September 30, 2024 • 45 mins
Unlock the secrets to transforming your hospitality business with our latest episode featuring marketing maestro Rob Powell. With an illustrious career that includes stints at Disney and Grand Casinos, Rob shares his unparalleled insights into creating unforgettable customer experiences and building rock-solid brands. Learn why marketing is the lifeblood of the hospitality industry and how its absence can lead to devastating customer dissatisfaction.
Discover the power of personalization and data-driven decisions in reshaping business operations, especially during these post-pandemic times. From contactless delivery methods to omni-channel marketing, Rob discusses the new norms and how businesses can adapt. Hear about the marketing triumphs of the NFL and ESPN and the cautionary tales of Bud Light, and understand why consistent messaging is key to maintaining brand integrity.
In our engaging final segments, we delve into innovative strategies for boosting customer engagement and loyalty. Rob shares brilliant examples of creative promotions that have reignited customer interest and driven repeat visits in the restaurant and casino industries. We also tackle the sensitive issue of online reviews and reputation management, offering practical tips to turn negative feedback into positive outcomes. Tune in for an episode brimming with actionable insights and eye-opening stories from a true industry expert.
God, doubt, and proof walk into a podcast... it goes better than you’d expect!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, baton Rouge, I'm Rob Powell.
Keep listening to Porch andParish the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Waiter, can we get our check please?
Today we're going to talkhospitality, that is, hotels and
resorts, restaurants and cafes,events venues, travel, tourism
and entertainment venues.
Notice that many of thesestruggle when managers don't
know how to well fill in theblank effectively.
That's when we, the patrons,get frustrated or disappointed
because these companies aren'tliving up to our expectations.
(00:33):
We live in a bedroom communityin Zachary, and one that finds
itself often confused where itfits into the larger picture in
our growing MSA, and marketingis a key element that gets left
out of this business plan.
All right, folks, braceyourselves for a marketing
masterclass.
Our guest today is a foundingpartner at Cardinal Capital and
lecturer at the University ofArkansas, recognized as a
(00:55):
marketer of the year by both theAmerican Marketing Association
and the Academy of MarketingSciences, rob has also been
awarded the Presidential Pin ofExcellence for his contributions
to Native American gaming, andthe Crystal Pineapple Award
Sounds so cool for his impact onhospitality education.
I would definitely put that onthe mantle.
Yeah, with a career thatincludes leading marketing at
(01:18):
Grand Casinos and RainforestCafe, and experiences across
Asia, north America and CentralAmerica, rob is here to share
his world-class insights, solet's give him a warm welcome.
Thank you for being here, robPowell.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here,yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
As always, we're here to bring you the best of
Zachary in the Baton Rouge areathrough engaging conversations
every Monday from our VirginiaStreet headquarters.
This is Porch and porch andparish, the podcast.
Stay tuned because thelightning round is coming up
next.
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(02:01):
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Spots are limited.
Coming back with the lightninground.
Okay, If you could improve themarketing at any company in the
(02:25):
world, which one would youchoose?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wow, love this question.
A bunch of the localrestaurants and bars, of course,
but I'd say actually twoindustries, if I can Commercial
banking and higher education.
Both need help in marketingareas.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I might be in one of those.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What are you going say likewise, likewise and if I
had to choose a company, I'd sayhonestly and I hate to do this
because I got my career startthere but I'd say disney company
has taken a little differentmove and I would also say in bev
and the latest bud light, um,you know, a little scandal that
they, they stumbled on, hasproven a lot and it's taught us
(03:04):
a lot I would love to talk aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, who would have
thought that, uh, one day Iwould grow up and and see disney
getting boycotted come on rightthey made snow white.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
How easy could it be, just just be disney again,
right, exactly, well, you knowthat's, that's part of our, our
cornerstone, or mine is, uh,going back to the basics, but
yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I mean, bambi was always a favorite topic of the
philosophers at my universityanyway.
It just seemed too cruel to beAnyway.
Favorite diner in Baton.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Rouge.
Let's see Deerman's.
You got Frank's George'sBeausoleil Love that place.
Jasmine's on the Bayou is alsogood.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, there, love that place.
Jasmine's on the bayou is alsogood yeah yeah, there's a lot of
good.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, uh, we're known for our food.
Yeah, louis, yeah louis.
I was gonna say you gotta go tolouis, everybody goes there.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, I feel like I I walk into a seinfeld episode
every time that I I get to louisI'm like I don't know something
special about that one um, andyou and I ate at deerman's,
which was awesome.
That was one of the favoritehaunts of my real estate mentor,
mike Falgo, as well.
Uh, favorite place in Louisianaother than home or work New
(04:13):
Orleans.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's my escape, okay, um, it's an assault on all five
senses and, uh, no other placelike it on the planet and I can
go there and become invisible.
But it also has a shelf life ofthree to four days, which is
just enough to get yourbatteries.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I have no follow-ups on that one.
All right, let's start with alittle bit of background.
You're a hospitality veteran,so let's get get us up to speed
with that career journey whereit's taken you, and let's kind
of start from the ABCs of howyou define hospitality.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, I got my start.
I did undergraduate graduatework here at LSU.
My family was in thehospitality business, the
restaurant business, with thelocal restaurant, and my dad
famously told me don't get intothe business.
And of course I wound upstumbling on the business
because I used to chase himaround the back of restaurants
(05:11):
stumbling, sliding on the floorsand yada, yada, yada.
