A Word or Two about Technology

I am sitting in the Philadelphia airport American Airlines lounge waiting for my connection and reading "USA Today" on the Internet. As I lift my eyes from my computer, I gaze at my fellow travelers and notice, not unexpectedly, that all of them, (and I mean ALL) including me, are plugged into their computers or tablets or smart phones. 

In this information obsessed society, I watch an older well dressed gentleman, as he walks over to get some coffee, opens his “vintage” Motorola flip phone and begins to talk into it. I also watch people look at him as if he just crawled out from under a rock.  

If you haven't seen how fast technology is moving check out the recent battles between the Apple I Phone 5  (soon to be the 5S and the Samsung Galaxy III...or IV  It is almost hard to believe what these phones can do.  It’s Big Brother in the palm of your hand…whenever you want it.  And the people who have opted for one brand or the other have done so for their own very unique and special reasons. And might be loyal customers or might change. That's why the race for new and more vigorous applications we can instantly plug in and use on our smart phones are so important for the phone manufacturer to grow market share and expand into new markets. (Three times as many smartphones are used in China than in the USA...about 1.BILLION.)  new markets indeed!

It is amazing, to me, how, more so than ever,judge people by the technology they have! We expect our clients, peers and colleagues to have an up to the minute laptop or tablet; perhaps both. We expect them to have a smart phone where they can check email, text messages and retrieve files from anywhere they are on the planet as well as being able to give an instant presentation to an audience of thousands.

We expect them to know the weather, their calendar of meetings, their favorite places to eat and drink in every major and minor city on the eplanete and to have their airline boarding passes on their phone. Anything less than having these items immediately available plants a “negative” about them into our very judgmental psyche, We also expect them to have Email, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin accounts; perhaps even a Pinterest account.

Not to mention travel aps, driving aps, and the world at our "always ready to Google fingers" ap.  If you thinks "aps" are appetizers, read this blog several times because aps are applications or mini programs you can use on your smart phone to find anything (and I do mean ANYTHING) in a matter of seconds. Anything longer and your ap is obsolete.

And when they are unable to perform any electronic or digital task, our frustration meter skyrockets. “What you don't have or use this tool?” we say.  “What are you, a   Neanderthal?

C'mon man! Get with the program; you're getting left behind.” We mutter under our breath…sometimes not softly enough.

But what is weird to me when I send emails to people in the industry I get x% to respond. When I send faxes, I get X% PLUS.   Huh????

What does that say about some of the people who are running bowling centers? Are they so behind the “times?”  Does their bowling center communicate that too? Does their marketing communicate that as well?

For those of you who are more familiar with faxes and land lines then Emails, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn and smart phones, stop what you are doing NOW and go find someone or some educational institution who can get you up and  into the 21^st century as quickly as possible.

It may be funny, but you are losing business by not knowing how to use these tools more effectively to generate more revenue and more customers.

More importantly, you're missing a lot of usable information to drive your business…and  a bit of fun!

Make It Better

I have been avoiding writing this blog for at least a week, maybe more.  Actually its nine (9) days but who is counting?

It’s my 400^th blog since I started and I wanted it to be oh so special; to be the best one I ever did; to have it either awaken the sleeping giant in my readers or to stimulate their creative juices

What I wanted, in reality, was for it to be better than anything I wrote.

The words to the Beatles “Hey Jude” song, “…take a sad song and make it better, better, better" kept rattling around in my head.

And then I got to thinking, always an adventure for my “made in outer space” brain.

When I ask proprietors who their target market is, they will often say “everybody.”  

In that one word they are saying that their market is a mass market and therefore they are willing to produce average stuff for average people.  There is hardly a plan for making “better.”

In fact they will freely admit that their bowling center is like all others. The lanes, the balls, the pins; all have to meet exacting specifications as established by the USBC.

But that is far from the point as proven by the advent and growth of boutique centers and BEC’s (Bowling Entertainment Centers where bowling is the lynch pin in the facility).

