Lionel Hampton. Both these famous pros told me he was the best jazz drummer
they'd ever heard. He played around the country with Gibbs and Hampton, made
recordings, got ovations from the savvy jazz crowd when he was introduced.
When the leader of the Sahara Las Vegas house band found out Mike was my
brother, he told the band and I became a hero--a stand-in for Mike. My cousin
Judy remembers watching Johnny Carson the evening Buddy Rich, the best big
band drummer of his time, played on the show. When Carson began to praise
him, Buddy looked down shyly, shook his head and said, "I don't know. There
is a kid out there. His name is Mike Romero, and every time I hear him play
it just makes me want to put my skins down." But by his late 20s, Mike had
changed. He was simply too innocent, too young and too impressionable to
escape the drug culture of the music business. His work slipped. He became
paranoid. He played less and less. Finally he simply stopped. Then came a
series of doctors and institutions. None helped. When our mother died in
1997, he seemed to straighten out. I bought him a complete new set of drums.
When we walked into the shop the manager recognized Mike right away. "Greatest
drummer in the world," he told me. Mike rallied for a while, even played
with some LA jazz groups, but the intensity that once made him the best had
deserted him. He never regained the driving beat that had him on the road
to jazz immortality. I moved from Los Angeles to Colorado, and we talked
on the phone and through letters for years. He became a kind and gentle man
who was always ready to help a friend, but he never quite adjusted to the
world around him. Last year Michael sold our family home and rented a room
from Daniel. It might have been the happiest time of his life. No trouble,
no worries, money in the bank, a good friend in Daniel. We talked on the
phone and he sounded strong, confident. Maybe, I thought, he had snapped
out of the haze that had held him prisoner for so long. Maybe he would even
play again. Not to be. Too bad that drugs derailed his destiny before he
could fulfill it. Too bad the whole damn jazz world never knew him. He really
was the greatest. Goodbye, drummer boy. R.I.P. |
| Super Bowl TV spots: better, but still cloddish
February 11 2008:
The Super Bowl ads astonished me. Some actually
focused on the product or service. A few actually tried to sell something.
I liked the lone ad for GoDaddy.com. They kept the company name in the lower
left corner through the entire spot, With the barrage of "branding" nonsense
that surrounded them it was a smart move. Grade for the entire batch of
commercials was C minus. Now here are five spots whose agencies should be
called in and asked what in the hell they were thinking. If you can remember
even one sponsor, congratulations. (1) A fancy new car speeds through the
French countryside. It halts when it reaches the French army, circa 1814,
and Napoleon steps out. (2) A gorgeous girl and a bunch of lizards hoof it
to the original choreography of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." One of the
lizards looks like Jackson. (3) An inept car salesman is forced to jump into
a ring of fire to confront an tattooed brute wearing a bad haircut. (4) In
a series of animated B/W drawings, a guy tries to push a rock up a hill while
an off-camera voice drones boring copy. (5) A guy with jumper cables attached
to his nipples shucks and jives until he starts a car. Now this is truly
silly stuff, done to make people laugh and say they loved the commercial.
The agencies get an F. The answers (1) Garmin (2) Life Water (3) Cars.com
(4) Yukon Hybrid (5) Amp Energy. Goodbye until 2009, students. |
| Creative types go wild; Super Bowl ads awful
February 1 2008:
Your faithful reporter is poised once again
to challenge your powers of retention. I've pulled this stunt for the past
eight years. Each time I've given you all my secret plans in advance and
warned that you will lose--and you do. Let me recap: The Super Bowl on Feb.
3, will be loaded with TV commercials that cost the sponsors more than I
make in a year (a little Romero dry wit, there). The big brands apparently
tell their ad agencies to turn their writers and art directors loose. We
want memorable and creative commercials, the sponsors cry. And the creatives,
freed from the pressure of actually trying to sell anything, turn out the
worst spots in the history of television. An eager press is delighted. They
cover the commercials the next day as if they were messages from the
Almighty--more important than the game itself. So your challenge is to watch
the spots and remember the sponsors. Simple as that. I'll replay the spots
in my Feb. 11 posting (in words, of course) and you tell me the sponsors.
Be prepared to scratch your head, gaze at the ceiling and frown. Most of
you won't remember even one. It's kind of sad when you realize the sponsors
paid millions to air them and not a living soul remembers. But it's only
money. And like I said--I win every year. |
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| The landline phone: hide yours at once
January 22 2008:
Don't let them take your landline phone away.
It's going to be an antique soon. Worth a lot of money. People will want
to buy it from you, then sit it on their desks so visitors will say, "How
cute." Yes, my friends, landline phones will bring handsome prices in 2060,
if you can find one. Cell phones already are pushing landline phones into
the pits and furnaces reserved for the obsolescent. Maybe you saw the recent
headline that read, "US now spends more on wireless than on landlines." It's
true. My own home boasts weird little machines named "LinksUs" or some such.