But I did undergraduategraduate work, did some PhD work
in the quantitative field, butit was all under marketing
umbrella.
Then I left there and I went towork at the Disney company and
had an absolute you know, youtalk masterclass.
They, you know, wrote the bookin some cases on the customer
(05:34):
experience and how they treatedemployees and how they built a
brand.
Yeah, absolutely amazing.
I was there during the MichaelEisner timeframe, which he was
quite famous.
They often used to say whatwould Mike do, as opposed to
what would Walt do, you knowthat kind of thing.
And then after that I went witha startup company called Grant
Casinos and when I started withthem they had a bingo hall in
(05:57):
Northern Minnesota and I had noearthly clue even how to operate
a slot machine.
But I pitched the owner of theplace and we had a ball.
We were on the cover of Forbesmagazine at one point, for the
fastest-growing company in NorthAmerica opened seven casinos
across the country.
Excuse me, nine casinos acrossthe country, both tribal
(06:19):
American or Native American andnon-Native American, that we
owned and we went public, made awhole lot of people, a whole
lot of money and just I wound upwith the marketing hat on.
But in those days I'm tellingyou one day I would be putting
together a slot machine base andthe covering on some of the
(06:40):
tables and the next day I'mrunning perceptual maps of brand
imaging for some of the tablesand the next day I'm running,
you know, perceptual maps ofbrand imaging yeah, for some of
the organizations then fromthere, and there's actually a
book written about this, uh didyou write it?
yeah, no, no, no there's a uh,uh, this guy pitched our
chairman.
Uh, after we sold grand casino,he pitched our chairman on this
(07:03):
idea.
That became rainforest cafe,and I'm truncating the story,
but, um, anyhow, we said okayand we pulled our money together
and started one at the mall ofAmerica in Minnesota, went
public with our second store inChicago and I wore the marketing
hat again, built 32 of thesethings across the country, all
different styles and, um, and itwas fantastic.
(07:26):
I basically my job as themarketing guy.
I had to make sure they didn'tscrew things up and, uh, because
it was a fantastic brand, as is, uh, you know, we we had two of
them in Disney, you know, ifyou've ever been down there,
you've been to those and, uh,you know, it's just an amazing
experience.
Then, after we sold that toTillman Fertitta out of Houston,
I had some time on my hands,went to work for the Second City
(07:50):
, which is a comedy troupe outof Toronto and Chicago, and it's
fantastic.
You can sit in the back room inthe green room and you got Dan
Aykroyd, martin Short, all theseguys.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I've listened to Second City just to get a little
bit better at improv.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And improv, I think, is a fantastic skill that you
can use in corporatecommunications.
I use it in teaching all thetime because it is an improv
fielding questions.
We're trying to get conceptsacross.
So the skill set itself isamazing and that was a revenue
stream that we built at secondcity to help them use that skill
and use these wonderfullytalented comedians and improv
(08:28):
artists, giving them anotheroutlet.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
They can teach management companies how to
communicate properly Shout outto more second city alumni
alumni.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Pick them.
Robin Williams, like I said,martin short, eugene Levy, tim
Conway Gosh we did some of hisDorf videos, which are fantastic
.
Oh, let me see John Candy.
John Candy, of course.
Matter of fact, I work directlywith and for one of his
pallbearers and there are somephenomenal stories about that,
(09:01):
most of which are not safe forbroadcast.
But yeah, they pretty muchanybody you've seen on saturday
night live were in um the secondcity yeah, and walking, steve
corral, steve corral was yeah,all the, all those uh again, if
you, what is the office?
yeah, and all those guys.
(09:21):
They all spent time usuallythere.
Gilda radner yep, um, you knowwe did a gilda radner concert.
Uh, um, that was justabsolutely amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Um, the cast of um ghostbusters yeah, well, I think
improv probably has a lot to dowith good um marketing and
hospitality.
There's probably a lot oftie-ins to that.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And I gravitated towards that and I saw the
tie-in, the parallels there areamazing, because you're always
dealing with a live audience and, coming from Disney, we always
looked at everything.
You're on stage, you're alwayson stage, whether you're back of
house or front of house, you dohave an audience and you're
always supporting somebody.
If you have that ethos goinginto it, you can put on your
performance every day.
You put on your costume, youput on your your um, you know
(10:13):
your character face and you goout and you perform.
Yeah and uh.
You know that works in improv,that works in hospitality.
It certainly worked at, uh,disney, it worked in rainforest
and arguably, it worked in thecasinos as well.
Yeah, so yeah it's fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, I love that.
Uh, I tend to kind of playaround with them, probably with
my, my teenagers and all um.
I tell them it's kind of likebeing a wide receiver in the nfl
that's about to get hit all thetime, like you gotta wake up
every day and just go out therereally locked into the moment if
you want to be good at thatkind of stuff.
So it's fun yeah, but um allright, let's get into some
(10:51):
marketing trends.
So they evolve quickly um whatare some of the latest trends
you're seeing in hospitality andhow can smaller local
businesses adapt them to theirscale?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
yeah, if you google marketing trends right now,
you're going to get these big,massive, massive capital
intensive projects which are,which are amazing, but they're
all getting at the core conceptof more personalization, which
blows me away.
If you're in the hospitalitybusiness, how can you go away
from personalization?
You have to be.
I mean, it's a people business.
(11:22):
You have to talk to not onlyyour employees but your
customers coming there.
