Ms. Knutson

Sales & Marketing

Use Velcro For Your Hotel's Marketing

By Bonnie Knutson, Professor, The School of Hospitality Business/MSU

Searching the Web the other day, I came across one of those funny little articles that give you a "list" for something or other. You know the kind. The 10 best.... The 5 worst...101 things to do with... In this case, it was 15 Things My Kids Taught Me. As I'm chuckling down the inventory, I came across No. 13 which claims that, in all of human history, the three most important inventions are string cheese, Velcro, and swim diapers. Now, I don't know about the string cheese or the swim diapers, but I'll have to agree with the Velcro. Just think how this odd hook and loop tape has made our lives easier. Jackets...gym bags...shoes...marketing messages.

Huh? Marketing messages?

Yep! Stop and think about it. What is the goal of Velcro? To hold tightly, of course. And what is the goal of your hotel's promotional messages? Why, to hold tightly to the consumer's mind, of course. Herein lays the first rule of Velcro Marketing as revealed by George de Mestral more than 50 years ago.

The story goes that, after spending the day hunting in the Jura Mountains of France, ol' George found that his wool pants were covered with little burrs off the brush. Try as he may, he couldn't get those pesky things off; they were there to stay. Not to be outsmarted by a bunch of burrs, George put them under a magnifying glass and saw that each of the burrs had hundreds of tiny hooks trapped in the loops of the woolen fabric in his pants. Now George knew a good thing when he saw it so he developed a machine that would replicate the hook and loop function using nylon. He called his invention VELCRO, from the French words velour and crochet. The rest is history.

George also noticed something else. He saw that the randomly arranged loops would stick much tighter than those arranged in neat rows would. In other words, if the loops were unpredictable, the bond was stronger. If the loops were neatly arranged in rows, they had less holding power. This is the second rule of Velcro Marketing. If you want your marketing message to stick to the consumer's mind, then it has to be unpredictable. This doesn't mean unorganized, uncreative, and unprofessional; it simply means unpredictable. Look up unpredictable in a thesaurus, you'll find that the antonyms are unsurprising, expected, conventional, banal, boring, and humdrum - none of which you want applied to your hotel's marketing because none of them will make your hotel's image or promotions memorable.

Think about it. If you see the punch line coming, the joke isn't as funny. When you've gone through the Haunted House for the tenth time, you're not as scared by the ghost popping out. And if every Wednesday is spaghetti night, how excited are you to have dinner? A friend of mine was consulting with a company that manufactures and sells dog food. After launching a massive television ad campaign, the company was disappointed in its ROMI (return on marketing investment). To better understand what was going on, the consultant compiled a video pr'ecis showing clips of his client's dog food ad along with those of the competitors'. What he found was predictable. There were dogs running through fields. Dogs running through woods. Dogs running with clouds in the background. Dogs running through fields or woods with clouds in the background. You get the picture. Each commercial followed the same pattern. They all had neatly arranged loops.

And they didn't stick in the mind.

The national campaigns that stick in your mind are the ones that stuck out their necks by not being predictable. There's 7up's Uncola, Avis's We Try Harder, Bud Light's What's Up, or AFLAC's funny little duck. While your hotel may not have the promotional budget of these mega brands, its marketing can be creative. As the old saying goes, when you don't have cash, use creativity.

AIDA is a marketing acronym that stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. You have to be able to grab consumers' attention before they can even think about booking at the hotel for their vacation, their business meeting, or just a weekend getaway. The only way to grab attention is to be noticed and the only way to be noticed is to be unpredictable - i.e. to not play it safe. Sure, it's risky; it's hard. But in today's over-communicated lodging environment, it is necessary to keep your prospective guests interested and to make your ROMI.

Someone once asked Joan Rivers (who is certainly unpredictable, but memorable) what the difference between a star and a superstar is. "That's easy," quipped Joan. "Most stars play it safe because they have too much to lose. Superstars are the ones who throw caution to the wind; improvise impulsively; go for the high note... the difference is guts." Put another way: No guts, no glory... Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Having the guts to be unpredictable doesn't mean that you can be na"ive or idealistic, however. You won't always win the marketing war so be sure to do your homework first and risk only that which you are prepared to lose. The road to profitability is littered with marketing blunders - Coca-Cola's New Coke being a prime example. But as the president of Coca-Cola pointed out,"The moment you let avoiding failure become your motivator, you're down the path of inactivity. You can only stumble if you're moving. If you don't have a few failures, you're not taking enough chances. Nobody can be right all the time, and the big companies didn't become big by playing it safe."

To win with the Velcro rules then, your hotel has to be unpredictable in its marketing strategies. Take a chance and count on your successes outweighing any failures you may have. Your REVPAR will thank you.

Bonnie J. Knutson is a professor in The School of Hospitality Business in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. She is an authority on emerging lifestyle trends and innovative marketing. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and on PBS and CNN. She has had numerous articles in industry, business, and academic publications. Bonnie is a frequent speaker for executive education as well as business and industry meetings, workshops, and seminars. Dr. Knutson is also editor of the Journal of Hospitality & Leisure Marketing. Ms. Knutson can be contacted at 517-353-9211 or drbonnie@msu.edu Extended Bio...

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