They lurk on the highest shelves, ready to transmit our deepest secrets to
God knows where. My wife and I have cell phones that fly around the room
whistling the Verizon theme song. They can take pictures, slice onions and
pilot small aircraft if you know how to hook them up. Even our alarm system
can do more than our poor, sad sack landline phones. Press just one button
and police respond in seconds. Suddenly, the landline phone geniuses have
discovered that they have a "mature" industry on their hands. Too bad. When
they come to confiscate your phone, tell them your dog ate it. |
| Unbelievable stories from world of sports
January 11 2008:
Brian Clark of the Rocky Mountain News is one
sharp guy. He collects oddball sports stories and lays them on us at the
end of the year. Here are some of the best from the Rocky's Dec. 22 edition:
(1) Before his lethal injection in Arizona, a convicted killer's last words
were "Go Raiders." (2) Indiana personal trainer Kevin Shelley shattered the
world record for breaking wooden toilet seat lids with his head by smashing
46 in 60 seconds (3) A Florida high school girls relay team was disqualified
from a meet because the members' sports bras didn't match (4) Denise Hanitzsch,
24, won the second "Stiletto Run" in Berlin, which featured 100 women running
100 meters in high heels (5) A soccer match organized as part of a campaign
against hooliganism in Germany ended when five players attacked a heckler
(6) Rick "Pellet Gun" Krause, 58, defended his crown at the International
Cherry Spitting Championship in Michigan with a spit of 58 feet, 1 and 1/2
inches (7) Golfer Jay Williamson picked a person from the gallery to serve
as his caddie after firing his regular caddie during the first round of the
Canadian Open. Thank you, Brian Clark. |
| Uneducated clowns trounce scientists
January 1 2008:
Regular readers will think I'm completely nuts
when they scan this one. They'll wonder what Unidentified Flying Objects
have to do with casino marketing. I'll think of something. Anyway, I had
to laugh at the December 9 edition of Parade magazine. They had a scientist
write an article on UFOs. That's like asking a Republican to write a nonpartisan
article on the Democrat presidential contenders--or vice versa. Scientists
have a code when it comes to UFOs. They don't exist--period. Break that code
and say goodbye to your career. So naturally, the scientist-writer praises
the scientists at SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute)
who have been listening for an alien signal from space for more than 15 years
with zero success. Meanwhile, those uneducated clowns in the UFO community
collect sightings by the thousands every year from almost every country in
the world. Video tape, film, still shots, physical traces, eyewitnesses,
radar, you name it. What a waste of time, right? I mean, a scientist can
dismiss all that stuff with a wave of his hand. The writer of the Parade
piece even says, "If a UFO landed in my back yard I'd want to have a look
inside and meet the occupants before I'd be convinced." Reminds me of the
casino wise guys who told me in 1976, "Tournaments? They'll never work."
|
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| High tech movie ads: what good are they?
December 22 2007:
Have you ever plopped down in your movie theater
seat with a tub of popcorn to catch some promos for upcoming films and found
yourself staring at 15 minutes of fast food and car commercials? The
movie-house-as-TV was kind of charming for a while--especially the local
commercials. Cute, unprofessional stuff. The whole thing had a hokey qualify
that was endearing. That's all changing. Now there are companies that can
take a slick new commercial, fresh from the ad agency, and beam it via satellite
to hundreds of movie houses simultaneously. Cinema Advertising they call
it, and the big brands are lining up to buy time. If TV viewers record the
shows and skip the commercials, move the same stuff to the theater where
the audience can't escape. A headline in the Denver Post on Cinema Advertising
the other day read, "Ad dollars seek captive viewers." Okay, you get the
picture. As a direct marketing guy I have just one question. Why would any
company advertise in a movie theater? Such ads can't be tracked for
effectiveness, the demographics are all over the place, and while the audience
can't flee, they can hate you. So why advertise in the movies? Is it just
a guess? A hunch? A prayer? Or is it because others do it? Check out the
Quote of the Month, to your right. |
| Gotta have a plan for the Info Age
December 11 2007:
Feeling spied on, are you? Afraid you have
a dossier at Google? Wondering how you can slither out of The Information
Age without making a big fuss? More and more Americans think like you do.
If I leave my home and drive into Denver, I pass mini-cameras perched above
the streetlights at key intersections. When I probe for information on a
search engine I wonder if they have a file on all my other searches. And
will I ever know how closely my primary physician guards my medical history?
IBM recently bought Cognos, described as a "Business intelligence software
vendor." What's that all about? When I occasionally fall for one of those
online polls so I can vent, they want me to fill out a form that's a dozen
lines long (I wouldn't do it if they paid me). Now Joseph Farah of World
Net Daily shouts that Google is "Out of control." He calls the company, "The
peeping Toms of Silicon Valley." And did you ever stare at your screen and
wonder how many cookies are stacked up in your computer, just waiting to
blab your innermost secrets to the world? To get around all this stuff you
gotta have a plan--so here's mine. I just don't give a damn. Any questions?
|
| 'Live Chat' for casinos; is it a practical
promo?
December 1 2007:
So how much "live chat" do you have on your
Web site now? Or have you even considered it? In the retail sector, according
to DM News, 27% of companies say they have it--and 33% say it will be one
of their priorities in 2008. Live chat is what the new Internet marketer
calls "Social Media." It's defined by inviting the customers to comment on
and review the products they buy from the company. Maybe some casinos have
started live chat programs. If so, I don't know about it. Most of the retailers
do it right, though. Which means they print negative reviews as well as positive
reviews. That's smart. Remember, the Internet is really a digital catalogue.
They make a sale, they ship. Trouble lies in the time the product takes to
reach the buyer, and the condition in which it arrives. So you see gripes
about some of these things, but they give the company an opportunity to establish
trust by rectifying mistakes at once--at no extra cost to the customer. Would
it work with casinos? Sure, it fits right in with the loyalty marketing so
many casinos do. But you'd have to take the bad reviews with the good and
follow through on your guarantees. Now for a heads up: I discuss the
growing variety of Internet, music and smartphone-based promotions and products
in my column in the upcoming Slot Manager magazine. |
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| Expensive promotion, but it sure got ink
November 22 2007:
Here's the short version of a true story I've
told in my seminars at conferences and individual properties. In the 70s
at Lake Tahoe, the Sahara Tahoe staged a week-long promotion. Each night
a contestant could choose one of five doors. Behind one was a model of a
new car. Pick that one and you win the car. No car had been won for six days.
