With Microsoft’s announcement that Internet Explorer 10 would ship with “do not track” as the default setting, the obvious question is, “What does this mean for my casino?”

This is likely the first major move in a trend toward consumer privacy. There’s just been too much negative sentiment to the manner in which Google and Facebook have callously collected and sold information about their customers.

The upshot is that, for better or for worse, it will be significantly harder to target your customers. So estimates suggest cost for delivering a targeted message to a specific audience will increase by as much as eight times.

If this is even half true, the smart casinos will turn to partners who truly understand casino customers. It won’t be cost effective to hire a “digital specialist” who basically just turns on some tracking tools and sends you a bill.  Your casino will get the most bang for the buck by teaming up with a marketing partner who knows your business, and has an intuitive sense where your customers are, where to reach them, and what to tell them.

In other words, an agency that can help you build real relationships with your best players – instead of just seeing them as a data point on a spreadsheet. In the short run, that may mean challenges in achieving your marketing goals. But with the right partner, in the long run, it’s a better situation for everyone.

Despite constant reports that “TV is a dying medium”, TV ad revenues in 2011 topped $70 billion for the first time ever. Yes Sports Fans, TV advertising still works.

But that doesn’t mean your media buy is working as hard as it can. In fact, I would argue that as media spending increases, so does waste. This is because media companies are getting spread thinner and thinner. They are not taking the time to analyze your unique audience, or to learn their specific media consumption habits.

In a world where incredible precision and customization is possible, far too many brands are ending up with a “one-size-fits-all” media plan.

At Red Circle Agency, we have over 50 years experience in media planning and purchasing. We know how to slice and dice your audience to find exactly the right eyeballs at exactly the right time.

We have, on many occasions, been able to increase reach and frequency for our clients, while achieving cost savings of more than 33% – often adding up to millions of dollars.

And we can do the same for you.

Give us a call, and see what better media spend can do for you.

I love Tara Ezzell’s post from from last week. In her post, she pointed out how you can get buried in all the science of marketing sometimes, and forget to look at your projects – and your property – the way regular people do.

Since a lot of what I ask my clients to care about involves the “image” and the “face” of the marketing, I’ll put a challenge to you similar to the one that Tara suggested:

Tour your property like a first-time guest. Look at all the points of contact. What’s the first piece of on-premise marketing that the customer sees? Is it a post that contains an old logo that your property stopped using 3 years ago? Is it a slogan from a campaign you no longer run? This matters.

What about the video screens that carry news of promotions and events? Do these posters carry the same branding that your design group/agency brings forth in your TV and print work? Or are they put together by different designers who just love to try new fonts and colors every time?

Of course what I’m talking about is consistency of brand. Many casino marketing managers get talked into thinking that the best way to attract a guest is with a new set of Photoshop filters and colors. And that may be fine for a St. Patty’s day promotion or to feature a rock group whose theme is pink and green, but the best way to keep the mind of your customer engaged with your brand is for your elements to always look like a family. The same logo in roughly the same place. The same color scheme. A set of modular elements that add spice to the visuals, but always reinforce the central images of your brand.

It’s a little like those awful photos you see of celebrities in the grocery tabloids. A celebrity that spends thousands of dollars to look amazing on the red carpet gets caught in public in a grey sweatsuit and ball cap; people do notice.

People are looking at your property the same way: are all your graphics, logos, promotional posters and even employee-focused signage showing a clean, crisp, and CONSISTENT brand image?

If they are, you’ve already impressed your guest before the first ticket goes in!

As casino marketers it’s important to take the time now and then to LOOK UP. It’s easy to become imbedded in the details and demands of our incredibly busy day – fixing the guest issues, getting that mail program out, 257 sales calls, sorting out those media invoices, running reports, analyzing reports, communicating the contents of the reports to our boss, etc., etc. etc. It’s work that can be daunting at the best of times.

