A few weeks back I had the priv­i­lege to take my wife and kids on a lit­tle road trip. We hadn’t taken a long trip together for quite some time, so we were all look­ing for­ward to this time together. The vaca­tion plan was that we would travel to Kansas to meet up with my wife’s imme­di­ate and extended fam­ily for a fam­ily reunion and then head to spend a few days with just her imme­di­ate fam­ily in Bran­son. Some­where along our jour­ney from Ypsi­lanti, Michi­gan to Pratt, Kansas and on to Bran­son, Mis­souri, I real­ized that some very impor­tant mar­ket­ing lessons can be gleaned from my experiences.

So I’ve decided to share these lessons I learned from my fam­ily vaca­tion: (in chrono­log­i­cal order)

SPEND A LITTLE, GET A LOT

We decided that since we were going to make this a road trip we would rent a vehi­cle instead of putting all those miles on our own vehi­cle. We were sort of on the fence with this one but I was really glad we decided to do it. I got to the car rental agency and it must have been rush hour in this place because I stood in line for a good hour before I even got to the counter. Now, it may seem all nice and dandy when read­ing this, but the truth is, I HATE stand­ing in line. There’s not much more that per­turbs me or makes me think I am com­pletely wast­ing my time than stand­ing in a long line. After the hour wait I finally got to the counter and went through the process and at the end I got my choice of vehi­cles. I got to choose a Ford Explorer, Ford Edge, or Chrysler Paci­fica. I’ve always kind of won­dered about the Paci­fica and I thought it would give me bet­ter fuel effi­ciency than the oth­ers, so I chose that one. The moral of the story, and the mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple I got out of this sit­u­a­tion, is that I could have used my vehi­cle and might have been okay, but the peace of mind that it brought to me to be in a brand new vehi­cle and if some­thing went wrong they would have to take care of it, was well worth the money spent. 

For mar­ket­ing, you can try to use resources that you have (and some­times you have to for one rea­son or another), but some­times spend­ing a lit­tle can pay off much big­ger and pro­vide faster results. You have to make the deci­sion for your­self and your orga­ni­za­tion when to try to do it ‘on your own’ and when to get pro­fes­sional assistance.

BRAINWASHING IS OKAY

Alright, so if you have kids or have been around kids for any length of time on a road trip you know that car DVD play­ers are like the 8^th Won­der of the World. I have twin two year olds for those of you who don’t know. They’re awe­some and absolutely breathe life into me. But they’re 2. This was going to be a 16 hour road trip. They’re 2, did I already men­tion that? So they watched movies and videos for most of the trip and it prob­a­bly soaked into their heads and killed off some tiny lit­tle bud­ding brains cells. I don’t care … it was worth it.

There’s not really a mar­ket­ing les­son here, I just wanted to praise car DVD play­ers. Well, I guess that is mar­ket­ing … that’s word of mouth. Make your orga­ni­za­tion worth talk­ing about!

NAMING IS IMPORTANT

Dur­ing our drive, we’re pass­ing through Indi­ana and I look up to see a water tower with the name of the city as big as it can pos­si­bly be. You see the pic­ture to the side here … yes, the name of the town was Gas City, Indi­ana. There are quite a few pic­tures that con­jure up in my mind when I think of the name of this town. What’s inter­est­ing is that when I got back home from my vaca­tion I saw a news story on a national news broad­cast that had a cor­re­spon­dent in, of all places, Gas City, Indi­ana. They were report­ing how the town just passed an ordi­nance allow­ing go-karts to be dri­ven on the city streets in the wake of ris­ing fuel prices. Well, that’s one pic­ture alright …

The mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ple here is to be care­ful of unin­tended mes­sages that names and titles can be per­ceived. A name or even image you think that might be appro­pri­ate may not seem so to the com­mu­nity you’re try­ing to reach.