On the seventh day the contestant picked a door and when the MC jerked it
open, all five doors opened. No cars behind any door. The casino had to pay
off with seven new cars. To my astonishment, a similar fiasco thing just
happened in Denver. The Denver Newspaper Agency and a local builder offered
a $200,000 home if your key opened one of three doors. The contestants tried
their keys before the start of a Broncos game and an elderly couple won.
The next day they appeared in an ad. They picked their house and were packing
to move in when the sponsors discovered there had been a second winner. After
another drawing, the second winner got the house and the erstwhile winners
sued. Public outrage followed. Result? Same as the casino. The sponsors paid
off with TWO houses--and attorney fees. An expensive promotion--but it sure
got a ton of ink. |
| Colorado casinos may try "end run" for smokers
November 11 2007:
As most of you who browse this space know,
I live in Colorado, south of Denver. Lovely state, wonderful people. Healthy
state, too. B ut when the legislature passed the Colorado Clean Indoor Air
Act in 2006, the voters weren't as happy as you might expect. Why? Because
casinos were exempted. They fought the battle in the media and clean air
won. An extension of the original act goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2008, and
smoking will be prohibited in "any indoor area" in a bunch of new establishments,
including casinos. But what is an "indoor area," and what does "open air
mean." The Rocky Mountain News tried its best to clarify things last week.
Seems that a review of building plans showed that several casinos in Black
Hawk are set to build enclosed and semi-enclosed areas for smokers. The people
in Smoke-Free Gaming and the Rocky editorial writers cried foul. But the
definition of "indoor area" is in dispute because the current laws mumble
when they should be precise. The Rocky decries an "end run" around the smoking
ban. Kindly stay tuned. |
| Are your hosts using three e-mail addresses?
November 1 2007:
Diana Dilworth in DM News tells of a study
by Habeas and IPSOS that claims nearly 50% of users maintain at least three
e-mail addresses. So maybe consumers don't trust e-mail, as several studies
show, but 74% use it every day and 96% use it every work day. So do your
casino hosts use more than one address? I assume so. I mean, why ask a big
player to phone in a request and find his host out of the office? Big players
don't want delays and call-backs. They want action now, and you cement the
relationship when you fire right back at them and say :"Sure, the weekend
is open for you. Let me know what time you'll arrive so I can send the
limousine." The obvious thing is to give the customer your private e-mail
address--the one you give only to dozen or so whopper players and the one
that you screen every day of your life. Of course, there's a risk. If the
host leaves your joint and goes down the street, he'll take all the e-mail
addresses he's saved. The day is here when not only your best players, but
every rated player in your database can walk out of the building buried inside
a SanDisk the size of your thumb. Maybe telephones and direct mail aren't
so bad after all. |
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| A marketing plan with 20 key points
October 22 2007:
Christopher Ryan has written one marketing
plan after another for some huge companies. In 1989 he put out a terrific
little book named "The Direct Marketing Challenge," Need to write a plan
every year? Get the book. No matter the size of the client, he recommends
25 pages And here are his key points. (1) Executive Summary, or as he prefers,
"Statement of Purpose" (2) Situation Analysis (3) Prior Year's Programs and
Expenditures (4) Marketing Objectives (5) Positioning Objectives (6) Vertical
Marketing Objectives (7) Revenue Objectives (8) Lead Generating Objectives
(9) Public Relations Objectives (10) Other Objectives (11) Marketing Strategy
(12) Media Strategy--Direct Marketing (13) Media Strategy--Print Advertising
(14) Trade Show Strategies (15) Sales Seminar Strategies (16) Market Planning
& Research (17) Public Relations (18) Collateral Material (19) Contingency
and Miscellaneous Expenses and (20) Marketing Budget Summary. Happy
planning |
| The way to manage a good grocery store
October 11 2007:
My wife received a self mailer last month from
one of her favorite Denver metro area grocery stores. Large postcard format.
The art showed vegetables, cheeses and steaks piled together. Not bad. The
copy announced a "Grand Re-Opening Party." The store hadn't been closed,
just remodeled inside to add more display shelves. If you shopped on the
day of the party, Sept. 12., you got a 10% discount. The card arrived in
our mailbox on Sept. 17. My wife phoned the store's corporate marketing
department and explained the situation. Silence. "Haven't you heard about
this from others?" my wife asked. "No, you're the first." My wife is pretty
savvy on direct mail. :"When was it dropped?" she asked. They weren't sure.
My wife's call was the first of many and the store wound up honoring the
discount no matter when you brought in the card. Problem solved? Not exactly.
When my five-foot-one wife returned to the store she found the newly added
shelves were on top of the original shelves. "Vanilla," she said, "was about
eight feet high. Vanilla!" When she threatened to bring a stool with her
to shop, the store said, "Sorry, you can't do that." She shops at other stores
now. But first she got her discount. |
| Ads puzzle Americans; some want restrictions
October 1 2007:
The DM News headline read "Americans have skewed
view of ad industry." Of course they have a skewed view. Most reasonable
persons assume that advertising is supposed to sell things. But if that happens,
it's a bonus. The main objective of ad agencies is to (1) produce memorable
advertising, (2) to give the agency a reputation for "creativity," and (3)
to swell the portfolios of the creative stars. But it's not the advertising
that should be memorable. It's the promises the advertising makes that should
be memorable. Not a hard concept, but it eludes many agencies. So in a recent
study by the famous J. Walter Thompson agency, just 14% of those surveyed
say that Americans respect ad people. Hey, wasn't Congress was down in that
locale for a while? Other depressing survey figures: 84% say, "Too many things
are over-hyped now." 72% say, "I get tired of people trying to grab my attention
and sell me stuff." 47% regard "Advertising as background noise." 52% say
"There's too much advertising. I would support stricter limits." That last
one is a little creepy, don't you think. Makes you really wonder about the
educational process. |
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| Accountable advertising always a primary
goal
Sept 22 2007:
You probably read about the Yale taste test
that found three-to-five-year-old kids preferred food that came in a McDonald's
wrapper. Dr. David Katz of the Yale School of Medicine said, "This study
demonstrates simply and elegantly that advertising literally brainwashes
children into a baseless preference for certain food products." Now Robert
Passikoff, Ph. D., has fired back in the newsletter Chief Marketer. Passikoff
says Dr. Katz knows, "Very little about branding" and the results of the
study "Shouldn't come as a surprise to marketing and communication
practitioners." I agree with that. But then Passikoff, who owns a company
named Brand Keys, does a club date on branding. And that I don't agree with.