So the challenge for this week: LOOK UP. Put down your pen, let the phone go to voicemail, let that email wait for one hour – it’ll still be there when you get back (I’ve done it and it’s never gone…never). Take a walk out to your parking lot (might want to let security know you’re doing this) and walk into your casino from the perspective of one of your guests: though the front doors. What do you see? We all walk through these areas all of the time, but how often do we actually LOOK at them?

Is the signage up to date? Are there dog-eared flyers taped up? Is everything tidy? Visit guest services, players club, restaurants, and hotel. Are the service areas and counters clean and uncluttered, or are there piles of papers, personal items, and staff memos in view? How do they look from the guest’s perspective? We know these things are necessary to our work and we take them for granted, really don’t even see them anymore. But they do create an impression when guests come to visit – and is it the right one?

As you walk, make a list of things that you notice.

-       Peeling “hours of operation” signs on the main doors

-       Taped memos visible behind the players club counter

-       Trash cans inside the main doors that are not clean

-       Guest service chairs in need of repair/replacement

-       Associate uniforms (are they clean and tucked in, with name tags all in the same place?)

When you go back to your office, divide that list into three parts: 1) Things that I can fix right now (move memos, clean trash can). 2) Things I can do soon (order new stickers for the doors, communicate uniform policy). 3) Things that are bigger projects (replace chairs).

Now for action! The items on List 1 – do them today. The items on List 2 – do them this week. And for the items on List 3 – figure out what you need to do to get them done this year.

Next Monday morning, repeat this process. Send different team members each week; spread it out around different departments. We all have an eye for different things – I am particularly crazy about taped signage (they call me the dog-eared paper police), as I think old papers, memos, promo flyers and scotch tape scream “cheap and messy.” If I have something nice, I’m not going to be taping anything to it – if it gets faded, damaged, written on, curled up it needs to be replaced.

By making Monday morning the time to look at things from the perspective of your players, you will be better able to keep them at the forefront of your actions all week long.

Do you remember the 80′s monster/horror-in-space film “Alien”? It’s a seminal work of sci-fi/horror from creative genius Ridley Scott, one of my all-time favorite film-makers. Check it out if you haven’t yet. Amazing movie. What’s particularly brilliant about the film — the story-telling technique that hooks the audience and doesn’t let go until the credits roll — is the teasingly delayed reveal of the monster (the alien). We know it’s a scary alien movie, but we only get parts of the aliens story, quick images of things in brief flashes, which never SHOW us the alien — until almost the very end. The technique at work in this movie — the delayed monster reveal — demonstrates Scott’s horror film-making genius, as these teasing flashes do a really great job of keeping us guessing throughout the film. Which is to say, Scott withholds the thing we want most to see up on the screen, and in doing so FORCES US TO IMAGINE WHAT HE REFUSES TO SHOW US: the scary alien we are all afraid of.

Scott is a brilliant storyteller, and he knows that by refusing to show us the monster our brains will naturally fill in the blanks. That’s just how our brains work. We all fear the dark to some degree, right? But it’s not the dark we fear, it’s the not seeing, not knowing what’s there in the dark, that opens up the space in our mind TO FILL IN THE BLANK WITH MONSTERS. Or whatever. Your imagination is a hugely powerful force inside your brain. What it makes is always more powerful than what can be seen. That’s why the book is ALWAYS  better than the film.

In “Alien,” Scott engages our imagination and sets the stage for us to draw the monster in our own minds. Much, much more powerful than anything Scott could put on film. Ever see “The Blair Witch Project”? Most profitable film of all time (based on investment cost vs. earnings). Same thing. Tease us with parts and pieces of the horror, but never show us the witch — leaving us to fill in the blanks. Scary!! I dare you to watch it alone at night…

Would you believe me if I said that successful advertising works in much of the same way? Because I am saying it. Right here.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting your brand advertising should resemble a horror film. Nor am I suggesting you withhold information or delay your selling points . But what I am saying is idea-driving brand advertising will out-perform image-based advertising always. Always.

