"If you have a positive attitude and constantly strive to give your best effort, eventually you will overcome your immediate problems and find you are ready for greater challenges. "
Pat Riley
The Wen McNally Story
I had an opportunity to spend some time with the McNally’s in Denver and was impressed with their story. This story has about 20 ideas, many that businesses could use in a poor economy.
Here is an interview I did with them about their advertising strategy.
Clay Campbell: Can we talk about the success you are having with your business?
Wen McNally: We started part- time 4 years ago and went full time 18 months ago.
2008 first full year $100,000 (projected for 2009 - they are expecting to double sales)
CC: How many dollars spent on actual advertising last year?
WN: About $2,000
CC: That’s incredible! Can you share some of the ways you became so well known in your community without spending money on TV and radio - normal avenues of advertising?
WM: We created a great following through word of mouth; by being generous.
CC: Tell us what you did
WM: The first thing was to get into the high school. We approached the high school football coach and asked to take pictures of the star players and the team.
We created a high quality poster with the star players and team picture and included the schedule. We printed up a bunch (my cost was $1 each) and gave to the coach. He immediately wanted to sell the posters but the only stipulation was that they must be free. The posters were hung up all around the school and in all the local businesses.
Because the coach liked what he saw, we worked on a fundraising project. I took an old sofa, painted it with fabric paint – white with black swirlies. We took the sofa to 3 of the football games and basically set up a studio. The kids paid $3/picture on the sofa. We had individuals as well as groups come and ‘hang out’ on the sofa and took pictures. All the money went right back to the school. From just 3 games, they raised $350. The catch was that we bring our display to the games.
CC: You were just getting your name out!
WM: Next, we printed 5000 postcards of the team schedule, and passed out. This was a very minimum cost. Instead of the traditional advertising, we had more time to get our name and face in front of the parents and teachers and that created a buzz. We wanted to specialize in high school portraits. When we decided to go full time, my husband (www.Thatbaldguy.com) quit his job to help, so we had to make it work.
Once we did the football team, all the other coaches wanted us to do the same thing for their teams – dance, baseball, JV baseball, soccer, lacrosse.
WM: Once we started and we had a great product, we had many referrals. We made the kids on the teams look like rock stars.
The first football poster we photographed them as a group. Now, we take individual pictures of each player and then Photoshop them to create the ‘team’ picture. By doing this, each student is lighted and we end up with very professional images. After parents saw the group picture, they wanted the individual pictures.
WM: The baseball coach invited us to their hit-a-thon picnic. We set up a display and brought all our samples and at the event, we unveiled the team poster. We decided to print up four 20x30 canvases of some of the star players. The parents absolutely flipped over them and we ended up selling all four on the spot – for $1600 cash!
WM: We created packages further and starting booking senior portraits.
CC: Important question – Is this a model that you borrowed, or did you come up with this on your own? That’s a whole lot of work to take individual shots of the kids and Photoshop them together.
WM: We adapted a program of Dave Junion. He had a poster program and we talked to him about what he did and then modified it to fit our needs. We took the whole program to a different level, with so many avenues at this high school. The athletic director even asked for us to create the football program.
CC: How much in gross sales do you think has come into your cash register because you did the individual posters, the white sofa at the games, and everything else you did just because you were trying to build up a brand without radio and television?
WM: That brought the majority of our gross sales; because we have done very little conventional advertising and our only actual paid advertising has been in the school. We pay for an ad in the high school paper. (Mountain Dew High School has between 1200 – 1500 students.)
CC: Could anyone do this?
WM: Any kind of business could do this – generous work. Accountant, bakery, bridal shop – anything that you can do to be out there and be a public figure and get known in the community. And if you live in the community it can be great for your business.
All gross sales came from this one high school. The second year we will possibly be doubling our sales. We also started at other high schools in the area. (Stafford, Virginia)
CC: Do you have any other marketing or advertising ideas that someone could use?
WM: Bakery – sampling – cupcakes – brand each cupcake
Elementary school – muffins with moms, doughnuts with dads
Charity is king with the schools, and it is hard to get in with advertising
Another thing that we’ve done – again in the same school - We take all of the pictures for all of the drama productions. We put out a series of posters of the actors in costumes.
WM: We also are in the high school newspaper. Because printing the paper isn’t great quality for a little black and white ad, we pay an insert fee and have our own insert in the newspaper. They print 1000 newspapers every month. Our insert is a 4x6 print image branded with our logo and website and we use an actual photo. We then pick 10 students, and have 100 inserts of each student. These are now called trading cards and the cards are posted in the classroom on the bulletin board. Everyone now can’t wait for the next issue and to be the next trading card.
http://www.wenmcnally.com/
Many thanks to Wen and That Bald Guy
This story has several great creative ideas for being generous. They use word of mouth very effectively by being over the top generous.
Perhaps now would be a good time to have a complimentary meeting with a Wizard of Ads Partner. Links to their websites and blogs are listed down the right side of The Wizard Times. Hundreds of their articles with free insightful advice can been seen at www.americansmallbusiness.com 2009 would be a great year to attend a class at the Wizard Academy 21st Century Business School in Austin Texas. What is the Wizard Academy?
See you next week.
Clay Campbell
Wizard of Ads
PS. Need help to attract more customers and grow your business?