Now, how do we use this?
We use data-driven decisionsand you can get data.
I don't care if you are a momand pop hotdog stand or if
you're a multi-unit.
You know full servicerestaurant or you know what have
you.
So you're getting into that.
(11:43):
One of the great things out ofthe pandemic is we learned about
different revenue streams andcontactless delivery.
You're getting into places.
Shoot, if you go to an airportnow you got a QR code, you hit
it and there's your menu.
You can actually ordereverything there.
You don't have to see anybodyat all, which is a double-edged
sword there.
Because you can.
(12:04):
It's very efficient, yeah, butthere's the employees.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Don't learn how you're getting rid of that
personal touch and when you showup to order in person, they
don't like it.
They want you on the appbecause, yeah, it's one or the
other, right, right, yeah andthe more we get um.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
These organizations run by the finance guys.
No offense and I'm sort of oneas well.
They cut the costs.
And where do you cut the costs?
The easiest ones are in thehuman cost.
So you get rid of that and youget more technology, but you
sacrifice some of the otherwonderful aspects of that thing.
The other is omnichannelmessaging From a marketing
perspective.
(12:40):
We see thousands of messages.
I think it's now up to 10,000messages a day, which is
ridiculous.
How can you compete with that?
And there's so many differentchannels?
Now, even on our littlebusiness, cardinal Capital,
we've identified about 32different channels that people
can see our brand.
And how do you do that?
We call it omni-channelmarketing, which is the
(13:01):
consistent message across all ofthe channels that you know and
you can control.
So it has a greater impact.
And you know, before it wasradio, tv, outdoor.
What have you?
now it's, oh my gosh, everywhereyeah so omni-channel is another
one um, you know, I laughedearlier.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was going toask, before you move off of that
, what's a good example of a ofomni-channeling?
Is that?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Okay, let me see how you put me on the spot here.
Let's see Omni-channeling.
If you do any PR work, you'veyou've got press releases out or
you do local radio spots theyall have to be pretty much on
this same image or, excuse me,the same message.
If you've got email campaign,you want to have the same
message.
If you've got an online campaign, the same message and make sure
(13:52):
if you're running a promotionfor example, if you're giving
away oh I don't know Um you knowfree dinner, um, a night, you
know, for a family for the nextfour weeks you're giving them.
You know, every Friday they geta free dinner.
Come on in, you know what haveyou?
It's gotta be across everysingle channel that you put out
there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So it's a uniform, seamless experience Exactly,
exactly.
Okay, so let me think about, uh, nfl, I get, I get that vibe
from NFL.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Um.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I feel like they're the same.
You know from the football thatI might buy at Walmart that
says NFL on it through.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Yeah, and you've got brand discipline on there.
Yeah, you know, and you've got.
You know your visualrepresentation, your obvious,
the brand ID.
And then you've got the soundas well.
Everybody knows the jingle ofthe.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
NFL yeah exactly Crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So, and it's on everything when it's available,
it's on everything.
Yeah, so it is consistent.
Now you want Monday NightFootball, You've got Monday
Night Football across all oftheir channels online and what
have you?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's hard to put you on the spot.
No, no, no, but you made methink Even.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
ESPN.
They just launched ESPN Bet andit's even an extension.
It's the same thing.
You look at it and you realizeit's ESPN.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You, but Bud Light was synonymous with NFL at one
point.
Now I'm starting to see a lotof Miller Light out there, but
you mentioned it.
We can go there.
Sure, I'm just going to let youlead it.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah, sure.
Well, what Bud Light did is andwe've learned so many lessons
from that particular instance.
And for those of you that don'tknow, yeah, if you're in
marketing, you really know it wecall it Bud Light's.
Marketing Blunder, what they.
Yeah, if you're in marketing,you really know it.
We call it Bud Light'sMarketing Blunder and they went
out there and they I can'tremember the influencer's name-
(15:40):
I can't either.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh, I can look it up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, dylan Mulvaney.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, and it was a fraction of Bud Light's budget,
but the impact it drove their,their revenues to I mean down.
They just, they just lost share, absolutely Everything took
forever to recover.
They lost two of their seniormarketing people as a result of
this.
They they aligned themselveswith a cause supposed to be or
(16:14):
their idea was to be inclusiveamong everybody, Right, which
means you're nobody, you're notan identity to anybody.
At that point, they dilutedtheir brand to such an extent
that what are you talking about?
You're not talking to me as acustomer.
Yeah, whereas Miller Lite,they've been pretty customer.
Yeah, whereas Miller light,they've been pretty consistent.
(16:35):
Yeah, they're always good.
I mean, we all think, still tothis day oh, what is it?
Great taste, less filling, yeah, you know, and they've come
back to it.
I'll be darned if their marketshare isn't going up.
All right, they were fantastic.
Now, what you've seen Bud Lightdo is they came back to their
original concept of we're just agood beer and we're here for
everybody, haven't we?
Not everybody, but we're forthat guy that goes to the bar
(16:56):
and watches the game.
You know?
Your dad's beer?
Yeah, yeah, you know, andthey're having a ball with it.
Now they brought in some.
Well, they paid a lot of moneyto bring in.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I think it was Peyton Manning, for originally they
brought him in and he was here.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Hey, I'm drinking bud light.
I can't remember the line hewas using, but you know that
wasn't cheap for them to do, butthey had to do something pretty
darn quick, yeah and um, youknow it was.
