While many companies have used the backlit sign panels at their local airport to advertise their wares, LifeStyles Furniture, an internet retailer of furniture with a brick and mortar store and warehouse in Moline, Illinois, decided to place their actual products in the local airport for weary travelers to use.

“We offer some of the best furniture in the world”, explains Brian Banks, president of LifeStyles Furniture. “When people see the quality, they get hooked. As much as we want to bring people to our store, it also made sense to take the furniture to the people. We want people to experience the quality.”

One of the LifeStyles Lounges at the QC Airport. Click to see larger image.

Lifestyles has four “LifeStyle Lounges” at the Quad City International Airport in Moline, Illinois. Each one of the lounges includes Ekornes leather furniture, side tables, and promotional displays. In conjunction with the furniture are lighted wall displays, stand up displays and two of the four locations have LCD televisions showing video about the furniture and the store. In addition to the lounges, there are also kiosks with various furniture store messages, each emphasizing the uniqueness of the store’s offerings and free shipping to anywhere in the country.

The furniture is available for any airport traveler to use and although the Quad City International Airport has been recently updated and has newer seating for their traveling clientele, the standard seating fare is no match for the Ekornes sofas and chairs for comfort. Ekornes, based out of Norway, is considered one of the world’s leading brands for upscale furniture.

Cathie Rochau, Marketing Representative for the airport says they like the addition. “Our travelers absolutely love the comfortable “LifeStyles Lounges” located in the airport terminal. We constantly see passengers waiting in a very relaxed style for their flights–many times with their laptops open and their feet up. The lounges have been a fabulous addition to the airport and they are constantly being used.”

“After we began the program last year, we started getting letters from travelers thanking us for providing the furniture at the airport,” explains Mr. Banks. “It would be impossible to calculate exact sales numbers that are directly related to the airport displays, but suffice it to say I have increased our presence there based on our overall increased sales.” LifeStyles Furniture had record sales in 2009 and continues to improve its growth in 2010. Both LifeStylesFurniture.com and PlatformBeds.com are seeing continued growth as well as the retail store.

Welcome to the five Quad Cities. Click to see larger version.

The creative messaging for the displays was created by the Gunter Agency, based in New Glarus, Wisconsin. With headlines like “Comfort disclaimer: not responsible if you miss your flight” and “So this is what first class feels like”, the agency looked at the placement of the signage as a component of their creative message. Creative Director Randy Gunter explains more about the creative strategy, “from personal experience, I know that you can spend a fair amount of time at an airport just waiting. Obviously this was the motivation behind putting the furniture at the airport in the first place. But, more than that, our messaging used that thought process too. We purposely put in longer copy than we typically would in a display advertisement. We also made each kiosk say something different, with fun, quirky elements within the body copy. That way we would hope that once people see that the copy is fun and entertaining, and different on each display, they would go and read every single one because what else are you going to do at the airport?”

And how about the big lighted wall display that says “Welcome to the Five Quad Cities”? Mr. Gunter explains, “The Quad Cities is a misnomer in that there are actually five larger cities that make up the metropolitan area. So of course we had some fun with that thought. We’re hoping that travelers will find it intriguing enough to have their photo taken in front of the display.”

At a recent visit to the airport, Mr. Gunter noticed that every LifeStyles Lounge was occupied. “I talked to the travelers who were in the seats and they just raved about both the store for providing the furniture and the furniture itself for its comfort and innovative design. They especially liked the reclining chairs.”

“We’ve been extremely happy with the response that we’ve got from our airport marketing,” explains Mr. Banks about their innovative program. “I guess the next natural step is to see if we can get our furniture on some of the jets.”

I then mentioned a strategy of “marking it up to mark it down.” The thought process in this strategy is that if you have a higher list price it allows you to mark it down (sales, coupons, etc.) and still get your margins. (Obviously this is more for a retail/consumer product environment than for a service or B2B account.) I then spoke briefly about the psychology of “getting a deal” and how consumers feel good about that process. Even if they could have purchased a competitor’s product of a better quality for less money, the idea of getting a deal trumps the comparison shopping.

Later, I received an email from Carol Smith at Just Fare Market (www.justfare.org). She asked an interesting question on whether the strategy “to mark it up to mark it down” was ethical. I asked her to elaborate:

I question the ethics of marking up to mark down because the practice of offering products marked down or on sale has become so pervasive a way of doing business that many consumers buy only when a product is on sale. Certainly many of these sales are the result of marking up to mark down. I believe that the “marked down mentality” has contributed to a downward spiral in the retail sector including offering lower quality products, less customer service, and moving production of goods from places where Americans could earn a living wage to third world countries where producers are treated in many unjust ways by foreign companies.

