A Lesson Learned From Miley

Planned PR stunts come in many forms. You could hold a press conference where you hand a giant check with lots of zeroes to a worthy organization, you could hire a stunt man to para-glide into your Grand Opening, you could even rent a famous person to make an appearance and pretend they are close friends with you for a special occasion. These are all wonderful ways to gain positive attention for your business.

Then there are planned PR stunts with negative connotations. Follow me here. A celebrity is a branded business. It has income streams, expenses, and a thought over marketing plan. To include PR. They have a target market. The fastest way to gain widespread loyalty within a target market is to do something terrible enough that your fans come to your defense, but not too terrible that they abandon you. It is exactly the root of the Paula Dean "scandal" and it is exactly the root of the Miley Cyrus mayhem. Guess what folks, if you are unhinged by her skanky "dance moves" - you aren't the target market!! You are the other side of the global conversation happening where Miley fans are becoming diehard Miley fans. Yes it's wrong, disgusting, a terrible example for children... But that, my friends, is marketing.

There is no denying her antics, or that of her publicist, raised her exposure. Every media outlet has covered the story, its all over your newsfeed, hell it made you open this very blog! Every page view adding advertising value to the source site. It flat out pays to stir the pot. So how can the small business owner cash in on this calculated marketing move with dignity?

Now I'm not suggesting you strap on a nude colored bikini and parade around a stage in front of millions of people to move more units. But I am suggesting you analyze your target audience. What dumb thing can they relate to doing and then do that dumb thing. Or at least write about doing that dumb thing. An embarrassing error in an email, a misuse of a texting term ("here I thought my associate was proclaiming his undying love for me and it turns out LOL doesn't mean "lots of love"), use your media of choice to embarrass yourself, just enough that your target relates, not enough that they abandon you. The more public the better. If done right, you get a conversation started where your loyals reLate and say "we've all been there", increasing loyalty, word of mouth advertising, thanks for the teaching opportunity, Miley.

DIY Easy Peasy Retail Cards

Retail Cards are small signs that provide information about your retail products available for sale. Also known as "shelf talkers", retail cards help attract your client's attention in your waiting area. For the purpose of today's blog, I have created very simple retail cards with an image, product name, and price. More elaborate shelf talkers may include details about where or how the product is made, it's benefits of use, and possible gifting ideas.

Needed for this Project: *Computer, *Printer, *Cardstock, *Scissors or Paper Trimmer

Step One: Create a new document in Word or other word processing software. Select a Business Card Layout.

Step Two: I chose a pre-made business card design with a flower. You could create your own with logo or other design.

Step Three: Delete rows 1 & 3 and the right portion of row 5 (side folding tent card). These will be the back half of your tent cards. Change the placeholder information to your custom descriptions. (For my example I am only putting product name and price).

 

Step Four: Print. I used colored cardstock to stand out and stand up straight.

 

Step Five: Chop.

Step Six: Once you have your cards all trimmed up, the next step is to fold the tent cards in half and display them with your retail items.


I think this looks much better than the price stickers we had been using and we can change the cards quickly and easily when we need to. We will make seasonal cards for the same products to spark interest in slow moving items around different holidays.

Here's how they turned out:

 

 

What do you think? Can you spice up your retail displays with this fast and easy retail card display? Comment below!