Remember, the average American comes into contact with 3,000 ad images each day. Think about that. Think. About that. How many ads can you recall from yesterday? How many from today?! Not too many, right? Ad images come and go. But ideas… Ideas stick in the brain. Think about the last meaningful job-related conversation you had. Or political argument. Idea-driven conversation, right? You thought about that idea before the conversation and likely have thought about that idea many times since. An idea is like a virus. (And if I just stole that line from The Matrix, I apologize to the Wachowski brothers.) But ideas really ARE like viruses. They burrow into our brains and they lodge themselves there. It’s hard to get rid of an idea once it takes hold. That’s just how our brain works.

Now think about what we ask of our advertising. We want our ads to go out into the market and stick in people’s brains — catch their attention, and then stay in brains, making them think about us. Stick and stay — like a virus. Good advertising campaigns, if they want to stick, must therefor start with an idea. Think about your favorite ads. It’s not the color of the logo that makes you remember that ad right now. It’s the brand idea stuck in your brain.

This is good news for you. Really, good news. Look around you, look at your competing casinos. Most casinos ad campaigns are are image-based. Lots of pretty pictures of the gaming floor and pretty people and money and wide-eyes and open mouths. No ideas. Just pictures of the obvious: it’s a casino, here are the games. A brochure of items for sale, as it were. Do you think this sort of ad is the sort of ad your audience will remember tomorrow — or will it be forgotten? What are the chances this ad will stick in their brains?

Close to zero. And that’s your opportunity. If you make one change in your marketing for next year, change from image-based brand advertising to idea-driven brand advertising. Make advertising messaging that that’s memorable, that makes people notice, that gives them something to think about. Engage their brain, hook them with your brand idea. Be an advertising brand virus. Be the alien space monster that no one can stop thinking about.

It doesn’t seem wrong enough to be THAT important, so you allow it to continue. And besides, it’s what you’ve always done, and because of that, because it’s always been that way, it’s easy to just ignore what’s wrong about it. Everyone is comfortable with what we’ve been doing. Change is… kinda scary. Change feels like a risk, and risk implies danger. Better to just stay the course. Safer to stay the course, right?

Wrong.

Bad advertising is something you need to shake off and put behind you, period. It’s undermining your casino’s ability to truly maximize revenues. Think I’m kidding? What if I told you 75% of your direct mail offers weren’t making it to the mailboxes of your players? The mail just wasn’t getting there. You’d flip out, right ? You’d call a meeting with all the directors and VP’s and you’d spend all night and the next day working on a solution. Your organization’s legal team would go without sleep until it was resolved. The whole management team would be calling hourly asking for updates.

And yet, if your casino is producing the sort of typical casino advertising that 75% of casinos produce — the sort of “hey, we’re a casino! Look at our slot machines and table food!” commercial-as-video-brochure, a commercial that is 90% the same as every other casino in your market (same sort of images, same sort of music, same selling message, same content) — if that’s what your casino is putting into the market, then I can tell you that 75% of your ads are failing to make it to your audience’s brain. You are still paying for it, full-rate even, but it’s not getting there. How much is your advertising and media budget? Are you going to flip out now? You should.

You can’t think about advertising the same way you think about database marketing. Database marketing is a very simple math equation. Give a player X dollars, and — if you’re reading your historical data correctly, and giving the right offer to the right player — you’ll pretty much know the percentage/chance that player will come back in the door and spend Y dollars. That’s the math of database marketing. You can know a head of the time what’s going to happen when you send that offer out the door. Low risk, tightly controlled, planned marketing (if you’re reading your data correctly). But advertising math doesn’t work that way. It’s not a game of small increments.  Trying to create an advertising campaign that’s the same, but just a little bit better than the competition is a formula for failure.

Remember, the purpose of advertising is to 1.) capture the attention of your audience, 2.) clearly define your casino’s value proposition in comparison to the other casino’s in the market — i.e. give the audience a reason to want to visit you rather than another local casino, and 3.) make them feel something. Really feel something.