It is predominantly in this segment where we see huge revenue per lane numbers. Whereas the average center hovers around $38,000 annual revenue per lane; it is not unusual to see a BEC do two or even three times that number. Awesome!

For these new entrepreneurs, they have fully grasped the concept of “better” and clearly understand that “good enough” is NOT “good enough.”

One of the first people to realize this was Henry Ford. With the development of the assembly line and vertical production processes, Ford could control the steel making process for the cars body and the assembly of its parts. He could control the sheep he raised which produced the wool that went into the stuffing of his car seats and headliners

In an age when auto makers felt that a car was a car, Ford made a “better car.”

How did he do that?  First he hired workers and paid them $5 per hour as compared to the industry’s then standard of 50 cents per hour.  His assembly line process cut the manufacturing time of cars virtually by two thirds.

So here was Henry, producing the Model T, a ‘better” car sold at one third of what other vehicles of the day sold for and was produced in less than half the time. The result was the ubiquitous Model T that outsold every competitor by at least a 2 to 1 margin.

If you step back and look at other products you will see that the search for better products is never ending; unfortunately not so much in the bowling industry.

Now I am not talking about automatic scorers and bumpers and glow in the dark lanes, I am talking about your open play and league products.

Take an existing product like cosmic bowl. Everybody pretty much runs it the same way. Turn off the lights, crank up the music, take requests and have it.

Where is the quest to make that product better?  Here are some ideas I brainstormed with a few 21 to 25 year olds.

Not All of Them Are Practical or Even Doable, but They Represent a “Quest for BETTER”

1.   Have live bands at least a couple of times a month.

2.  Run dance contests in the bar or on the concourse or on a wooden dance floor you put down on the concourse.

3.  Conduct theme parties for 70’s, 80’s and 90’s decades as well as country and rap music  on a weekly basis and award prizes for best outfits that represent that period.

4.  Set up a miniature hula hoop on the lanes and make people bowl thru the hula hoop. (Please don’t ask me how to technically do that; but I know somebody will figure that out!)

5.  Use the Baker system of scoring; something that the open play customer has probably never seen before to add a “better team experience.”

6.  If you have the kind of equipment that can set up different spares, then do that in the 1^st  game; bumper bowling where you have to hit at least two rails in the 2^nd game and 9 pin no tap in the 3^rd game.

7.  Run a karaoke cosmic contest where each lane of people have to sing at least some part of a song together and let the other lanes rate them. The winning team gets cool cosmic karaoke t shirts.

8.  Cover the masking units so the pins cannot be seen when the bowler bowls. He only sees them on the overhead monitors.

9.  Run the 40 frame game in a cosmic fashion with prizes at the end.

10. Make the 3^rd. 6^th and 9^th frame a “double jeopardy frame” where bowlers would get double their score for whatever number of pins knocked down in those frames

Now, some of you are probably saying, “Fred, that’s too weird, even for you!”

So let me tell you one more story about a simple shopping experience: “buying a shirt.”

One of my friends, a Wall Street type guy went to Frankfurt Germany to negotiate a deal. When he arrived at his hotel and opened his suitcase, he noticed that as a result of his toothpaste tube pretty much exploding; his two business shirts had light green stains on them.

In a panic mode, he raced down to the concierge who assured him that a men’s clothing store was directly under the hotel and his shirt problem would be efficiently solved.

As he made his purchase, the owner suggested he try it on and then the store’s tailor would press it for him. As he was trying it on, he noticed that the mirror was more like an LED screen.  He pushed the start button and the menu said things like “suggest a tie, suggest a sweater, and suggest trousers.

He pushed the suggest ties button and thru the magic of technology, there he was with his shirt on and various ties kept popping up, neatly tied around his neck which he could see on the LED screen.

Of course he bought two new ties and went back for another shirt. For my friend, as he was regaling us with this story, he said, more than once, “This was the best shopping experience I ever had. IT was BETTER than any other shopping sojourn.”