They learned their lesson.
We learned it.
Uh, we learned.
You know, if you commoditizeyour product in that industry
you could argue almost everyindustry it's a very dangerous
game to play.
You know.
(17:42):
You got to carve your spot outwith your specific industry and
own it and, what most, to bringit back to the local area here.
What a lot of companies in thismarket will do is they'll react
to their market and I'll talkrestaurants and bars and they
listen to their market and theythink this is what we're doing.
Well, guess what?
If they listen to the market,they're all going to wind up
selling Michelob Ultra andshowing SEC Sports all the time,
(18:03):
which is fine.
That's what the market wants.
But you know what?
You can carve out a really coolniche by doing something
different and unique.
And it takes time and mostmarketers and most business
owners will not.
They don't realize it takes alot more time than normal.
(18:24):
We have a saying it's the ruleof threes.
Everything costs three times asmuch, takes three times as long
and it is three times asfrustrating.
And I got to tell you you overthe course of my career, that's
pretty much been the case.
So if you're trying to teach amarket to like, um, you know,
craft beer that is grown, youknow, or that is that is
(18:45):
distilled within south louisianaonly, and that's all we're
going to serve yeah, it's goingto take a while for people to
find out and get accustomed to.
That's what you serve.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Right yeah, you can be chimes and attract people
that want to do the beer aroundthe world thing.
Might have a lot of stale beerif that doesn't work out.
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
It's, it's, but it takes time.
Like I said, it takes time todevelop that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, that's interesting, all right.
So let's segue from here.
Just kind of we're takingthings back, these grand
scholastic marketing conceptsand applying them locally.
So Zachary is this bedroomcommunity.
You know we had Mayor SharonWeston, mayor President Sharon
Weston Broom on sitting in thatchair right before you and she
(19:35):
even mentioned it.
Zachary is a bedroom community.
That's busting at the seams andtrying to figure out that
identity, right?
So how can we benefit from someof these larger concepts?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Well, again, I go back.
I always go back to the basics,concepts.
Well, uh, again I go back.
I always go back to the basics.
But the place, the place tofind folks that like your space,
whether it's a restaurant or acommunity, what have you are in
your restaurant or in yourcommunity.
You get them to activate more.
Yeah, imagine what it'll do foryou.
(20:09):
That's the easiest and cheapestway to drive value.
And think about it For arestaurant if you brought back
every single 50% of your clientbase one more time a year, what
would that do to your revenue?
You wouldn't have to spendmoney on acquisition tactics,
bringing new customers in.
(20:31):
You could just spend everythingfor that one guy sitting there.
You know he comes here, youknow, three times a month.
Get them to come back fourtimes a month.
Yeah, you know how.
How hard would that be?
You do that with, you know,half of your customers, a
quarter of your customers.
Your revenues are going to gothrough the roof.
So that's the same thing about,um, you know, bedroom
communities.
(20:51):
You look at it that way.
Where do you find people thatlike your place?
They're here, yeah, you getthem to talk about it, you get
them to do more, you get in, getmore active in it, or you get
just a fraction of them andyou're going to do some good
stuff.
You know it's going to grow, aswe call it, organically.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, um, you're the the breadth of your.
Your career experience is kindof uh, it's hard to focus in on
on one thing, but, um, maybegive us some examples of how you
created Stark raving fans in,uh, in just one of those
companies, cause I think that'swhat we're talking about is just
taking your existing base andenergizing that.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Um, your existing base and energizing that.
We're going to have to editthis cause I you're catching me
on one, one of the best you know.
Go going back to the casinos,and we really, in grand casinos
position, we carved out a nicheof putting casinos in places
nobody would have thought youwould have ever had.
A casino In Minnesota, milleLacs, the Mille Lacs Band of
(22:01):
Ojibwe.
It's a tribal casino in themiddle, absolutely nowhere, 90
minutes from Minneapolis-St Paul, yeah, and we had to get people
up there.
Well, we wound up employing themost people there, um, and we
were good employers, I mean, wepaid well, and to get people to
experience it, we would do crazypromotions, just tactics, like
(22:22):
crazy.
One of the um, one of the localradio stations, was 101.5.
It's country music station, andwe garnered up 101 limousines,
yeah, and we did a parade fromtwin cities up there.
Um, what a sight, yeah, and itwas, and you had the press out
there.
You had people you know, liningthe sideway so we gave away four
(22:46):
seats per limousine, so we had400 seats now.
Now we're driving people upthere and blah yeah all of stuff
.
So we would do crazy things likethat.
And, um, you know, in themillennial we had a uh, what was
it?
2000?
Hot air balloons on the Gulfcoast.
That was just one of our, our,our deals down there, yeah, and
we carved out a niche of, uh,creating these unbelievably well
(23:09):
put together, well-designedcasinos in the middle of nowhere
.
I mean, you've got Marksvillehere.
It's now Paragon Casino, yeah,but it was Grand Casino
Marksville.
You've got Cushata, which theyjust advertised, I think, on the
Saints game, as being thelargest casino in Louisiana, and
it is.
It's a monster over there.
Is that part of the Grand?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Casino show.
It was ours, oh really, overthere is, is that part of the
grand casino?
It was ours, it was ours, yeah,oh really yeah, yeah, I mean
we've.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
We have sold it.
We sold grand casino back tocaesars yeah and uh, the tribes
now have the casinos.
