|
|
|
||
|
|||
When a competitor opens near you, with a huge advertising budget, it’s time to get creative. Consider Video Palace, an electronics store in Colorado. A major regional competitor moved down the street from them and they were advertising their grand opening. The Video Palace owner had visions of customers driving past his store to the new competitor. Then he got smart. The day of the competitor’s grand opening, Video Palace rented a helium balloon and floated it above their store. They hired a clown to stand in front of their store near the street and wave to people driving by. Video Palace placed balloons and pennants on their building surrounding the outside of the store. On their yellow reader board that flashed, it had NOW OPEN (It didn’t say Grand Opening). Half the people going to the competitor’s grand opening got confused and went to his store by mistake. He honored all the competitor’s sale prices and had one of his best sales days ever... all at the expense of his competition.
One of our all-time favorite examples of an aggressive approach to competition was used by a small mom-and-pop pizza place. They had their successful niche of home delivery and a small ad budget, which consisted mostly of a small ad in the yellow pages. When Domino’s moved to town they started out with direct mail, radio and some TV. However, when the new Yellow Pages came out, Domino’s placed a full-page ad in two colors. Since it was a full-page, it was the first ad seen in the pizza section of the Yellow Pages. What this did was push the small pizza chain ad back one more page in the Yellow Pages and business started to decline. After a short period of time they regrouped and thought of ways to jump start their business. They soon launched their own campaign that said, “Bring the Domino’s ad out of the Yellow Pages into my store and I’ll give you two for one pizzas.” People were RIPPING them out and bringing them in. Very soon you would have been hard-pressed to find a Domino’s Yellow Page ad.