If you are making advertising that looks like “typical casino advertising,” which is what most casinos do, then you are not standing out and being noticed. The average American sees 3,000 ad images a day. That’s a lot. And is you’re making ads that — for the most part — blend in with other casinos in your market, are you capturing the attention of your audience? Probably not.  If they aren’t noticing the ads, they aren’t learning about what’s special and different about your casino.  And they definitely aren’t FEELING your selling message.

So what can you do to make sure your brand advertising stands out, gets noticed and creates real, meaningful feelings in your audience?

1.) Break the current set of habits.  Do things differently.  If you have had the same agency for a long time, then get a new one.  If you’re doing it yourself, then go buy some help (agency’s will do short-term projects).  But whatever you do, don’t do what you’ve been doing.

2.) Look around you.  Whatever your competition is doing, don’t do that.  Avoid looking/sounding like the other casinos.

3.) Take chances.  Being safe is good in many areas of business — but not in advertising.  Safe seldom collects the attention you require to break your message out into the open.  Take a risk.  Try to stretch the norm.

4.) Kick the executives out of the room.  The VP of slot operations should NOT have a say in the brand advertising decision.  Period.  Marketing directors shouldn’t tell slot directors what machines to buy, and slot directors shouldn’t tell marketing directors what the ads should say.

These ideas/changes will help. And if you’re afraid, call someone that’s done it before.  There are many good resources (and many bad, so be careful).  But most of all, break the bad habits.

Digital marketing is the most efficient, most measurable and most interactive media tool available to casinos — so why are so many of us ignoring it?

Change is hard. And scary. But if the change looks like a good change, and the upside can be measured, and the change tested and built-up incrementally, then a change that looks good can be a change that is good. I remember when I first started working at my tribe’s casinos as the advertising manager at Grand Casino Hinckley in Minnesota. It was the year after we started sending out direct mail offers. Prior to that we hadn’t done any mail. This was 15 years ago, but I remember those first meetings as a young advertising manager like they were yesterday. What I remember most is the fight our sister property’s ad manager and I had with management to steal back our budgets from the direct marketing team. You see, for the previous 10 months, our advertising had gone dark. No ads, because management and the newly created direct marketing team had stolen away all the advertising dollars to fund this new direct mail concept. And they didn’t want to give us back our advertising budget because the direct mail experiment had been so very successful. Very, very successful. That’s an example of good change. Very good change. There are others and we can all point to them when the industry changed dramatically for the good. All businesses have them game-changing paradigm shift.

Dont believe me? Think I’m jumping the gun? Go look at the stats online (by the way, that I can just say, “Go look at the stats online,” and know that anyone reading this article can immediately, from their smart phone or ipad or computer where, by the way, you are all reading this article right now can access thousands of reference, hours and hours of reading, on the power of digital communications and how it’s changing everything we do in every possible way). There are digital tools you need to leverage, right now. The opportunity is too large.

One example: Facebook. By August of this year, 1 in 7 people on the planet will have a Facebook account. And that doesn’t include China, where Facebook is not now allowed. More people visit Facebook in a day than visit Google. Facebook is more than just a fun toy. It’s an incredibly powerful marketing tool that allows us to target very specific individual demographics including location, age, sex,and a host of “likes” and other affiliations, making it possible to send extremely intelligent targeted messaging to people in your market. This sort of marketing power combined with the number of people using Facebook and how often they use it has never, ever been available to us before. It’s a game-changer that’s transforming the way human beings live and interact with each other, with the brands they buy from, with the world at large. The question you need to ask yourself: Are you using the power of Facebook to grow your business, or are you just posting event updates on your Facebook page. There’s a big difference.

Another example: Re-targeting in online advertising. When you go to sales school they teach you that warm leads are worth infinitely more than a cold-call. The man who walks on the car lot wants to buy. The salesman’s job is to close the car sale. In the digital space, you can choose to buy banner ads on websites with heavy traffic, and truth is there’s a place for that sort of media spend. But there’s more efficient tools, and you should be considering these first, because they are more AND focus your spend on warm leads rather than cold call leads.