There you have it.  Someone or some bodies made a mundane task like shopping for a shirt a BETTER EXPERIENCE.”

Moral of this long story: if you are not constantly trying to improve your product, then you are going backwards because other centers, other entertainment options will do the same thing, only better” and customers always want better. Always.

P.S.  I sincerely thank all of you for faithfully for reading “Fredquarters Blog”, engaging with me and giving me the opportunity to be of service to you.  I sincerely hope you like this “Better” blog.

I wish you a great fall kick off..

A Commodities Discussion

Recently, I heard a noted industry marketing guru stand in front of an audience of bowling proprietors and tell them that bowling “is a commodity industry.”

I wanted to shoot him or at least destroy any chance of him having additional offspring.

Unfortunately it has become that because of the overpowering (and incorrect belief) that proprietors have of consumers’ perception of bowling, (I.E “all they care about is price, they just want to get the buying experience over with by buying cheap.”)

Thus, we have proprietors leading each other over the cliff by selling bowling at the lowest possible price just so they have traffic, just so they can sell a beer, rent a pair of shoes or sell a hot dog.  It is this thinking that has led proprietors to being unable to maintain their centers, to improve their centers or to pay more for better personnel. 

Is that why I see more bowling centers closing?  Not enough capital to do any of the aforementioned?” Yeah, I think so and that leads to an inferior and less desirable product which leads to fewer customers,  less revenue and eventually to posting this sign: “Out of Business.”

When an industry marketing guru or a proprietor says that “all the customers' care about is price”, the guru is really saying that the customer believes that nothing about the product matters to them. In fact the product is no longer the discussion; the price becomes the discussion.

But it doesn't have to be that way.

No, you can’t make bowling interesting to all, but you can get those that are interested in your newest innovations to care and TALK ABOUT IT.

Remember that bumper bowling was invented by a proprietor who used carpet rolls which morphed into blow up bumpers which morphed into automatic bumpers which morphed into greater interest in bowling among families with children.

The closest I have seen is Gordon Murray’s Profit Platform which turns the bowling center into a music and rock show. Now that’s innovation that cannot be confused with commoditization. (No Gordon didn't pay me to say this, but he should :)

 So who out there has the next “carpet roll?”

"The Numbers Is The Numbers."

Lots of my clients are very good with the numbers. They are constantly reviewing,  measuring, from a multitude of angles, including lineage by type, by time, by weekend, weekday, night, day, shift, revenue per game,  food and beverage revenue per game, shoe rental income per game and number of clicks on Facebook, websites, coupon redemption, payroll percentages, shoe rental to open play ratios and on and on. Some even measure revenue per square foot.  

Other clients measure revenue in more of an “overview way” they know the numbers, but they don’t delve as deeply s group number one described above. Instead they spend their time creating a better bowling experience.

In my humble opinion, organizations that do NOTHING BUT review numbers are hard pressed to make creative breakthroughs. 

Because they’re so busy measuring and tallying and dividing and multiplying, there is no room in their day for experimentation and testing ideas.  Even if they should come up with a great idea, it would have to run the gauntlet of “review and measure”.  Rarely, if ever do these ideas survive.  That’s why there are so few companies called “Apple”, “Google” or “Facebook.” 

Numbers review is great. I am all for it, but please give creativity a chance to fail. Because if you are not failing, you will never have a success and a breakthrough.  

And that would be a shame.

I Could Just Scream

On Monday, July 29^th  I gave a presentation to the Michigan bowling proprietors at their summer convention in Mt Pleasant MI; this well attended event was held at the Soaring Eagle casino

I titled my presentation “Get a New Plan, Stan" because I felt that we had been planning for fall leagues the same way for over 50 years and perhaps, just maybe there was another way to do it.

While I won’t give you the whole presentation in this blog, I want to make one point that may turn your head around and get you to thinking about Fall League bowling marketing in a different light.