The success of branding by McDonald's, Nike, Apple and others of that size
all had one thing in common: tens of millions paid out to get that brand
recognition. Fine. But too often, branding successes by major companies lure
small companies into the brand wars, and money that could have been spent
to create hard sales is wasted. I say every ad should sell something. And
every ad should be tracked for cost per sale. Can you "brand" in this kind
of ad? Of course--but the primary goal should be accountable
advertising. |
| Yahoo bumps Google in satisfaction survey
September 11 2007:
Those upstarts at Yahoo have pushed Google
out of first place in the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction
Index, according to a report in DM News. The annual U of Michigan report
authored by Larry Freed covers e-business Web sites, search engines and portals,
online news and information sites. Yahoo's customer satisfaction score was
79% on the report's 100-point scale. Will you tell me how 79% of a group
of people can agree on anything? Weird. Google was just a point back at 78%,
but the googlers have slipped two years in a row. The largest increase was
9% by Ask.com, a site I've never visited. And as you might imagine, AOL lost
nine points and fell to 67%. AOL cuts out on me at least once a day in the
busy periods, and sometimes I'm not able send or read e-mail. A box appears
and tells me that their computers are overloaded, or some such. I get the
idea they hate Mac users anyway. PCs get special treatment but us Mackers
are still using an out-of-date browser. To tell you the truth, Yahoo looks
better to me every day. |
| Your reporter speaks and writers listen up
September 1 2007:
I gave a couple of talks in Las Vegas last
month to a nationwide conference named "Writing Gaming Marketing Copy That
Sells." I'd say we had about 45 gaming writers attending and after I harangued
them for two and a half hours most of them came up and told me they enjoyed
it--and learned something. Hey! I enjoyed it, too. Writers are my favorites.
Raving Consulting sponsored the conference. I started by telling the group
to stop calling themselves copywriters. I think it's a demeaning term authored
by New York agencies decades ago to keep the most creative people in the
joint hidden away in a corner cubicle so they could underpay them. But any
ad guy knows that prospects buy from information, not from glitzy pictures.
Don't they? Some other do-dads I dropped on the writers: Casinos are person
to person businesses, and because the GM can't meet everyone, direct mail
fills the gap...art directors who use sans serif type such as Helvetica for
body copy should be deported...forbidden words include such beauties as 'great,'
'exciting,' 'needs' and 'world class."...the best of my Twelve Best Lines
in Casino Marketing, is 'Thank you"...the worst line in casino marketing
is "Management reserves the right to...'...and never overlook the power of
teasers--those lines on the front of envelopes that reveal part of, or all
of, the offer inside. Pretty smart, these Raving people. Maybe I'll see you
at one of their writing conferences next year. |
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| Throwing Don Rickles a bunch of curve
balls
August 22 2007:
Don Rickles is 81. Can you imagine that? And
he's been married for 42 years. I read it just the other day in the public
prints. They ran his picture, too, and he looks just like he did in the 60s
and 70s when he ladled out one indignity after another to the show crowd
in the old Las Vegas Sahara Casbar Lounge (and later the main room). One
of my jobs as marketing director of the Sahara in those days was to get the
shows plugged, so Don and I became friends. Of course, I was always throwing
him curve balls. When he opened the main room following a long absence I
passed out masks of his face to more than 800 guests. When he walked on stage
he stopped, looked around and fumbled his first few words. I howled. On another
evening I had 475-pound Arnold Chernoff, a friend of mine, seated front row
center. Arnold had a ferocious wit, so when Don sauntered out and saw Chernoff,
he yelled, "What the hell do you do?" and Chernoff fired back, "I'm a jockey,"
The audience went crazy and all Don could do was fake that smile he had perfected
to buy a few seconds before answering. I loved those days and I loved Barbara
and Don He could make you laugh for 45 minutes straight. Never been one like
him. |
| The Beckham impact: Soccer is still a drag
August 11 2007:
The wise guys in the sports business say that
David Beckham will turn soccer into a major sport in the US. Not a chance.
Tim Leiweke, president of the Anschutz Entertainment Group and owner of the
Los Angeles Galaxy soccer club, told the LA Times, "There's going to be a
billion-dollar impact. No question about it." Hey, if I gave Beckham a reported
$20 million contract to play for my team I'd probably say that, too. The
guy is a very big star. He's the Pele of our time. I read a story that claimed
the Galaxy has already sold 250,000 of his jerseys (they go for $80 each).