Re-Targeting works like this. A potential player/customer comes to visit your website, our technology will place a “cookie” on the player’s browser, thus allowing us to “follow” that player around the internet, placing ads for our casino/entertainment/events in from of that player at a schedule and a rate we choose. 5 times per week? 5 times per month? Our choice. We can set it up so that when people visit our entertainment page the next 5 banner ads they see will be banner ads for our upcoming concerts. They walk on the car lot because they want to buy, and it’s our job to close the sale. A warm lead vs. a cold lead. The fundamentals of the science of sales tells us that we’re going to close a warm lead with 100x more efficiency than a cold lead. Which type of sales lead would you rather spend your online advertising pursuing?

These are just two examples. There are many. Have you ever tested your online SEO (search engine optimization)? SEO is the art/science of “getting found online.” Ever look at how many people in a week search your casino? Search for a casino in your market? Check it out. It’s probably more than you think. Do that. Find out what that number is. (Probably it’s a bunch.) How important is that number? Think about how you find information for yourself. When you travel, how you decide where to stay, or where you’re going to eat when you’re in a new city? You don’t use a phonebook, you use Google. How important is SEO? How many searched a week are you missing out on? Yeah, it’s important.

What is Red Circle most excited about right now? The use of daily deals networks to place new trial use hotel and/or food/play offers in front of players in markets that you don’t normally advertise in this is the thing we’re most excited about right now. Mostly because it’s so very, very efficient for our clients. The quick overview is this: We’re using existing deal networks to place our clients casino deals in front of hundreds of potential users AT NO COST TO THE CASINO. This new social buying tactic, like Facebook, like the re-targeting system, like the science of SEO, allows us to utilize the power of digital/social media to transform our clients’ business through through more efficient, more effective marketing tactics. Example: We organized a deal this winter for a small casino in the far northern Mid-West. We sold more than 800 room nights in a month and a half. All to people 4.5 hours south of their primary advertising market. 800 room nights. No cost. That’s efficient, that’s effective. That’s the power of digital (social buying) marketing.

A word of caution. Just because your casino has a website and a Facebook page doesn’t guarantee you are utilizing the power of these two tools (or accessing any of the other available tools). Find good help. Good help can help you avoid the pit-falls and make sure you maximize the opportunities right away. When my tribe first started direct mail 15 years ago we had good help, and that made all the difference.

Be cautious, but don’t shy away. The paradigm shift is upon us. Jump the change, get ahead of your competition. But do it smart. Measure it. But do it now, before your competitors leave you behind.

The Most Interesting Man in the World – Dos Equis

The Man Your Man Could Smell Like – Old Spice

Burger King Whopper Sacrifice – BK

Chrysler 200 (Superbowl Ad) – Chrysler

Advertising is simple.  Your message only has to do two things: 1.) Capture the ATTENTION of your target audience — get them to look at your message and recognize it for what it is — and, 2.) In that moment of recognition of your product, the audience must see/know how your product is DIFFERENT than the others in market, and also WHY YOUR PRODUCT IS RIGHT FOR THEM.

If you make messaging that does these two things, you have what most would call “advertising,” and, frankly, if you can make casino ads that don’t blend into all the other casino ads in your market (ATTENTION) and demonstrate your casino’s unique selling message (DIFFERENCE), then I think you’re doing better than most!  Most casino ads, and in fact most ads for any and all products, don’t get those two things done very well.  Ineffective advertising is just noise.  There’s a lot of this kind of advertising in the world right now.  Look out your window right now, you’ll likely see lots of it.  Check out this fact: The average American encounters 3,000 advertising messages each day.  That’s a lot of advertising, right?  And most of it’s noise.  Nearly all of it, in fact.