Suppose that, instead of being in the bowling business, you were in the widget making business and each widget you made you sold for $500.  Last year, you sold 1,000 widgets and your company, which makes other products as well, therefore had revenue of $500,000 just from this one product.

This year, you are charged with producing 1100 visits. The Board of Directors wants a 10% sales increase so they can take the company public.  You are at the Board meeting when they tell you this and then one of the Board members pipes up and asks what you think it will cost, from a marketing perspective, to get to 600 widgets?

I explained this scenario to the bowling proprietors in the room and they were pretty much silent. One gentleman said $10,000. Others said $15,000.  Someone even mumbled something about $20,000.

Now when I asked them how much they currently spend to sell 1000 of their $500 widgets (league bowlers), they were virtually silent. No one in the room spent more than $2500 with the vast majority spending NOTHING!!

Can you imagine that to protect our sacred base of league bowlers, the majority of proprietors said they spend nothing? Now I don’t want to sound like I’m picking on the Michigan guys ‘cause I’m not. I guarantee you this is true in every state of the nation – and I know because I have been in every state, over 1,000 centers, and Michigan was just the most recent example.

Why do we invest so little in selling our product? Do we not have faith in the product? Do we not have confidence in our ability to market it successfully or have “we always done it that way.  Perhaps the real reason there are less bowlers is because NOBODY PROMOTED LEAGUE BOWLING IN THE FALL.

Even with our employees, we are frugal. “Here’s a dollar a bowler”, we say. Are You Kidding? That bowler widget is worth $500 in revenue to you and you’re going to give someone a dollar to bust their buns for you. Why should they?  Some of you don’t even call your league bowlers back, but still leave it to the league secretaries who have NO vested interest in paying your mortgage. 

 Some don’t even send out direct mail, but instead send out emails. Hey, knock; knock less than 12% of your emails ever get opened.  You have to take massive action, direct mail, email, telemarketing, robo calls, targeted communications about leagues to specific segments, outside sales, REAL incentives for league bowlers and employees to bring a friend or get a sign up respectively!

You have to use all the tools you can find; not just sit back and wait for the league secretary to tell you how YOUR BUSINESS is doing.

C’mon man. Get in the game and spend some money to protect and grow one of the biggest parts of your business.  Because the way things are going (about 2mm league bowlers down from 10mm); you’re almost at the bottom of the barrel.

I guess my back is hurting more than I thought tonight so that’s my rant for July 31, 2013.

Does a Product Have To Solve a Problem?

I have been taught, and you probably have as well, that marketing discipline rule #101 says that a product, in order to be successful, must solve a problem.  For instance, it must make our life easier (the automobile vs. the horse); more convenient (the grocery store under my apartment building in NYC, especially during those nasty NYC winters); or it must male our life better(electric lights vs. gas lamps).

In the bowling business, we can count the automatic scorer as solving the problem of absent pin boys – or in some cases- pin boys that were slightly hung-over; the automatic bumper that helped kids to enjoy the game more as well as cosmic lights that added an element of excitement and color to the bowling experience.

But what about bowling leagues or open play.  The purists among us would say, “You don’t have to add anything to bowling leagues, no Visiballs, NASCAR jackets, or vacations, just the joy of bowling and scoring.”  And they may be right. 

Non traditionalists would say that bowling needs to offer premiums like this and to offer shorter season or every other week leagues or even once a month leagues. And they may be right too.

The fact is your product, whether it be Pizza Pins N Pop, Cosmic Bowling, Price Specials or premiums for frequency, must appeal to the six emotions we all feel in some way or the other. Happiness, Sadness, Surprise, Fear, Disgust and Anger.  

Both of the aforementioned products make people happy that they saved money on a “deal” as well as feeling “cool” that they are into a whole music and light show (just like the concerts they love), respectively.  

Note:  Have you ever combined both and seen the result?  its amazing to see, especially when targeted to two specific audiences at two different times (families with kids under 12 and 15 to 34 yr olds).