But as good as he is, the game he plays is a drag. In American football,
the most exciting plays are long passes to a wide receiver who gets behind
the defense. When that happens in soccer they whistle the play dead and give
the ball to the other team. Change the rules to encourage more scoring? Never
happen. In soccer, the winning teams usually score two or three goals at
best. If they win 4-1 it's a blowout. Sure, the Mexicans, Central and South
Americans love it because many of them grew up with the game. But for the
average US sports nut it's a yawner. Matter of fact, I feel like a nap right
now. |
| Casino marketing show a big draw in Las Vegas
August 1 2007:
The Casino Marketing Conference produced by
Raving Consulting and Ascend Media sailed through its fourth year in mid-July
at Paris Las Vegas. Looked good all the way, too. At this point most of the
attendees are small and mid-sized casinos, but you won't find a more competitive
bunch. The Conference gives awards in categories that range from casino floor
promotions and Web sites to E-mail promotions and direct mail. The rules
are tough because you have to prove what you got for the promotion money
you spent. But they should be tough. They're based on what I've lived by
for 40 years--promotions that are measurable and accountable. Your faithful
reporter's name is on the awards, too (the Romero Awards). Max Rubin gave
the opening keynote address, and anytime you get Max in your show you've
got one of the best I've ever seen. A Toyota VP gave the luncheon talk in
which he likened Toyota's marketing to casino marketing. John Acres received
the Lifetime Achievement Award. The man's contribution to the modern slot
machine is unequaled in our industry. And Dennis Conrad gave his famous "Best
and Worst Casino Promotions of the Year" talk. Maybe I'll see you there next
year. I hope so. |
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| The Tom Collins story: thankless
persuasion
July 22 2007:
Tom Collins, of the original Rapp & Collins
ad agency, carries on the most lonely crusade in advertising, The man is
trying to teach ad agencies how to sell things. Every month in Direct magazine,
Tom takes a hopeless ad written by some famous agency and does a quick (and
brilliant) makeover. You'd think that every agency in the country would thank
him. Wrong. But why? Because Tom is a direct marketer. General agencies still
dominate the ad business--and direct marketing, despite occasional "integration"
of the two disciplines, remains the poor relative. General guys hate direct
guys. In a recent issue of Direct, Tom shows a full page 4/C ad for IBM's
new "Pay by Touch" technology. In the frozen food section of a supermarket
a lone customer peers inside one of the doors, on which is placed a large
asterisk. The footnote reads "This finger is legal tender." Which means?
This is followed by unreadable copy in small sans serif type reversed out
of yellow. Tom's makeover shows a picture of IBM's Pay by Touch machine,
tells why it's superior to credit cards and how stores can easily work it
into their current systems. Thankless persuasion at its best. |
| Forget press releases; write stories instead
July 11 2007:
Chief Marketer, a good little online newsletter,
had a piece last month named "The Secret of Sending Press Releases." I didn't
read it. Because I've worked both sides of the street, I figured I'd give
you my own secrets. As a newspaper editor, I saw plenty of press releases.
Later, I wrote press releases for the old Del Webb's Sahara. My stuff always
saw print, and some editors even called me and said they always looked forward
to my releases. Why? Most press releases are filled with syrupy praise for
the company. Mine told stories. They were written like newspaper feature
stories. They were about Sahara people who did unusual things--like Buddy
Hackett writing a check on the side of a grocery bag to help an Indian charity,
or Joan Adams, one of our cocktail waitresses, winning the national indoor
archery title just two months after she took up the sport. But my stories
always got our point across--whatever it was. And I never used corporate
leads, the kind that put the name of the company president in the first line.
My secret was--I knew editors liked a good story as much as anyone else.
Good stories always run. "Press releases" get thrown in the waste basket
or chopped down to a couple of lines. |
| Thousands storm Vegas to get married on 7-7-7
July 1 2007: Ed
Koch had a terrific story about July 7, 2007, in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper
the other day. Seems that thousands are rushing to Las Vegas to get married
on that particular day and the "40 or so" wedding chapels are gearing up
for a record 24 hours. The Flamingo Las Vegas alone, he said, will host 77
weddings at seven locations. And Paris Las Vegas is asking seven couples
to celebrate their one-year anniversary by returning to the resort for a
$777 meal. Koch wrote that 07-07-2007 "reduces to the lucky 7-7-7 for the
superstitious among us." Well, maybe, but not so in numerology (7+7+2+7=23,
which reduces to 5). But while there's no doubt that 7 is considered lucky,
what caused it? I asked an online outfit named Answerbag, where people write
in with their favorite answers to just about everything. The answers included
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, seven deadly sins, the seven seas and
the seven ancient planets. I threw in Craps just for the hell of it. Bet
I'm closest. |
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| Feds cracking down on Internet gaming
June 22 2007:
There was a point, a couple of years ago, when
some of us thought that the Feds would cave on Internet gambling. But instead
of succumbing to what seemed inevitable and easing restrictions, the opposite
has happened. NewsMax.com, one of the best of the conservative news sites,
says the FBI's Cyber Crime Fraud unit is a no-nonsense bunch that has bluntly
warned those who live in the US not to wager or transfer money electronically
for gambling. The FBI, says NewsMax, also has targeted the owners of virtual
casinos, gaming rooms and off-track betting parlors--and has had some recent
successes. About a dozen of such cases are "in motion," says an FBI official.
The number of offshore casinos is approaching one hundred, and the primary
market is the US. NewsMax reports that Sebastian Sinclair of the New York
consulting firm Christiansen Capital Advisers, says Americans lost more than
$7.2 billion online in 2006. I had to blink a couple of time at that stat.
I thought most online bets were small--and if they are, can you imagine how
many Americans are playing? |
| Funnier TV spots about to appear
June 11 2007:
You can expect to see more and more funny TV
spots in the months to come. Nielsen now offers ratings on commercial breaks.
This is very good news to general advertising agencies, who can now let their
creative talents run wild. Agencies love to dream up goofy spots that sometimes
end with the name of the sponsor on display for as much as, oh, half a second.