Further, raising the price to lower the price seems dangerously close to a practice that the Federal Trade Commission has defined as deceptive pricing. When offering a price reduction from a former price, the former price must be a bona fide price that was used on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial amount of time – otherwise this is against Federal Trade Commission rules.*

I buy Fair Trade products whenever such a product is available to me. In fact I am involved in developing a Fair Trade retail store in our community called the Just Fare Market. The price in Fair Trade is fair to the producer, wholesaler, retailer and consumer. Fair Trade bypasses typical middlemen who get an unfairly high cut in conventional trade. Raising the price to lower the price is not a marketing strategy we use. Everyday fair prices is part of the brand of Just Fare Market.

*FTC Guides against deceptive pricing: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/decptprc.htm

I’d like to thank Carol for taking the time to share her opinions on the subject. She certainly brings up some interesting thoughts which does affect all of us as marketers.

As a marketing consultant, this brings up a few interesting questions for me. If I believe something is unethical (assuming it is not illegal, just unethical), do I still present it as an option to my client? (With the thought that my ethical tipping point may be different than my clients?) If my client asks me to do something that I think is unethical (but once again, not illegal), do I do it? (I know my answer to these questions, but I would be interested in hearing what others say about it.)

I tell people in my seminars that I am a hypocrite in at least one area. I would have no problem if we passed laws making billboards illegal. I think that they detract from the beauty of our country (especially on scenic drives here in Wisconsin) and add to the noise and clutter in our world. Yet, I know that they work for my clients and I tell my clients that they work, and we have been involved in the design and media placement of numerous billboards over the years. So there is no doubt about it, I have a hypocritical stance on that subject.

People that have interviewed for positions with our ad agency will probably recall being asked a related question in their interviews. The question is, if the agency was asked to do work for a company that you disagreed with (ethical, political, whatever reason), what would you do? There is no right or wrong answer to this question. I can respect a point of view where the respondent claims that their moral compass simply would not allow them to work on certain accounts. At the same time, I also respect a position that as an employee, the job is to give 100% effort for every client, regardless of personal thoughts.

I guess it comes down to balance. I believe that as a marketer and marketing consultant, it is my job to help my clients in any way that I can to help them sell more of their products and services and be profitable. At the same time, we do have to maintain ethical standards. In fact, if you read our company brochure, we have an integrity statement in place that pertains to our company, our clients and our vendors. (And this has been in print for some time, we didn’t just add it for convenience for this blog post.) Does your company have an integrity/ethics policy?

The golden rule still makes a good business rule: treat others the way you want to be treated.

Advertising

• Print advertising — newspaper, magazines
• Television — despite all the doomsayers, TV still works
• Radio — can you use weekends and evenings?
• Billboards
• Direct marketing — mail or even drop off something direct

Social Media

• Build a Facebook and/or Twitter page (read our article!)
• Create a LinkedIn profile
• Be an expert — join LinkedIn groups and answer questions
• Advertise on Facebook
• Use LinkedIn to get introduced to someone

Web

• Have a good website
• Blog — write and update a blog
• Viral video — it’s tough, but when it works, it’s good
• Sell on Ebay (yes, this can be a tool to promote your business)
• YouTube — post your company videos on YouTube

Guerilla Marketing

• Stage an event — be careful, don’t do anything stupid
• Do something on location, build a dog house out front

Sponsorships

• Help a non-profit (and publicize it)

Public Relations

• Send out press kits to get feature stories
• Send out “announcements” — new hires, certifications, awards, etc.
• Send letters to editors (share your expertise on current issues)
• Be an expert — get quoted in articles (let writers/editors know you are out there)
• Write articles for other publications/websites

Trade Shows

• Have a booth
• Be a sponsor
• Sponsor a reception for attendees (either public or private)
• Walk the show (as an attendee)

Stay in front of your clients/prospects

• Newsletter (either traditional or electronic)
• Create an annual report (even though you don’t legally have to, create one anyway)

Events

• Have a party! (Have a Halloween party)
• Invite client/prospect to lunch, golf, etc.

Holiday

• Send out something fun/special at holidays (and don’t just think Christmas)

Sandwich boards

• Dress someone up and put them out on the street (Uncle Sam before the 4th of July?)

Give-Away samples

• Walk into a business and give away samples

Seminars

• Give a seminar

Join a group

• Join an industry or business group (Chamber) and attend events
• Volunteer for committees (this is when you actually meet people)

Write

• Not an email, but a letter
• Write an article

Create quality collateral materials

• Send out a quality brochure, DVD, catalog, etc.