But how much of it do you ignore?  Think about it.  How many ads can you recall seeing and thinking about today?  Not many, right?  Because we ignore 99% percent of it.  Americans in the 21st century are very good at ignoring advertising.

Take a moment and think about the advertising your casino produces.  Does it look like the other casinos in your market (then it’s not going to be noticed because it’s “just another casino ad”)?  Does your advertising focus on why your casino is different from the other casinos in some way that’s unique to your casino, or does it say the same things the other casinos say but with images of your casinos slot machines and tables and buffets?  Ads that blend in, that sell the same ideas, with the same images, with the same headlines — that’s noise and it’s going to be ignored.

So how do you make advertising that isn’t ignored?  And is that even good enough — to be noticed and your differences acknowledged?  In this article I say that to be advertising your message needs to be noticed and needs to clarify difference.  And when that happens we call that advertising.  But if your casino patrons are being hit with 3,000 advertising messages right now, today, how do you make advertising that does the job you want it to do?  How can I get my casino noticed, demonstrate difference, AND influence buying selection/choice?

Let’s call that thing number three.  1.) Attention, 2.) Difference, and, most importantly, 3.) Influence buying selection/choice.  Because that’s why we spend money on advertising — not to merely get our product noticed, but we spend that money to generate interest and influence buying selection.  Great advertising does that, right?  Think about the great ads you’ve seen in your lives.  The ads that made you buy were special, were different.  Had something that made you buy that particular product.

Again, think about he question I asked above.  How many ads do you remember seeing and thinking about today?  Now I’ll ask you a more telling question: How many ads did you see today that made you buy something (or choose to buy something later today or this week)?  What I said in the first line of this article was true: The nature of how advertising works is rather simple.  But the creation of advertising that is worth the money you spend to have it created, the money it costs to put it on the air, that’s not very easy at all.  In fact, it’s really difficult.  There’s a famous business quote that goes like this, “I know that half of my advertising is a complete and utter waste of money.  I just wish I knew which half.”

Ouch, right?  Ouch because you can relate, right?  Hurts to think about money wasted, especially advertising and media dollars.  Because advertising isn’t cheap.  Think about that last question again, but think about it from your casino patron’s point of view: Do you think they notice your casino ads because they stand out from the crowd?  Do they understand how/why your casino is different and better for them?  And do your ads influence a buying decision?

And that’s the very challenge this article will examine.  How do we apply the scientific principals of MAKING ADS THAT INFLUENCE SELECTION and avoid making ads that cost money but don’t do anything.

HOW DO ADS INFLUENCE?

Information tells, emotion sells.  Human beings make decisions based on emotion, not information.  This is a scientific truth.  Part of the science of advertising — to know that telling people about your product does not sell your product nearly as well as making them FEEL AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION with your product.

The key to all great messaging — whether it’s a memo to your coworkers, a speech to a crowd of guests, or an advertising campaign — is emotion content.  You must make the audience feel something.  Do you remember the extremely effective Sally Struthers “Feed the African Children” TV ads from the early 80′s?  I love this example and reference it all the time.  Because if you remember these ads, you’ll remember how simple they were.  Africa was struggling with a terrible famine, Struthers was helping to raise relief money, and rather than use :60 second TV spot to tell us about what was wrong and why and all sorts of I’m sure important details, instead Sally Struthers merely sat a small, starving African child on her lap and implored us to “give $0.29/day and you can feed this child.”  That poor, sad little child’s face was 100x more effective than any amount of information.  Information tells, emotion sells.

Think about some of the more recent advertising campaigns that people talk about (by the way, that’s a great measure of your advertising’s effectiveness — if people are talking about it, it’s really working).

Some of my favorites: The Man Your Man Could Smell Like, from Old Spice.  Why does it work? It’s so different, so interesting, so unusual that it gets noticed.  And what woman (who often buys the soap in the family) doesn’t aspire to have her husband resemble the football player in the ads?!  Likewise, what man doesn’t aspire to that.  Unusual, humor and aspiration.  And extremely entertaining.  The idea and the production value are so strong that PEOPLE WANT TO WATCH THE ADS.  Because they are so fun and entertaining.  The Old Spice You-tube channel has enjoyed millions and millions of visitors (another sign of a good campaign — people watch your ads for entertainment) — that’s media impressions for free!

