CREATIVE IDEAS FOR MARKETING,
PUBLIC RELATIONS AND WORKING WITH THE MEDIA

To Plan or Not To Plan

Humorous factoids and far-out marketing ideas for the Winter planning season

It's January. The garden catalogs just hit your mailbox touting everything from the Big Mama tomato to a cappuccino hybrid sunflower. The kitchen and bath remodeling issues of the home magazines aren't far behind. Makes you want award-winning landscaping and bathrooms the size of the Bears locker room.

Travel agent ads feature sunny destinations. Makes you want to plan a trip to anywhere that isn't cold, gray, and Illinois.

On average, Americans plan their lives about 16 days in advance.

And the Food Network has replaced the festive entertaining series with ones featuring macaroni and cheese and other homemade comfort foods. Really makes you want to settle in and plan menus designed to put on a few more pounds.

January is America's nationally recognized "planning time." And, it's a great time to think about your marketing plan.

So, while you are delaying the diet so you can wear the L instead of the XXL to the first spring golf outing, here are a few thoughts to help guide the planning process.

It pays to know slang

Lynn McClure IAPD Public Relations Director

For those of you with bilingual districts, don't make the same mistakes as some of these famous corporations.

• In Chinese, Pepsi's "Come Alive with the Pepsi Generation" translated into "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the grave."

• The Parker Pen company needed a better Spanish translation when it marketed a ball-point in Mexico. The company thought the word "embarazar" (to impregnate) meant to embarrass. Thus, "it won't leak in your pocket and embarrass you" read "it won't leak in your pocket and make you pregnant."

• Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick," a curling iron, into Germany only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure.

• The Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Lofty advertising...for a fee

Once the weather improves you can promote the next festival by sending your message skyward with Fly Name. Just come up with a catchy phrase, maybe include a date, a phone number or a Web site and stick it on a banner. A small plane will pull it north to south along the Chicago area beaches or over the Cubs home opener. According to flyname.com, it's only $34,700 to fly over 27 million people on various dates from May through September.

They will not, however, guarantee that any of those people will look up.

Subtlety in advertising...for a fee

If you have beach-front property, here is an income generating idea. A company in New Jersey uses a trailer with a custom-designed cylinder to impress ad messages

January/February 2002 43

MIXED MEDIA

in the sand. "Beach'n Billboard" alternates messages for Skippy peanut butter, and Snapple with anti-littering messages. Using a trademarked process, they engrave the ad message on a 4-foot by 12-foot rubber mat that wraps around the cylinder. For a mere $25,000 a month the message is embossed into the beach every day.

"Beach'n Billboard" then pays a daily fee to the city to hitch the trailer behind the town's beach cleaning vehicle and imprint the ads.

So far Skippy's marketers have not seemed to notice that their message gets wiped out every time a sunbather sets up their blanket.

What, me plan?

A market research firm in Arlington Heights, Illinois, surveyed 1,000 adults last month regarding their planning habits and found that a vast majority (80 percent) of those polled plan what they can but don't get carried away with the process.

The preferred method of planning? Most men (55 percent) tend to keep the information in their heads while 58 percent of the women polled use informal notes written on scraps of paper. And about the same number of people use a Palm Pilot as write it on their hand.

If you don't want to think too hard or too far in advance, you can take some comfort in knowing that on average, Americans plan their lives about 16 days in advance.

So relax. Might as well put off the planning.

And as you order up the pizza, the chips and dip, the pretzels and the beer to watch Super Bowl XXXVI, here's a little-known fact. The Cattleman's Association plans on raising 3,000 cows each year to supply the National Football League with enough leather for a year's supply of footballs.

Of the many great sessions at the IAPD/IPRA Annual Conference, here are a couple that might be of particular interest.

Communication Under Pressure with the Media

Saturday, Jan. 26, 8:30 a.m. — 9:45 a.m.
The public relations professional who coached the Decatur School Board through the nationally scrutinized crisis involving the dismissal of seven students in 1999 gives inside information.

Community Consensus without a Referendum

Saturday, Jan. 26, 1 p.m. - 3 p. m.
A referendum isn't the only or the best way to judge community support for a capital project. Learn a more effective alternative to gauging public support before the referendum process.

Benchmarking for Park Districts

Saturday, Jan. 26, 1:30 p.m. - 2:45 p.m.
Make better decisions by gathering information from sources similar to your own agency. A roundtable presentation and discussion will outline the process.

44 | Illinois Parks and Recreation