Put up a sign

• On your location, if you already have one – change it somehow (even if just temporary)

Give-aways

• Do something different — tin sign, tickets to a concert, etc.
• Do something useful — okay, it’s not anything ground breaking, but I’ve seen my coffee mugs used lots of places

Change your on-hold message

• Make your on-hold messages entertaining — hire a comedian

Make a personal connection

• Talk to someone on the phone
• Send an email
• Ask for a referral

3-D movies are all the rage again and people are rushing to get their movies out on the big screen. Of course we’re talking about the 3-D where you put on glasses and the movie has realistic, or sometimes fantastic, depth to them. (There is another type of 3-D movie where the imagery is computer generated using 3-D modeling techniques, but that is another discussion. The recent Toy Story is an example that uses both 3-D types.)

That Pavilion at Olbrich Gardens in Madison using "cross-eyed" 3-D viewing technique (click to enlarge.) To view in 3-D, simply sit in front of the photo and cross your eyes. A combined 3-D image should form in the middle. (It takes a little practice and some people have a hard time making it work.) The web link has anaglyphic photos - red-blue glasses needed. www.GunterAgency.com/3d

I’ve actually been playing around with 3-D imagery since I was a kid. I used to draw two images and then do the “magic eye” or “cross-eyed” trick to blend them into one. Later on my brother got a copy of Grand Funk’s Shinin’ On album, complete with 3-D artwork and anaglyphic glasses, and I started playing around using red and blue markers to create 3-D images.

Back around 2000, we did a holiday card for the agency that was sent out with 3-D glasses. It gave a link to an interactive, animated 3-D website. It was of “Santa’s Workshop” and when you clicked on one of the toys, they would move in 3-D space. To our knowledge, we were the first company in the world to create an interactive 3-D website.

We’ve been shooting 3-D photos for several years and today we are currently working on a 3-D Wisconsin book (with plans of other states down the road.) If you have suggestions for photos to be included, let us know. We’ll be doing both natural landscapes and tourist attractions.

To see some of our 3-D pictures, you can go to a special section of the agency website – www.GunterAgency.com/3d. You will need red-blue anaglyphic glasses. (Send me an email or give me a call, I can send some in the mail.)

We’ve recently added RSS feeds to the ad listings on the Ad Diner. This is a great feature for visitors who use RSS and want to keep an eye on new offerings, but only a small fraction of internet users actually know what RSS is. If you aren’t familiar with it though, it’s worth taking the time to give it a try. It might dramatically change the way you use the web.

The problem with the web.

Every now and then something comes along that solves a problem most people didn’t realize they had. People got along fine before the remote control was invented, but these days no one would buy a TV without one.

I follow dozens of websites, and each of them adds new content in varying frequency. Some of the more popular blogs update several times each day, and many of the smaller sites only update every few weeks, if that often. I could waste a lot of time checking all of these sites every day to see if they have updated, and even then the less frequently updated sites tend to get forgotten about. Often a lot of valuable and interesting information gets lost in the shuffle.

Some websites have tried to solve this over the years with email reminders and newsletters, but if you sign up for too many of those you’ll end up with a cluttered and unusable mailbox.

RSS helps solves this by providing a better way to check and read all of your websites in one place.

Okay, what is RSS?

RSS stands for either “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication,” depending on who you ask. An RSS feed is just a file on a website that summarizes the site’s most recent content, with links to the original articles on the site. An RSS feed by itself isn’t particularly useful—it’s just a list of recent articles on a website. It’s when you use an RSS “Reader” that feeds become indispensable.

(Above: The front page of CNN.com and the contents of the accompanying RSS feed. Notice how the RSS feed offers the same information as the links on the front page. I actually prefer not to use RSS to follow major news sites like this because the sheer volume of content tends to overwhelm everything else I’m following, but they all offer RSS as a way to follow the news as it happens.)

An RSS reader (sometimes called an “Aggregator”) is a computer program or a website that checks all of the RSS feeds you tell it to and combines them together in one list. It keeps track of what you’ve read, and lets you know when something new is added. All in all, it’s a lot like using email—you have an inbox, you can sort articles by author, title, or date, you can flag stories you want to read later, and if you fall behind and just want to give up, you can mark everything as read. You no longer have to check to see if sites you read have updated, because the reader checks for you.

What do I need to get started?

First, you need a reader.

There are lots of different RSS Readers available, although most function fairly similarly. On the Mac, NetNewsWire, Vienna, and NewsFire are all good options. More recent versions of Apple’s Mail program also function as an RSS reader. On Windows, FeedDemon is a popular choice. There are quite a few cross-platform options as well, such as RSSOwl and BottomFeeder.

