Here’s a quick foray into big-brand marketing, which might be relevant to you even if you’re a complete non-brand:
To start, imagine the year is 2008. Skinny jeans have just become non-negotiable… M.I.A.’s Paper Planes is playing everywhere… and the biggest question on everyone’s mind is, “Was that really Sarah Palin, or was it Tina Fey?”
You, a young and stylish traveler, have just landed in New York City. So you check into your hotel — the hip and modern W Hotel on Lexington Avenue. You’re starving, and you’re ready to hit the town and get some Sbarro’s.
But Uber hasn’t been invented yet. You don’t want to walk all the way to Times Square… so you ask the concierge to call you a cab.
“A cab?” the concierge chuckles. “Oh no, sir. We have something better for you. Something much better. We have a luxury livery service… an Acura MDX SUV to chauffeur you around town.”
It turns out back in 2008, Acura (Honda’s premier line of cars) teamed up with W Hotels to offer something called the “Acura experience.”
Acuras were supposedly good cars, but nobody knew that. Back then the Acura brand of luxury cars was about as desirable as the Flint brand of bottled water.
So rather than plowing more money into ads, the marketing team at Acura created an exclusive “livery service” to anybody staying at any W hotel. You could be chauffeured around town in the new Acura SUV… or if you’re the controlling type who doesn’t want anybody else touching the steering wheel, you could take the MDX out for a test drive yourself.
According to Jonah Berger’s Contagious, the “Acura experience” resulted is millions of rides… tens of thousands of new car sales… and 80% brand switching.
I think there are two lessons here.
The first is that demonstration is much more powerful than bloviation. But you probably knew that.
The second is an illustration of the central idea of Jay Abraham’s marketing philosophy:
“Any problem you have is the solution to a much bigger problem somebody else has — they just don’t know it.”
Jay’s idea goes way beyond what you might think of as joint ventures or affiliate marketing. Instead it’s the insight that, whatever you’re trying to do, somebody out there would love to help you, because it serves their interests also.
I’m not sure what problem W Hotels had back in 2008. But I guess if you’re trying to position yourself as fancy and hip, it’s a constant race to keep ahead of expectations. That’s how Acura helped W Hotels… and made a bunch of car sales as a result.
Like I said, I believe this can help you even if you’re a complete non-brand. Wherever you’re trying to go, there’s somebody out there who has a stable of horses… and will lend you one for free, if you just deliver a package along the way.
I’ve been taking this attitude since the start of this year, with several projects I’ve taken on.
Is it working? Well, I’ll let you know (in the next week or so) if my exclusive “Bejakovic livery service” has produced any result. And if you like, you can decide then if Jay’s idea is something you should adopt as well.
Final point: I have an email newsletter where my updates go first. If you’d like to subscribe so you find out how my livery service experiment goes, you can do so here.