Birthday parties in bowling centers are so successful because they make Moms life easier, are more convenient than having a party at home and solve the problem of where to host little Susie’s party. From the child’s stand point, it makes the child happy and offers elements of good surprises.  It is no doubt the industry’s most successful product followed only by company parties which hit the same hot buttons.  

No doubt these two products have been increasing in “consumer value” and participation in centers across the country while league bowling in its traditional form has been declining.

So if you want to continue growing, check your league and open play product’s temperature. Does it make people happy to do it?  Are they surprised that they can get a value after the league is over? Or are they angry about what they perceive as the high price and do they fear looking silly because they don’t know how to bowl in front of their friends?

What emotions are your products stirring up? What problems do they solve?  If they are only solving the “save money” problem, maybe you need to teach that one trick pony another few tricks to appeal to a broader audience.

Here’s one exercise you can focus on.  What can you do to make your audience feel “cooler”?  Seems that’s a universal want these days. Ask your teenage workers, your twenty some sons and daughters, they’ll tell you what’s cool and what’s not… straight up.

The answers are right in front of you.

The Re-Configuration Strategy

This is the time of the year that almost all of my clients are into taking massive action to get their leagues on the floor. from calling back league officers, secretaries, to holding league officer meetings, to working with their consumer and business sales organizations to conducting special events to bring in league bowlers, dropouts and their friends as well a people who have expressed interest in league bowling.

In fact, next week I am going to be talking about this process at the Michigan convention, but today I just want to focus on a strategy called “Co-Registration” which is but one part of our overall League Marketing Plan.

Today, you are more of a publisher than you are a marketer.  Think about how many emails, Facebook posts, newsletters and other materials you are witting today as compared to just 3 to 5 years ago. I am sure it is a big change. 

That’s why to help you build your email list, helping to get more foot traffic and helping to generate a selling situation, co registering a local charity and combining it with a mega event at your center is a great way to build your brand; not to mention to get more people selling your product(s)

Coca Cola, the number one brand in the world, spends millions making sure their brand is recognized.  Of course as the number one recognized brand in the world, you would ask why they have to do this. Simply stated; because if they didn't their competition will. 

Today I saw a co registration that CVS is investing in with “Back Pack America”©, a not for profit organization that endeavors to provide back packs for kids from underprivileged households.

 CVS has taken on, at least in my market, a major Cable TV campaign and Newspaper campaign and social marketing campaign to get families who are planning to buy their children a new back pack to donate their old back packs by dropping them off at a CVS store.

Why would CVS do this?

For several reasons:

1.    It builds their brand by aligning themselves with an organization that helps kids

2.    It  builds traffic, ‘hey lets drop off this back pack, and while I’m there I’ll pick up a few things

3. CVS sells back packs too… and school supplies as well as many, many products that have a

highly intrinsic “impulse buy quality.”                 Target© stores, too, have a similar strategy.  Its called Feed USA + Target.  When consumers buy specific products, Target© will give meals to families across the countries free. Advertisements show what products you can buy and how many meals it represents. Obviously the more expensive he product, the more meals you donate.

 Why would Target do this??

 See 1,2, and 3 above. And you can add one other reason. It gives Target© a discernible point of differentiation as to why you should buy at Target© vs. other stores, especially during this “back to school season.”

 For those consumers, and Target© must have done their research on this one, who are concerned about homelessness, poverty, unemployment and other society ills, it becomes a great way for consumers to “rationalize their purchases at Target© or to spend a little more than they planned. A lot of “little mores” add up to a whole lot of “lots more” on their income statement.

So perhaps in conjunction with any traffic driver you are planning to do, maybe there is a local charity in your market that you can “co register” a program.

You will get more traffic. You will get more emails and more importantly, you will begin to change the still existing culture of “ye olde bowling alley” to “family friendly, community involved bowling center.”

 And if you think its too late for this September, well, there are eleven (11) other months of opportunity. 

As always, just give me a call if you want to discuss this with me.