For people like me who have multiple computers they use on a regular basis, a web-based option might be better. Bloglines is a fairly popular web RSS service. For people who already use Google services such as Gmail or Google Docs however (and who doesn’t?), Google Reader is an excellent choice. Google Reader uses the same user account as the rest of your google services, and is available anywhere you have internet access. There’s even a special version for the iPhone and other mobile devices.

Some of the non-web RSS applications such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon will synchronize with a Google Reader account, so you can still check your feeds when you’re away.

Then you need something to read.

Take a look at your favorite websites and see if they have feeds available. Not every site offers RSS, but most do. Just about every blog will have one. On most modern web browsers an RSS logo will appear in the address bar of a page that has an RSS feed. If not, look for the RSS logo on the sites you visit:

Take a look through your bookmarks. You might find some sites that you found something interesting on, bookmarked, and then promptly forgot about. See if they have a feed and subscribe to it. Most bookmarks are clutter you’ll never look back at, but a feed is a potential source of new information.

Some sites do interesting things with RSS. Craigslist doesn’t just offer feeds for each of the category listings on the site, you can also subscribe to a feed for a particular search. If you listen to podcasts on your iPod or other MP3 player, you’re already using RSS in a specialized way. Podcasting software just uses RSS feeds with links to audio files to handle updates.

Adding a feed to Google Reader is simple. (see below) Click the “Add a subscription” button, and enter the page you want to subscribe to. Reader will try to find the site’s RSS feed. Most other readers are similar.

Our ulterior motive:

Obviously we hope you’ll subscribe to the Five and Dime RSS feed, and if you’re reading this coming from the Ad Diner, subscribe to one of our feeds there.

One of the things that I emphasize with students is that their ability to listen will serve them well in the advertising world. Many times my best ideas aren’t even my own, I just listen intently and take what the clients say and give it back to them. Most of the time they don’t realize what they are saying. And I think it is a fair statement that we polish the idea a little bit.

One of the best slogans we ever created for a client was the phrase “Know Your Worth” for Royal Neighbors of America. RNA is an insurance company that specializes in marketing to women and has a long history. They were the first insurance company to even offer insurance to women (hard to imagine that there was a time when women couldn’t buy insurance), they were also very involved in the women’s suffrage movement, working to give women in the U.S. the right to vote. They grew very big over these early years and kind of rode that success for years to come.

The phrase “know your worth” wasn’t our invention. It actually was a line buried within a paragraph on their website. It took an astute designer (Holly Stine) to see that line and think that it could be a defining phrase for the company. (Which also shows that it doesn’t matter what your title is, a designer can come up with good copy, a copywriter can have good graphic ideas.)

Unfortunately, after three presidents and four marketing directors within a two year period, the fourth marketing director decided to ditch the “Know Your Worth” slogan. That’s too bad, but often new marketing directors feel it is more important to make their mark and they can’t do that with someone else’s ideas.

The dog house in front of Companion Animal Care in Fond du Lac.

(This is part two of a series. Part one can be read here.)

We’re currently working with an animal hospital in Fond du Lac. One of their problems is awareness. We’re addressing part of that awareness problem with some innovative marketing programs that are literally getting prospects to walk in the door. But one of their problems is that people don’t know where they are located, even though they’ve been located on a very recognizable street for many years. (And Fond du Lac isn’t that big of a place.)

Their monument sign was fine and out near the street where it could be seen easily. Do they need more signage or something different?

I suggested creating a landmark out front that people would notice. We narrowed it down to two different ideas. A pond with a large sculpture of a dog peeing into the pond (you know, a dog version of the cherub statue peeing fountain.) Or building a structure. The structure won out. And what would that structure be? Well a dog house, of course.

They had already hired a talented artist, Therese Randall, to paint murals in their building. She returned to turn the dog house into a piece of illustrative art. Now if anyone asks them for directions, they can say they are “in the place with the big yellow doghouse out front.”

A number of years ago I found some recordings of Hardrock Gunter. With an interesting name, I did a little research which eventually led me to find Hardrock living in New Mexico. To make a long story short, we’ve become good friends and in October of 2008, we took a vacation to New Mexico. During our visit, we interviewed Hardrock.

Hardrock is one of the first rock and rollers out there.

His Birmingham Bounce has been written up as possibly the first rock and roll record. (He recorded it in 1950, Red Foley made it into a number 1 hit a little later.) (Gonna rock and roll) Gonna Dance All Night is arguably the first time that the phrase “rock and roll” was ever used in a song in a musical context (also recorded in 1950.) His recall into the army for the Korean Conflict interrupted his career. He was recording on the sun label before Elvis did.

Hardrock is a pioneer of the rockabilly sound. I hope you enjoy the interview. Learn more about “Rock” on the official Hardrock Gunter website.