WHEN THE POOL IS BROKE … MAKE LEMONADE

By the time we finally made it into a small town in Kansas called Pratt, we met up with our extended fam­ily and shared warm greet­ings. After din­ner we decided we would go back to the hotel and let the kids swim in the hotel swim­ming pool. Did I men­tion that we had about 10 kids in my wife’s fam­ily alone? Yep, you guessed it from the title of this point … the pool was out of ser­vice. Some­one had appar­ently bro­ken some glass and it fell in the pool, so they had to drain the pool and clean it. The thing is, you can’t tell that many kids (and par­ents too) that they can’t go swim­ming espe­cially when they’ve got their swim­suits and float­ies on already (see pic). The hotel man­age­ment decided it would be okay, though, that the kids could play in the large hot tub. Oh yeah, they def­i­nitely made lemon­ade out of that sit­u­a­tion and they didn’t even tell the dif­fer­ence. They still had a blast.

In mar­ket­ing, as in life, there are many times you can’t con­trol sit­u­a­tions that arise, but you can always con­trol how you’re going to react to those sit­u­a­tions. So even if your bud­get gets slashed, ideas get ham­mered, and oth­ers get brought in to “give their input,” choose your atti­tude and make lemon­ade out of the situation.

HOW FAR IS TOO FAR?

While we were in the lit­tle town of Pratt, Kansas, I looked up near the small com­mu­nity cen­ter where the fam­ily reunion was held and I saw not one but two water tow­ers. One was labeled “HOT” and one was labeled “COLD;” as if all the hot water in the entire town comes from the one tower and all the cold water in town comes from the other tower.

There are prob­a­bly one hun­dred mar­ket­ing prin­ci­ples I could pull from this one exam­ple but I’ll just keep it to one. Every orga­ni­za­tion, and we know every munic­i­pal­ity, has weak spots and areas that just don’t make sense. Try as best you can to not overly expose your weak­est areas. Tear down the water tow­ers in your orga­ni­za­tion and improve your brand.

IF IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT DEFINITELY IS!

After our jaunt to Kansas for the fam­ily reunion, we decided to travel with Carrie’s imme­di­ate fam­ily and nephews and niece to Bran­son, Mis­souri for a few days. For those of you who have never been to Bran­son, the best way I could really describe Bran­son is that it’s the Vegas for those who aren’t com­fort­able going to Vegas. Shows, shop­ping, enter­tain­ment, and parks adore this great town and the scenery and sur­round­ing lakes are inspir­ing. As we made our lodg­ing plans for Bran­son, we found a great deal on a condo that would fit each of our tastes and would be a very relax­ing stay. The only down­side was that it was one of those deals that we had to sit through a 90 minute tour (aka sales pitch) to buy into the time­share of these con­dos. Well, what we were promised for our accom­mo­da­tions turned out to be noth­ing more than a hotel room ala 1987. The short of the story is that we did not end up hav­ing to do the “tour” but it still didn’t change our room sit­u­a­tion into one of the nice condos.

Here’s the deal with mar­ket­ing and this is where you really need to find bal­ance. You do this wrong and you come off as inau­then­tic. You do this right and you build rela­tion­ships with your com­mu­nity. Here it is … don’t over­hype and don’t under­hype your orga­ni­za­tions, event, or programs.

MARKETING IN A RELEVANT … 1880’s STYLE

Dur­ing our Bran­son trip, we decided to spend a cou­ple of days at a lit­tle amuse­ment park called Sil­ver Dol­lar City. This is a great amuse­ment park that is a com­plete throw­back to life as it was in the 1880’s. At Sil­ver Dol­lar City, you expe­ri­ence fes­ti­vals, clog­gers, street shops, train rides and the sim­plic­ity of life back then. They do have some rides that are more con­tem­po­rary and updated, but for the most part it’s a time warp. On our first day at the park I noticed some­thing very inter­est­ing. They appar­ently implored some pretty cre­ative mar­ket­ing tech­niques to get their mes­sage heard back in the 1880’s. (see pic … of course, I didn’t know that GAC was around back then)

The mar­ket­ing les­son learned here is that no mat­ter where you are or what your envi­ron­ment and cul­ture, do mar­ket­ing that fits you. Be authen­tic and tell sto­ries that rep­re­sent you. Many times, the medium is the mes­sage … even if it’s chalk on a street.

So there it is, my vaca­tion in a nut­shell … with some mar­ket­ing lessons learned along the way. Be inspired by your world and your experiences.