How ‘Common” Is Common Sense In Marketing?
How ‘common’ is common sense? Not very… here’s a story (true) that illustrates what I mean.
A local new business, “Have A Sushi Bar” (name changed to protect the innocent 
was scheduled to open in a few weeks. It was positioning itself as an upscale shushi restaurant/bar and it had created a bit of a ‘buzz’ in our town of 55,000.
To get the marketing campaign rolling the owner decided to give 50 people a special invitation package that allowed them to invite one other person, of their choice, to the restaurant on a special night to sample the menu and have some drinks. It wasn’t free, you had to pay for your meal and drinks (I think they said something about some ‘free’ champagne) but still, it would be kind of a fun thing to do.
I liked the idea… thought it was a pretty smart way to get people excited and involved in the opening. But like all good ideas, if it isn’t carefully planned and all contingencies accounted for, it ends up backfiring.
First off, who do you choose to give the invitation packets to? At first I thought they would hold a drawing… they could have gotten some free publicity with one of the local radio stations and offered everyone who called a special number to be entered to get one of the “Invitation Only Day” packets.
The owners could collect the names and addresses of the callers…that would have had the dual purpose of building a mailing list as well as getting a ton of people who hadn’t heard of the opening a chance to discover it.
Out of the hundreds of people who would call in to the get the special “Invitation Only Day” packet they would have randomly picked 50 lucky winners!
I mean what a great idea!
Everybody wins! The owners get people excited about the opening, they get at least 100 people to come to the restaurant on this special day to have fun and try it out and they get a ton of free publicity from the station!
And, if this was my restaurant, I would have contacted every person who called in to get the packets. I would have told them that even though they didn’t get chosen for *this* night, that we are scheduling a second night and they would still be able to get special “Invitation Only Day” packets but for another night!
In fact, if there were enough people who called in, I would have immediately scheduled 3 or 4 or 5 “Invitation Only” days and stretched it into a “Invitation Only Month!” so that my restaurant was filled any day I wanted it filled!
And you know what really happened instead?
What did the owner do instead? He hand picked 50 of his closest friends, relatives and business partners to get the invitation packets. They in turn could invite only one person to attend this ’special’ opening day with them.
That still would have been ok… but what happened is that the word got around that some people received the Invitation ‘packets’ and, not knowing beforehand that the person who received the packet was limited to inviting just ONE person, people started asking if they could go with them. When the person said, “no”, that they could only invite ‘one’ person, people started to get offended.
The owner was notified that there were a lot of people who wanted to come, but were turned down. He didn’t seem to care. He just told everyone they could only bring “one” person and that was that.
At that point he still could have ‘rescued’ the situation
More:
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
Hi,
I don’t agree… I would make a great sushi chef
No, seriously, I think it has a great deal to do with common sense.
It doesn’t matter if you’re an expert at marketing or not, offending people is jusy plain stupid.
Common sense should have told him to at least get a ‘waiting list’ going so people weren’t offended or put off.
Sometimes ‘marketing’ isn’t about marketing at all, it’s about treating people the way you would like to be treated.
-Dave
I agree with David.
The offer was for free champagne. In return the owner was able to pre-schedule the correct amount of food and the proper amount of help for a “sell-out” crowd almost “on demand.”
This is very valuable.
That way he could serve his customers well and not waste labor or food. Can you imagine running out of food or having a pile of rotting fish if he “guessed” incorrectly.
He could have also run a night where the “winners” could bring 2 guests. Another night with 3 guests. Another night with 4 guests.
Paul Tuttle
Hey David,
Your article already confirms one of life’s lessons I’ve learned the hard way: even common sense isn’t so common. 
Anyway, I’ll look forward to reading your other posts. Keep them coming!
David,
It’s all too common that most people don’t have the sense that they’re born with…there seems to be a proliferation in the last few generations of just plain stupid people…
I think your article is great, but i dont think it really relates to having common sense.
This only goes to show, there are marketers, and then there’s SUSHI makers..
I’ll bet if you were to step behind the counter of a sushi bar, you’d wind up making a mess too