In some cases they change thenames, in other cases gotcha,
not, yeah, um, and grand casinogulfport and biloxi went to
harrah's, so did tunica, and Ibelieve they closed tunica.
Stratosphere we sold off as itsown entity, yeah, so uh, but
all of them had their own uniquedesign element that did attract
(23:58):
them and it created somethingfor people to come back to.
But if you want to talk aboutcreating raving fans, another
perfect example of that is atdisney, where, um, you know it
literally was that stagepresence, and Disney had a
wonderful way of every year theywere creating something new.
So every time you came back,you had a new experience.
(24:19):
So, again, where do you findpeople that like it?
Oh, there, you get them toadvocate for you and you get
them to come back once more.
Now we're giving them acompelling reason to come back
by creating something new.
And at the casinos, we hadpromotions all the time, yeah,
and they wound up loving us.
It was really, it was fun andit was new at the time.
Let's, let's face it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah Well, let's talk about marketing spend.
So I think we could, all youknow, point to a large marketing
agency that that you know, ifwe had 75 grand, we could
probably get our foot in thedoor over there and start
spending some money and seeingsome results as a small business
.
But social media most powerfultool on marketing earth right
(25:02):
now.
How can local hospitalitybusinesses leverage it
effectively to boost their brandand connect with the community?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, there's a ton of tactical elements that get
people to sign up for a post onbehalf of advocate for use,
hashtags, those kinds of thingsand you can come up with some
really fun, creative ways ofdoing that.
One of the best ones I saw Iwas in oh gosh, I can't remember
, I think it was Memphis andthey you would take a selfie,
(25:30):
you would put a hashtag and theywould print it out and put it
up on a wall, like a wall offolks that were there, and
underneath it it would say whattheir favorite dish was, what
they did.
So it not only created thesocial.
Yeah, exactly, it was verypersonal.
It also created a database forthem, because all this was
digitized and they had adatabase of what those people
(25:50):
liked and they also had apicture of them so when they
came back in they could identifythem.
They could say hey, mike, comeon in, I know you liked xyz.
Yeah, guess what?
I got another one for you totry.
Yeah, you know, and what's morepersonal than that?
I think that's just you know.
Fantastic.
Yeah, so you can build that.
Of course you want to.
But marketing spend in thatarea, let me tell you, it's
(26:12):
getting just as expensive,expensive as over the top you
know, uh, five thousand a monthon, that is just scratching the
surface forsome of these, these
organizations, yeah, but you gotto be at it.
You got to stay at itconsistently.
Um, if you're doing it and notspending money, um, you know,
you literally have to stay on itand try to get creative and
(26:34):
keep going.
Once you think you're tired ofit, let me tell you you've only
scratched the surface out there,because you need to stay at it
10 times more Because when youthink, oh, my gosh, everybody's
heard it.
No, no, they haven't.
Because again, you're competingagainst all kinds of other
messages out there.
So you've got to stay at it.
And if you think you're tiredof it or the market's tired of
(26:56):
it, they're not barely heard it.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I love that back in my commercial real estate days.
It's weird to say that now.
You know there's there was thisdebate.
Do you make cold calls or not?
You know, is it good to peoplehate it?
You know I always like to callthem warming up calls.
But the people that did itreally well they, they kind of
brought a mentality to themarket that if you exist in this
market you're going to get acall from me.
(27:22):
You just will at least onetouch point.
And if you really think aboutthat, you know we're.
We're all probably wasting alot of time not getting out
there, right we're.
We're missing a lot of shotsbecause we're all probably
wasting a lot of time notgetting out there, right, we're
missing a lot of shots becausewe're not taking them.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, I call it the top of the funnel and the old
marketing adage.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You know, the funnel Get awareness up there and you
go all the way down to thedecision.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Everyone's in the funnel, yeah yeah, and I
remember doing a presentationfor our board once and I went
through the whole databaseprocess.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And you, you know they come in the door, they sign
up, they do this.
We spend this much back on them, or we call it investment and
they come back and they do theirwhatever behavior we wanted
them to do and we just kept thatcycle going dead silent.
The chairman stood up and saidrob, I know exactly where you're
missing the boat here.
Getting them in the front door,the top of the funnel, is what
(28:15):
he was talking about.
It's creating awareness for us,because once they get in the
door, he goes.
I know you'll get them Once weget in the door.
I know you got them, but getthem in the front door is the
biggest thing.
And if you look at and I talkabout casinos now they all play
the locals game.
They all continue to feed on thepeople that are in there, Got
it?
And a lot of restaurants arethe same thing.
(28:36):
They live and breathe by thelocals.
Yeah Well, how many new peopleare coming in the door and how
much are you spending?
How much time and investmentare you spending in getting
those new people in the door?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
introducing new people.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, and it's a very common thing to see, especially
with small one-off shops hereand it's a fantastic problem to
have, because if you're existingon your locals and on your
consistent customers, that'sgreat.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
All right.
So here's the toughest questionthat I'm going to hit you with.
You knew it was coming already,but I prefaced this a little
bit before the interview.
We've got this thing calledRants and Raves, and, zachary, I
think I talk about it everyweek.
I hope I'm not driving peopleto Rants and Raves by talking
about it, but maybe I am.
(29:24):
Maybe I'm the problem.
No, but no.
When we have new businesses intown, especially these poor
restaurants, they get beat up.
It's like they can't doanything right.