You see a lot of them in the Super Bowl. Consequently you remember the
commercials but not what they were supposed to sell. The truth is, humorous
commercials aren't supposed to sell anything. They're supposed to be
memorable--nothing more. But as your faithful reporter has declaimed so many
times, it's not the commercials that should be memorable. It's the promises
they make that should be memorable. Nevertheless, when agencies ponder what
type of commercials will do well in the ratings, the answer invariably will
be slapstick. Clients who put their faith in branding and who sign up to
check their ratings will be delighted. Imagine winning the commercial ratings
war. Joy! Better check what happened to sales. Claude Hopkins, the father
of modern advertising, summed up his philosophy in five words: "People don't
buy from clowns." |
| Need more keywords? Add a blog to your site
June 1
2007: Kelly K. Spors, who covers small
businesses for the Wall Street Journal, wrote a nice piece on keywords last
month. Keywords are the ones most likely to be typed into the various search
engines by those who seek your product or service. Up until recently, picking
keywords had been a guessing game--and still is for many. When my wife and
I began to build our new home in early 2005, we set up a Web site and picked
several keywords we thought would pull viewers. One of them was "dream home."
Bad guess. Everyone who builds new homes uses it. Now Google Analytics and
ClickTracks can take out a lot of the guesswork and HitTail.com can analyze
your site and suggest keywords to use. The latest technique is to add content
to your site, or a blog, because the larger number of words lets you pop
in or repeat more keywords. And a blog can do something else--such as create
the one-on-one conversation that made direct mail so successful. So I wondered
how many of the major casinos had their own blogs to help cement the relationship
with their best customers. I searched for two days and didn't find one. But
I did discover something else--that if you go to Google and pick a casino
name, then follow it with the words "Slot Blog," you'll pull up 266,000 sites,
or more. Who ARE the people behind this. I'll answer it in my next column
for Slot Manager magazine. |
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| 'Advergaming' booms; Army attracts 7 million
May 20 2007:
Chief Marketer, a terrific little online
newsletter, recently led me to an excerpt from Watch This, Listen Up, Click
Here, a new book by David Verklin and Bernice Kanner on "Advergaming." Across
the globe, say the authors, there are 100 million PlayStation2s and 40 million
Xboxes, and in the US, video games make more money than movie box offices.
Virtually every big advertiser from Volvo and Burger King to Nike and Visa
has gone virtual, and one of the big winners is the US Army. With enlistments
falling, the Army paid 7.3 million for a game named "America's Army." Of
course, they took a beating in the press but all of a sudden the critics
stopped carping. Since the game was released in 2002, more than 7 million
users have registered (most anonymously) and 10,000 to 50,000 news ones are
downloading the game daily. Studies show that between 20% and 40% of new
Army recruits have played it. And, a recent survey by Nielsen says that three
out of four homes with guys under 34 have game systems. Is the Verklin-Kanner
book going to be a bestseller? Bet on it. |
| A never-ending search to inspire casino play
May 11 2007: In
the mid-70s, as marketing director at the old Del Webb's Sahara in Las Vegas,
I'd gather my staff and we'd talk about ways to encourage more play. Our
ideas were fun, but not practical. Then I read an article about a company
that manufactured negative ion generators. Negative ions, as I recall, buoy
the human spirit, make you feel better, even embolden you. In nature, I read,
negative ions were generated by thunderstorms. So I wrote the company and
asked how they might work in a casino. The reply was enthusiastic, also costly
and impractical, so the idea died. Other casinos put their faith in certain
types of canned music, or themed interiors, or off-color comedians. Our casino
pit guys swore that when Liberace played the main rooms, players came out
of the show mellow and subdued. But when we had Buddy Hackett, they'd roar
out of the big room with fire in their eyes and head for the tables. Now
a friend of mine, Denis Floge, thinks that chocolate can inspire more play.
He tried it, too, and it worked. Look for his full story in the July issue
of Global Gaming. |
| Know what PPA means? Boy, you're sure out of it
May 1 2007:
Initialese has pretty much reached its apogee
in modern marketing. But if you don't know what the initials mean, you can't
make sense out of the stories or articles. Luckily., your faithful reporter
is on hand to enlighten you, otherwise you could wander forever in the acronymic
wasteland. For example, what does this mean? "SMBs are turning to PDAs to
improve their CPAs." Hah hah, you laugh. Everyone knows what CPA means. Oh,
do they? The translation: Small to Midsize Businesses are turning to Personal
Digital Assistants to improve their Cost Per Acquisition. ("Personal Digital
Assistants," by the way, are cell phones.). So I'm starting a new feature
to demystify the current fads. Samples follow: PPA (Pay Per Action, now in
its beta test phase by Google); SEM (Search Engine Marketing); EEC (E-mail
Experience Council); VWC (Virtual World Conference, recently held in New
York); PIP (Package Insert Programs, part of the new media); IAB (Interactive
Advertising Bureau, as in "The IAB estimated online sales hit 16 Billion
in 2006." Now you are armed--but only temporarily. |
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| If you like a TV spot, does that mean
sales?
April 21 2007:
So EchoStar Communications and Google have
teamed up to create an automated system for measuring TV advertising on the
Dish Network. Good luck to them. The system is already in place in EchoStar's
set-top boxes, so that's no problem. And the boxes can measure which commercials
viewers watch, and which ones they skip. But the problem is, what does that
really tell an advertiser? If your spot gets watched a lot, does that mean
it's creating sales? Maybe, maybe not. But Google apparently believes it
does, and intends to use anonymous data from the set-top boxes to bill
advertisers for the audience that watches the spots for long periods of time.
Can they sell such a service to advertisers? Not to me, they can't--or to
any direct marketer, I'd guess. But many large companies are so impressed
with anything their agency recommends that they abdicate their responsibility.
So I expect the plan to be hailed by the ad community as a miracle and snapped
up by all those companies with multi-million dollar budgets. Same old, same
old. |
| Change in casino mail makes it hard to read
April 12 2007:
Casino direct mail has changed. Boy, has it.
