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.”

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.”

I originally saw this article from George in Pam Witzig‘s newsletter, first in a series of articles on a series of “Mad Men” that she is running, articles featuring real life stories from advertising men back when there were only three TV networks to advertise on. (George recruits for Pam’s employment agency.)

August Busch III had just told the agency that we needed to come up with the next major Budweiser ad campaign. The agency was hopping and we even cut back on our three Budweiser lunches.  When you worked on Bud you didn’t have martini lunches. Some of the creatives even came in before 10AM. The word was out, if we didn’t nail it then it would be up for review. And when Mr. Busch said “jump!” …well, you know the saying.

It was not that the present campaign sucked. Here comes the King was pretty good and with those Clydesdales, how could you not get attention. In addition to that the agency created a secondary camping where we painted the Budweiser label on the side of barns or on the bottom of swimming pools and made it all fun. Gosh those labels were big. A client’s dream: “Make the logo bigger.” But Mr. Busch wanted to see something fresh.

Now don’t get me wrong, he liked all that we did and loved the jingle. “Here comes the King, here comes the big number one,” (Trombone: bum bum bum bum) “Busweiser beer is beer that’s second to none,” (Bum bum bum bum.) Written by Steve Karmen. And ending with: “When you say Budweiser, you’ve said it all.” So the entire agency was on call to “Ratchet it up a notch.” God how I hate that phrase.

I was a young Art Director and associate Creative Director at the time. Like Salvatore Romano on Madmen, I too could draw. The agency was given three, maybe four weeks to present the new thinking. I thought of a simple idea. Use the Clydesdales and the famous wagon and have it waiting with no drivers or dog outside a construction site in New Jersey. As the men came off site they punched the time clock and our hero climbed up on the wagon and moved them out. Heading through the Lincoln Tunnel to New York City and across midtown Manhattan and all that cross town traffic. Then when he got to the Tavern he meet his lady friend. I created a new Tag line “The King is waiting” and rewrote the lyrics to Steve Karmen’s famous music. The agency chiefs and the Don Draper of then D’Arcy Advertising all gave me their blessings and I was on cloud nine. And eager to start my storyboards.

My final idea was approved at the last minute and the next day (Friday) I went to the brewery with all the brass and several other creatives with their ideas. You would always show at least three ideas and then recommend one. In this case that was going to be mine. I was pumped and had practiced singing the Budweiser jingle with my new lyrics. Same beginning but a new second stanza. “The king is waiting, there is no doubt it’s what great taste is all about.” (Chorus: It’s what great taste is all about.)

We got there at 3PM and waited on the other side of two very large double doors. Mr. Busch and all the top brass were on the other side. We waited for over an hour or more and at the last moment were told that we had 15 minutes to present since August Busch III was going to fly his helicopter from the rooftop to head home, and he was leaving at 4:30PM. I guess he didn’t want to get caught up in the St. Louis helicopter rush hour traffic. The Executive Creative Director turned to me and said “Well George, you’re on,” then told all the other creative teams to stay outside. The doors opened and there was a huge table with all these men sitting there. At one end was a very large painting of August Busch III and sitting under that painting was the man himself.

I made my way to that end of the room and started to pull out all my storyboard frames from my art case. I could hear some talking going on behind me but was too busy getting all my stuff out of the case. I was down on one knee while I was doing this so I couldn’t really see the entire room that well. Then, suddenly just as I got the last frame out August Busch III turns in his oversized swivel chair and says right to me “So what you got?” I was too pumped to be frightened or to freeze and went right into my pitch on one knee like I was proposing marriage. And that would have been easier. I took him through the storyline and showed him the frames one at a time as I sang the new lyrics to the famous Budweiser song. I didn’t have time to get up and use an art easel to show the work and present to him and all the others in the room. Some of the men got up and moved toward the front as I went through my pitch. Including the new tag line “The king is waiting.” And when it was all done he smiled and asked me “Can I drive the wagon?” and I said “Mr. Busch, you can do whatever you want.” And with that I could hear laughter coming from the other side of the room.

I packed up my work and we were out of there by 4:30 as promised and Mr. Busch was very, very happy. I was thrilled and on cloud 19. Afterwards the agency brass all patted me on the back and said “great job.” That weekend I was as high as a kite and knew that I was going to be famous for having created the new Budweiser ad campaign. On Monday there was one other idea they were bringing over to have Mr. Busch see and it was created by the Don Draper of the agency. After that, I was in like Flynn. His idea: “For all you do. This bud’s for you.”

I got an email from one of our clients which made my day. Let’s call him Steve (because that’s his name.) We had just talked the day before about how he was having a hard time getting to talk to one of his prospects.

I had mentioned that when you get frustrated about something like that, just think about how this is really pretty typical. How many clients do you now have that it took you a year, or maybe longer, of calling on before they became your client? Frustration is the salesperson’s worst enemy while persistence is his best friend. (I know Steve knew all of this already, I wasn’t telling him anything new—he’s a really good salesperson, but sometimes just hearing it from someone else is good.)

The email that I received said the prospect took his call. Steve was told that he must have ESP because the prospect was about to give him a call, that the prospect had just cut out his ad from the trade publication and was ready to make an order.

Which brings up the second component of the story: persistence. How many times did this particular person see the ad before he decided to cut it out? Although we like to think that the first time we run an ad that it brings instant success, the fact is that more often it takes several views before someone will act.

Be persistently persistent. (And you can do that without being a PITA. If you don’t know what a PITA is, send me an email.)