If the food's not hot, if theyI don't know, if any of the
accommodations aren't right, ifsomebody doesn't get water on
(29:45):
time, if somebody has a criminalrecord at the restaurant, we're
all going to know about it.
And so what I'm witnessinghappen is Everybody is on rants.
There's a few people that speakon rants, but most people are
just watching the show and nevercommenting.
How do we get in front?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
of this I mean because it's driving businesses
out of this town.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, is it really?
It's actually puttingbusinesses out and it's almost
kind of like to the level wheredo we need a lawyer on this?
You know, like if, if you'rethe business owner, do you
actually need to show up with alawyer, cause it's that.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Well, there's a difference between encouraging
good feedback and a positive ornegative view of that kind of
stuff versus doing harm.
And in my opinion, you know,complaining is the easiest damn
thing to do.
Excuse my language, it takes noskill to do that.
It takes extreme skill tocomplain and then come up with a
suggestion yeah and um ordiscipline right yeah, yeah,
more discipline in their thing,and a lot of people like to hide
(30:46):
behind the keyboard, which Ithink is is a.
You know it's a cop-out whenthey do that level of damage.
Yeah, um, but I think feedbackcan be great.
How do you get out in front ofit?
You know that's, that's the,the million dollar question.
Um, but you have to bycontrolling the narrative.
You give a story to talk about,you know, and that sometimes
(31:09):
takes, um, you know, it's, it'skind of tough to do, and I'll
give you an example of what wedid.
Or you can turn it into apositive again, sometimes
difficult.
We had a casino that, um, thebig, you know, early on in the
casino days, emerging markets,the big, uh, rant and rave, if
you will, was, you know, we'restealing everybody's money, blah
(31:30):
, blah, blah.
And uh, look in the backparking lot there there's all
these cars for sale and all thisstuff.
They're repossessing cars andselling them and all the you
know, and they take their moneyand they put it in a plane and
fly out.
And we had a plane and we flyourselves out.
Right, right, right, you knowme being the smart aleck I said,
no, we wire our money out whichthat got all over the
newspapers, which was stupid,but what we wound up doing?
(31:52):
is.
Uh.
We turned around we said, okay,look, we don't possess stuff.
That's not what we're in thebusiness of doing.
If you want your property, youthink you've been possessed, you
know repossessed, or you knowwe've taken anything to settle a
debt.
Why don't you come here on aTuesday afternoon at two o'clock
?
We'll give it back Press.
You're invited here.
(32:14):
We are.
Tuesday at two o'clock, by theway, was our slowest day part.
So we had all these people showup.
We served them drinks.
We said hey, here you are.
So who's lost their thing?
What are all those cars in theback that are for sale?
Oh, those are the employees.
They're selling their carbecause they're upgrading, and
(32:35):
if you want to go buy one, I'msure they'd be happy to do that.
So we turned that bit ofnegative into a positive.
We also bought the dinner toall the people who wrote into
the paper that complained.
We bought them dinner and saidcome on in.
We were in a position to dothat, sure.
So we got out, kind of in frontof that kind of stuff.
Yep, we did another one atRainforest.
(32:55):
I don't know if you want me totalk about this one enough.
Yeah, rainforest.
I don't know if you want me totalk about this one?
Enough, but it's Rainforest wehad when we first started
Rainforest Cafe.
We had live parrots out infront.
Every Rainforest Cafe had acurator in the back and let me
tell you, mike, these parrotswere treated better than my kids
are.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
It's a Disney parrot right.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, they were live parrots and we only had four on
stage at a time.
We probably had 20 were liveparrots and we had.
We only had four on stage at atime.
Yeah, we probably had 20 25parrots per property, but most
of them are in the back in theirown little aviary and they had
showers every other day likemike the tiger level
accommodation exactly at everysingle one of our restaurants.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah and well pita people for the ethical treatment
I was just going to say if youbelong to p PETA, please just
hold your ears.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Well, no, they had a great, you're mistreating it.
They just weren't informed.
Yeah, so they came and they hada demonstration in front of our
place at the Mall of America.
Well, our parrots got prettyfreaked out and they flew down
the mall.
No, they're not wing clipped atall, they're flying because
they're concerned here.
(34:01):
And, by the way, you guys wantto come on in the back, we'll
show you everything we did.
They became really goodadvocates and, uh, really, peta,
you flipped PETA.
Well, not completely flipped,but they were like okay, you're
doing it right.
Wow, you know, yeah, and uh, wehad, uh, at the time, we had
license to handle endangeredspecies.
We had black macaws andeverything.
Wow it was phenomenal Gorgeanimals, but you know, it's one
(34:24):
of those situations.
It's a case of where you have abad situation, yeah, and again
we had the resources andcreativity to turn it around a
little bit.
Yeah, and deal with them andshow them the facts.
Wow, and that was good.
And we had a cooperating mediaas well.
Yes, in this channel of onlinecomplaining, you know, um, you
(34:47):
know, the only thing I'd say tosome of these people who
complain is what would you doabout it?
You know what?
What suggestions do you have onthe other side?
And there's no way you couldpredict all of the complaints
right now, because people likeyou said water didn't come on
time.
Well, you know what it was?
A.
They're probably right.
Sorry, come on in, we'll giveyou free water.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I'm kidding, probably a straw man argument.
Anyway, I mean it's, you know,it's always like yeah, it's
something to complain about.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
But um, yeah, it's a tough one.