Letters, the old standbys, have morphed from single pages of stationery to
one section of a six or eight panel brochure--right next to the zip-out coupons
that carry the offers. The new format probably is cheaper to produce but
may cost more to mail. And it looks like an ad--not like person to person
communication. What it does well is place the offer front and center. But
in direct mail, the list rules. And that's the reason a bad mailer sent to
the right list will still pull. Send a beautiful package to the wrong list
and it's a disaster. The other thing that has changed is the type style.
Just about everything, even the letter, is now in sans serif type--the kind
writer Vrest Orton called "The most impossible type ever invented." as far
back as 1977. But art directors who are ignorant of .the purpose of printing
(which is to make reading easy) think sans serif is "clean" and :"cool,"
so that's what we get. I console myself with the thought that the pendulum
will swing back, and that single page letters and Roman type will return.
But hey, in fifteen or twenty years all mail might be delivered right to
your hand-held pod. Dismal thought. |
| Forget original ideas until you prove them
April 1 2007:
Warning! The words you are about to read are
dangerous, Remember them and be wary. They are "original," "innovative, "
"creative," "new and different." In the general advertising community such
words are hallowed. In the direct marketing community they almost always
spell trouble. Why? Because they all mean "untested." The strength of direct
marketing lies in its ability to test a direct mail piece or a direct response
ad before rollout begins. Without testing you're simply guessing and hoping
for the best--yet it's common in most industries (including the casino biz).to
launch huge campaigns without ever testing up front to see if you have a
hit or a miss. General advertising agencies put their faith in their creative
people. We do that in direct marketing, too, but only after they've proven
the ad or mailing package will pull the response that's necessary to pay
for the placements--and then some. So why do some companies rush out flawed
work that costs thousands to produce and tens of thousands to place--and
accept whatever response they get? That's easy. I have no idea. |
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| Attacking 'junk mail' is just a dumb
idea
March 21 2007:
Deliver me from newly elected politicians.
Too many of them think they have to show the flag so they invariably come
up with nonsensical "feel good" legislation. Case in point was a recent bill
to "stop unwanted junk mail" in Colorado. A similar proposal appeared in
Montana. My guess is that both bills were rushed to the floor because the
sponsors thought that some other legislator might beat them to it. The uproar
that arose from the Postal Service, unions, businesses, printers (and others)
showed that both sponsors did little or no homework and had no idea of the
job-killing impact such dumb ideas might cause. The Colorado bill would have
allowed those on a "do not mail" list who received mail to collect a $500
civil penalty, but exempted "political organizations." Sweet. Both bills
died in committee. My firm belief is that newspapers started the term "junk
mail" and if they had their way they'd ban ALL advertising mail--except their
subscription mail, of course. I also believe that a relatively small core
of activists keeps alive a ridiculous myth--that everyone hates "junk mail."
The battle rages. |
| Littler's three TC wins paid off big for Laine
March 12 2007:
The recent death of singer Frankie Laine brought
back memories of the most spectacular golf event ever staged in Las Vegas--the
old Desert Inn "Tournament of Champions." Howard Capps, former pro at the
DI, created the T of C in 1953 for the new Desert Inn Country Club. Along
with it came an equally spectacular Calcutta Auction in which hundreds of
DI rollers invited by the casino "bought" the tournament players. Calcuttas
fell out of favor with the PGA so you don't' see them anymore--but the T
of C Calcutta might have been the largest of all time. In 1955, Laine ("Mule
Train," Wild Goose" & others) bought golfer Gene Littler in a T of C
Calcutta that amassed a purse of more than $250,000, and collected a bundle
when Littler won. Laine bought Littler again in 1956, and Gene won again.
Could he make it three straight? In 1957, with the T of C the richest tournament
in golf, Laine and his wife Nan dashed from hole to hole to push their man
to victory. Gene won his third straight with the Calcutta at more than $400,000.
The T of C lasted only a short time at the Desert Inn before the PGA realized
what a valuable property it was and took it away. But my memories of Frankie
and Nan are just as strong as ever for a very good reason. Gene's third win
produced my first byline story in Sports Illustrated--a piece about the
astonishing Littler-Laine winning streak. |
| Conroy's WSJ Letter: a sales masterpiece
March 1 2007:
Martin Conroy died on Dec. 19, 2006, and the
New York Times noted his passing with a laudatory story. But only if you
write direct mail (as I do) would you remember the sales masterpiece that
Conroy created--perhaps the best the craft has even seen. His letter, written
to increase subscription sales for the Wall Street Journal, began this way:
"On a beautiful late spring afternoon, 25 years ago, two young men graduated
from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both
had been better than average students, both were personable, and both--as
young college graduates are--were filled with ambitious dreams for the future."
In the direct mail business we call this a "story lead." You don't see many
because they're hard to write. Conroy's letter continued: "Recently, these
men returned to their college for their 25th reunion. They were still very
much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both,
it turned out, had gone to work for the same midwestern manufacturing company
after graduation and were still there. But there was a difference. One of
the men was manager of a small department of that company. The other was
its president." The difference, Conroy goes on to say, was that one had access
to information and the other didn't--followed by a series of WSJ benefits
. Conroy wrote the letter when Nixon was president. It's still is use today,
unchanged after all these years and still the best of its kind ever written.
R.I.P. |
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| Ogilvy nailed creatives, and they never
forgot
February 1 2007:
Continuing last month's piece about the definition
of "creativity" in advertising, the following. "Send us your copywriters,"
the late David Ogilvy told the general advertising community. "We will teach
them how to sell." Ogilvy was a longtime champion of direct marketing who
proved his faith with consistency. Here's one of his classic headlines: "At
60 miles per hour, the loudest sound you can hear in the new Rolls Royce
is the ticking of the electric clock." The company's chief engineer reportedly
saw the ad and exclaimed, :I've got to do something about that damned clock."
Later, Ogilvy wrote an ad for Hathaway shirts that contained 14 benefits.