Another favorite: The Chrysler 200 TV spot that ran during the Superbowl.  Genius!  The ad connected the city of Detroit with the country of America (car company’s floundering as a mirror of our Nation’s great recession) and then used Detroit’s favorite pop-culture icon/son, Eminem, the rap star (who has been struggling — and recently succeeding in grand fashion — to resurrect his career from the his self-imposed pit of depression and drug use) to connect up the idea and inspire us.  In one stroke, Chrysler makes us feel sorry for the company in the same way we feel sorry for America.  And ourselves.  And we are led to feel empathy for a car company that is, at it’s core, a fundamentally American company.  And the company’s resurrection becomes America’s resurrection, becomes our resurrection, and the example we are given (what we yearn to realized for American and for ourselves) is the Detroit super-star, Eminem’s recently, fabulously resurrected status.  You watch that ad and you feel something.  It’s a very real feeling, like when you watch “The Bridges of Madison County.”  No one can watch that movie and not cry a river.  I don’t like the 200 car, I don’t like Chrysler, but I want to buy one — because the ad makes me feel like there’s some kind of connection between America’s recovery and being cool like Eminem and driving a Chrysler 200.  It’s like somehow the America will find it’s comeback — like Eminem is doing this year — if I just buy a Chrysler 200.  You feel that, too, right?  Now that’s a great ad.

Google that ad, look for the things that make that ad special and unique to Chrysler.  Then recognize the emotion for what it is and track how it works, because you can’t see that ad and not feel something, right?  Then think about your ads…  How can you make your ads more like the Chrysler spot?

If you’d like more help, go the Red Circle Agency website.  There are a dozen or more tv spots there that follow the science outlined in this article.  Follow the science and your ads will be Googled too. Free media impressions — that’s better than paying for ads that are ignored.

A good idea can make a difference.  The lack of a good idea means nothing.  As in, nothing changes.  As in, I hope the competition doesn’t buy a new idea and move ahead of us.  Because without a good idea, we’re standing still.  No, that’s not true.  In today’s world, standing still is actually moving backwards.

Where are you getting your new ideas?

If you’re like a lot of Indian casinos today, you’re not buying any new ideas.  You’re not spending on anything.  You’re running with what you got.  More than not buying, you are going one step further and investing in the idea of cutting costs, hoping your guests don’t notice that you’re giving them less for their dollar.  Guess what — they notice.  And that revenue decline that’s not coming back — it’s not all the economy’s doing.  It’s partly the economy and partly the decision to give your guests less for their money.  Give them less, they will give you less.  It’s really that simple.

Am I suggesting you spend money to spend money?  No way.  Spending smart, yes; spending more money on yesterday’s ideas, no way.  But you gotta invest in yourself — even when the economy is tight.  Standing still is going backwards.

Here’s a cautionary tale.  Someone I know shared an NY Times article analyzing the profitability of a large Northwest Indian casino operation that DOES NOT utilize a modern player-tracking system and the player loyalty marketing tools made possible by that sort of system.  The article was very much a “how to do business wrong” sort of piece.  The article claims the casino — because they don’t use a modern loyalty database marketing program — is leaving $50 million a year “on the table.”  As in, they could make $50 million more if they only installed this $2 million dollar system and engaged in some smart database marketing.  Terrible and tragic and amazingly unexplainable, right?  I’ve worked in the market before, and so I know the article to be true — and possibly conservative even.  A person I know who used to work there says the number is more like $80-100 million.  Can you imagine that?  Leaving $100 million on the table because…  It’s easier to do nothing.  Doing nothing is safe.  Expensive, but safe.