I like the more um offensiveapproach to where you give them
a good story to talk about.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, that's good advice.
So, yeah, my core question isdo you respond or do you not
respond?
And so the offensive approachbetter?
Yeah, maybe you DM them andoffer them a chance to
re-experience the amenity?
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Absolutely.
You want to do what's calledservice recovery?
Okay, and you know we alwayswant to have those folks turn
into advocates.
If you're complaining aboutsomething, you have to get to
them quickly.
You have to get to thempersonally.
The response has got to beexactly unique to them.
It can't be boilerplate.
You know, I see it all the timeit drives me crazy them.
(36:00):
It can't be boilerplate.
You know you go to.
You know I see it all the timeit drives me crazy.
And the advice I give um, themanagement, management companies
on this is they'll, they'll putout on social media the same
boilerplate response to all ofthese.
Response you know things.
Yes, you can't do that.
There is a formula, you knowtimely response, acknowledge
their concern.
You know all of those.
There's steps you go through,yeah, uh, but you got to make it
(36:22):
unique to them.
You got to make it, you know,relevant to them and address
that.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Excellent and, by the way, it does take time to do
that.
It can be a full-time job doingthat.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Oh, just responding alone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I know it makes me feel for these, these little,
these smaller businesses thatjust aren't staffed up enough to
even handle that right.
And then, uh, the recovery partis expensive as well, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
just to earn back customer yeah and it's, it's, um
, it's funny there, my fatherwho's in the restaurant business
, he's.
Back in the day we had commentcards and now we have, you know,
digital tattoos, which are, youknow, comments online yeah um,
he would respond to every singlecomment card or make sure
somebody did, and he would goback and check.
Yeah, um, we did the same thingin the casino business.
(37:10):
Everyone who wrote in somethingwe would respond to and we
would check it.
Yeah, um, that they wouldrespond, and every different
everyone, every response, got aunique answer.
To the point of where we hadsome consistent ones, we'd
invite them in.
Come on in, come back in thekitchen.
Yeah, and let me show youwhat's going on here you know,
and we had the product to provewhat was going on.
(37:30):
So we made them part of thesolution.
Yeah, made the complainer partof the solution.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, so, yeah, cool, um, one of the the the greatest
parts about zachary is it.
There is a.
It's weighted more towards ayounger audience.
So I say we're graduating someof the smartest and finest minds
out of the schools here.
You know, whether they chooseto come back is a matter of what
metric, and I the best answer Ihave for it is how can I, as a
(38:00):
local, create nostalgia for them, something to come back to, and
so tying that into hospitalitybusinesses, restaurants, how can
local businesses createnostalgic experiences for the
youth?
Uh, one example, kind of helpwith this.
Uh, I was just at a burger Kingwhen I was little and for some
(38:23):
reason the manager was like hey,kid you look, you looked at my
mom, do you?
Do you want to come back withhim and I'll give you all a tour
of the kitchen.
And I had a tour of the kitchenat Burger King and I just felt
and they gave me the crown and Iwas like I'm locked in.
I still go king over mcdonald's.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
It's just locked in yeah, yeah, they hit you at that
time frame.
No, you felt important yeah, um, you know, and that's that's.
You know, a lesson we can takefrom the casino business.
They well-run casinos make youfeel important.
Yeah and uh, you feel like awhale when you walk out of there
, even though if you spent 20bucks and uh um, you know you
can do that.
(38:59):
Making those people feel givethem a reason to be tied to it,
yeah, uh, as opposed to all thereasons not to be tied to
something.
You know we're running away.
It does not help that thisregion gets all the negative
press, you know how is ithappening?
I mean, you can't open a paperwithout stumbling across.
You know we're last in this,last in that, yeah, and that's a
(39:23):
shame because we've got a lotof good things going on.
But you've got to make itpersonal.
Yeah, your example was perfectbecause they made that a
personal.
It was personal to you andimagine if we did that to every
graduating senior you know, thatkind of thing.
So, or I'd ask the seniors whatwould you do to make this you
(39:49):
know your legacy, place yourheritage here?
What would you do to?
What are you going to think ofhere and how can you think
positively about that?
Um, I wouldn't phrase it thatway, but I'd, you know, make
sure they have something, aninput into you know their memory
here.
(40:09):
Yeah, as opposed to just saying, oh, you got to remember this,
you gotta.
No, no, they'll do it, it'll be, it'll.
Let them create it.
I have a lot of faith in ourkids.
I think they are you know,teaching.
I've got roughly 200 students,200 and change.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
LSU or Arkansas, arkansas.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
And uh, oh, man, they're fantastic.
They are just some of thesharpest I have seen in a long
time, and every year they arethey still amaze me different
than when I went to school, butdifferent is good, and they
learn differently and theyexpress themselves differently.
But boy, they are sharp, youknow.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And they'll come up with it.
So if you put it in their shoes, in their hands, I'm sure
they'll come up.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think the adults and and you know, I don't know
our generation who shoot, are alittle bit more open with the
kids.
These days just kind of sharingthe dirty truths.
Sometimes I look at my kids andI'm like do y'all have the
answers?
Because I don't.
But they're digital natives.
I wasn't, you know.
I had to learn to type an essayas opposed to writing it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
My students all take their exams on their phone.
Amazing, yeah, it drives menuts and I'm like well, hey, if
you want to do that.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I had to adopt.
They're texting an essay.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, pretty much Incredible when they text it.