He called advertising that entertains, "A sin," and once said, "There is
no need for advertisements to look like advertisements. If you make them
look like editorial pages, you will attract about 50 per cent more readers."
If you define advertising "creativity" by the products or services it sells,
there was never a more "creative" guy than Ogilvy. Yet when he died the ad
community remembered him mostly for a throwaway line in a speech, "The consumer
is not a moron. She is your wife." He scolded general advertising creatives
with that zinger and they tried to turn it against him.. |
| Super Bowl commercials are devoid of
promises
February 10 2007:
What are we to say about Super Bowl TV commercials
this year? Advertisers flung open their pocketbooks; a 30-second spot went
for $2.6 million; ad experts, columnists and online reporters raved about
them. Yet, with a few exceptions, they were not ads at all. They were comedy
shorts, with the product an afterthought. Sick, some of it. Wasteful, practically
all of it. The game has become quicksand for client money and wonderful fun
for the ad agencies that are free, for the only time in the year, to produce
work in which selling anything is not a consideration. So as we have done
for the past six years, I will describe a spot and you guess the product.
Answers at bottom: (1) A Japanese movie monster flattens a bridge and a car
and is attacked and zapped by a giant human in a hero suit (2) A group of
men in business suits camping in the forest are attacked by unseen dart blowers
and run off a cliff as they dash for safety (3) We see a shot of Stonehenge,
then a child throwing a rock, then other quick clips of rocks in various
forms (4) A guy on a chopper is attacked by giant creatures, including an
ugly spider, yet outruns them all (5) A guy dressed as a heart is attacked
and beaten by various villains who represent deadly diseases. And that's
it for this year. Just remember, friends, that it's not the advertising that
should be memorable. It's the promises the advertising makes that should
be memorable--but there are none. The sponsors: (1) Garmin Personal Navigation
System (2) Career Builders.Com (3) Prudential Insurance (4) Hewlett Packard
(5) BeatYourRisk.Com. Funny, most of it, but very sad. |
| Casinos helped lead database breakout
February 20 2007:
Did you ever doubt that casinos were leaders
in the database marketing revolution? If you did, it's time to take a look
at what some respected database marketing experts are telling Circulation
Management magazine about the state of such marketing for 2007. "Database
marketing is moving out of the back room and firmly into the strategic fabric
of the marketing organization," said David Williams, president and CEO of
Merkle, Inc. Moving out of the back room in 2007? Where the hell have those
companies been for the last 40 years? Now listen to this from Melissa Campanelli
of DM News. "...the building of prospect databases will be one of the issues
marketers will be focusing on in 2007." Just starting to focus on database
marketing in 2007? Those guys are really out of it. Your faithful reporter
discovered the power of database marketing in 1964, and I've been its champion
ever since. It's the only form of advertising you can track for effectiveness,
and that alone should have put it in the forefront of marketing strategy.
It gained ground in the casino business after I hammered away with columns
about it in IGWB, and by the early 90s it was king. Credit goes to all those
casino marketers who adopted it early on and stayed with it. Few outside
our business know we were so influential in the database breakout. |
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| All-America madness will soon be upon
us
January 1 2007:
The most consequential news on the first day
of 2007 will not be about any of the nation's domestic or foreign problems,
nor about any medical miracles, industry accomplishments or stock market
swings. Instead, it will concern the odds on the annual college football
bowl games--and later, the results in excruciating detail. This is important
stuff to the millions of us who prefer the success stories of the sports
page to the tales of failures so prominent in the general news sections.
Later come the All-America teams, more or less finishing off the collegians.
Your faithful reporter has always thought All-America selections were
silly--except for one put together by Stanley Woodward decades ago. Here
are the players I can still remember from that first football Dream Team:
DeBelza, St. Mary's; Awn, Wisconsin; Moonova, Miami; Cheerforole, Notre Dame;
Alhailta, USC, DeIza, Texas, and you can take it from there. I told you it
was silly.
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| If Johnny can't read, look to the typeface
January 11 2007:
In 1977, author Vrest Orton, founder of the
catalog company "The Vermont Country Store," wrote an article for National
Review named "Why Johnny Can't Read." This piece, well ahead of its time,
should be read by all art directors and designers--especially those who work
on books for children. Some selected quotes from Orton. "The more we spend
building bigger and more luxurious schools...the less Johnny can read. Parents
are disgusted...yet are seldom aware of a major reason...in the last 10 years
American book publishers, ignorant of the purpose of printing, have introduced
the most impossible type ever invented...I refer to a blunt, stark, rigid
type called sans serif...any type that makes the message difficult to read
is wrong...the function of a type face is to make the page agreeable and
pleasant to read and the classic serif (Roman) types achieve that purpose..
Sans serif does just the opposite,,,each letter stands alone and yells for
attention...there are no contrasts...Sans serif type is a mongrel...the sheer
effort of trying to read such a crude type is too much, and Johnny says the
hell with it." |
| If pushing a benefit, you must be specific
January 22 2007:
Hey casino marketers--if you're going to push
benefits in your advertising, be specific about them. Here are a couple of
illustrations that drive home my point. In the fourth edition of Which Ad
Pulled Best, the editors tell of the US Envelope Company's launch of a
self-sealing envelope. Benefits included "sanitary," "novel," "different,"
"better" and "Humid weather never affects it." Not bad but vague, and they
all missed the mark. The wining headline read, "Avoid Licking Glue." Now
that's specific. In another test by a packaging company, the headline on
their ad read "If it's a packaging problem, it's our baby," illustrated by
a mother and child. The ad ran a very poor second to "Jake LaMotta, 160-lb
fighter, fails to flatten Mono paper cup." The picture of Jake and the victorious
paper cup. proved a benefit the first ad lacked. Under TIP OF THE WEEK |
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