But what I am suggesting here is not risky.  It’s simple advertising principles — a sure and true as physics.  Drop a rock off a building, and it falls to the ground.  Create advertising that’s interesting, proprietary, and based on an idea that connects with your target audience in a way that creates an emotional connection — that rock will fall.

The simple rational is this: When your casino first opened, you were right to make ads that showcased the casino and all the many things in the building.  Now, many years later, everyone knows what’s inside a casino.  99% of your guests have already been to your casino at least once before.  So the old idea — showing them what’s in the building — is wrong now.  That “show them the stuff” idea was the right launch idea 20 years ago when people didn’t yet know.  Now they all know what you have.  Now it’s time for an idea that differentiates your casino from the others in the market.  Show them difference now, not stuff.  Find your difference and up-sell that difference in a way that matters to your guests.  Wrap that message about difference in advertising that makes an emotional connection with your audience.  Bamm!  That’s an idea that’s worth investing in.

Just because your ads include pictures of casino “things” — chips, cards, cash and young blonde women jumping up and down at a slot machine — doesn’t mean you are “branding” your casino.  In fact, a brand is defined as: “what people think of you in comparison to your competitors” — and if your ads look no different than the casino down the road, then you are NOT branding anything.  You are making casino ads with your little logo in the bottom right corner.  But that’s not branding.  Branding, by definition, requires the creation of difference.

Look at your casino’s advertising.  Different or the same?  And I’m not taking about the color of the type or whether your logo is in the bottom right corner.  Those are easy.  Beyond that, the next step, and the part that will make a difference is this.  1.) Create only ads that SAY SOMETHING SPECIAL AND UNIQUE ABOUT YOUR CASINO, something that’s very specifically different from what other casinos say about themselves.  That’s a start.  The next step, then, is: 2.) Find a way to talk about your special difference in a way that up-sells what’s special about you.  Better.  Now, here’s the Master’s level class: 3.) Craft a message that sells what’s special in a way that actually matters to your audience.  Emotional connections matter.  Make advertising that engages your audience, asks them to care about the choice of which casino to visit.  Do that and success will follow.

This is hard to do.  Especially difficult for Indian casinos where politics are thick and jobs are difficult to hold on to.  Your casino managers are human beings, and for human beings it’s always more difficult to break from the herd than to follow along.  There is great comfort and safety in doing what others do.  It’s human nature.  But it’s also the most fundamentally primary reason that most advertising in the world (casinos and all others) is visual garbage and a complete waste of money.

So if you want your advertising to be more than visual garbage and a complete waste of money, follow this rule: The primary job of any ad is two-fold, which are: 1.) Draw attention to the message (get eyeballs and ears to pay attention to the ad), and 2.) show difference between our product and the others in a way that’s compelling (make the audience care about — even love — you).  That’s the job, period.

Again, look at your ads.  Do they call out difference and sell your special uniqueness, or do they sell sameness?  Is there anything in your ads that would make someone care, or do the ads serve as a tool for the casino to brag about itself?  Avoid bragging about yourself.  Find a way to connect with your guests thru your messaging.  Find a way to make them feel special.  Your ads need to work for your casino like small-talk works for a single guy chatting up a girl at a club.  No successful single guy walks up to a girl at a club and starts talking about himself and pointing at his cool clothes and expensive shoes.  And if he looks like every other douche-bag in the club, then he’s striking out.  That guy’s a loser and will grow old as a very, very single and lonely bachelor.  Better to look/dress uniquely — but in a way that’s not weird or threatening but original and interesting — and rather than talk about yourself, instead act friendly and helpful and ask the girl questions about herself.  And when possible, create connections: “Hey, that’s my favorite song, too.  Let’s go dance to it…?”  Your casino ads need to make the same sort of play.

The non-nightclub/dance floor version of this advice is this.  Good branding showcases how your product is different and better than your competitors.  Great branding does the same but finds a way to also emotionally connect with its audience.  Create difference, up-sell value, and make an emotional connection.  These are the keys to branding success.