| Your Most Valuable Promotional Tool |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Bill Arbuckle | |
| Wednesday, 28 December 2011 08:07 | |
|
He was the Michael Bay of local used car dealers. Much like the director of the Transformers movies crashed cars and blew up everything in sight, this guy seemed to think that dropping one used car on top of another would convince local buyers to visit his car lot and get a great deal. He built his business - a fairly large local used car dealership - one cheesy commercial at a time. And then someone got smart: They decided to include the dealer's wife in the commercials. The tone changed immediately from crashing cars to something simple, but far more interesting. The dealer's wife simply told the story of how the car dealership started off as a family project. Husband and wife reminisced about buying one car at a time, then taking the cars home where the kids washed them by hand before taking them to a small sales lot. The story felt genuine. The people no longer seemed like the stereotpyical used car salesmen desperate to make a sale. There was a warmth and a welcome that resonated from them. The warmth was genuine. I stopped by the lot one night on my way home from work. The dealership was sponsoring a driver for the annual Pikes Peak Hill Climb race, and his car was parked on the lot. When I stopped to take a picture of the car, guess who met me in the lot? The dealer's wife. She offered to take my photo next to the car so I could show my kids. She was as welcoming in person as she was on the TV commercial. After meeting her, I could easily believe her story. My view of the dealership drastically changed because one person took the time to make a connection. The experience has stayed with me, and has changed my view of marketing and promotions. We tend to view marketing through the lens of campaigns with their on-air and online components. But it's far simpler. Marketing begins - and ends with - a person with an engaging story. That's it. Everything else is secondary. Your most valuable promotional tool is a person. A person with an engaging story. And since we're the gatekeepers for our station's marketing projects, that brings it all into perspective. It's up to us to tell the story. To be engaging. To make the connection. So it all comes down to this: Your most valuable promotional tool is...you. |
|
| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 04 January 2012 07:37 ) |