I have to push it back because,no, this is not text language.
You've got to learn how to doit properly here, but it's, I
think they're fantastic, crazyyeah, well, I think that's a
good place to segue out.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Um, why don't you give us a huge shout out to
cardinal capital and everythingthat you're doing there, and and
how can you help localbusinesses, uh, through that
channel?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
appreciate that when I yeah, when I came back here um
gosh, it's almost 10 years agoum, I came back here.
By the way, like a lot of usthat are boomerangs, come back
for family reasons.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Spend time with my dad.
I came back and my gosh, thisplace did not have any money,
you know.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I left 25 years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Right and some, you know, some just firing your
belly kind of companies aregoing all over the place raising
money, going public, yeah, withthese two companies and just
having a ball.
And I came back here and it'slike, wait, nothing's changed.
So the way we raised money wasusing a service like Cardinal
Capital, which is, in essence, acommercial loan broker, and we
(42:31):
go out and find money for abusiness.
We don't work for a bank oranything like that, although we
work unbelievably well withbanks to help them, help their
customers.
That's why we're buddies.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, and if you guys have got some stuff that's on
your books, that's hey, thisguy's got a problem or a unique
challenge, we'll go.
How do we help them?
And we go all over the planetwell, all over North America and
find money and deploy it forour clients yeah, and we are
agnostic in terms of category.
(43:05):
We'll help them all.
I'm the marketing guy.
I tell bad jokes and my twobusiness partners are savants
with this stuff.
They know this stuff and canthink so fast on their feet.
And I'm the guy who says wait,here's an opportunity, here's a
solution.
I have no idea how we're goingto get them together, but we can
and we will find it out.
(43:25):
And that's what CardinalCapital does.
We work with businesses toconnect them to the money and
show them how to finance theirendeavors and reach their goals.
And it's fun.
Yeah, it's fun, you know it's.
It's fantastic, it's fun, youknow it's.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Thanks, thank you for the opportunity absolutely
absolutely yeah all right, thatis it for this week's episode of
pnp.
Catch us on all localnewsstands or on the worldwide
web at porchandparishcom.
Immense thanks to all oursponsors, who make this content
free to you, so please go outand support them.
And why don't you, uh, give ussome contact information if
(44:00):
you're open to it?
Look, if you're a small tomid-sized local business and you
need some help.
I have a feeling like this is agood resource and a great
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
I'd be happy to help At Cardinal Cap.
It's rob at cardinalcapnet orrp RP025 at UARKedu.
That's my um University ofArkansas email address or
612-805-8601.
I don't mind giving myself anumber.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, yeah, excellent , all right, thank you.
Thank you so much, yep.
Talk to y'all next week.
Hey, baton Rouge, I'm Rob Powell.
Keep listening to Porch andParish the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Waiter, can we get our check please?
Today we're going to talkhospitality, that is, hotels and
resorts, restaurants and cafes,events venues, travel, tourism
and entertainment venues.
Notice that many of thesestruggle when managers don't
know how to well fill in theblank effectively.
That's when we, the patrons,get frustrated or disappointed
because these companies aren'tliving up to our expectations.
(00:33):
We live in a bedroom communityin Zachary, and one that finds
itself often confused where itfits into the larger picture in
our growing MSA, and marketingis a key element that gets left
out of this business plan.
All right, folks, braceyourselves for a marketing
masterclass.
Our guest today is a foundingpartner at Cardinal Capital and
lecturer at the University ofArkansas, recognized as a
(00:55):
marketer of the year by both theAmerican Marketing Association
and the Academy of MarketingSciences, rob has also been
awarded the Presidential Pin ofExcellence for his contributions
to Native American gaming, andthe Crystal Pineapple Award
Sounds so cool for his impact onhospitality education.
I would definitely put that onthe mantle.
Yeah, with a career thatincludes leading marketing at
(01:18):
Grand Casinos and RainforestCafe, and experiences across
Asia, north America and CentralAmerica, rob is here to share
his world-class insights, solet's give him a warm welcome.
Thank you for being here, robPowell.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Thank you very much.
It's a pleasure to be here,yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
As always, we're here to bring you the best of
Zachary in the Baton Rouge areathrough engaging conversations
every Monday from our VirginiaStreet headquarters.
This is Porch and porch andparish, the podcast.
Stay tuned because thelightning round is coming up
next.
Looking for a family outing offthe beaten path?
Trot over to Breck's far parkequestrian center for a unique
experience.
Far park offers guided trailrides throughout the fall.
(02:01):
Starting on September 22nd, youand the family can enjoy the
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Perfect for all ages.
Follow the link to sign up.
Spots are limited.
Coming back with the lightninground.
Okay, If you could improve themarketing at any company in the
(02:25):
world, which one would youchoose?
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wow, love this question.
A bunch of the localrestaurants and bars, of course,
but I'd say actually twoindustries, if I can Commercial
banking and higher education.
Both need help in marketingareas.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I might be in one of those.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
What are you going say likewise, likewise and if I
had to choose a company, I'd sayhonestly and I hate to do this
because I got my career startthere but I'd say disney company
has taken a little differentmove and I would also say in bev
and the latest bud light, um,you know, a little scandal that
they, they stumbled on, hasproven a lot and it's taught us
(03:04):
a lot I would love to talk aboutthat.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, I mean, who would have
thought that, uh, one day Iwould grow up and and see disney
getting boycotted come on rightthey made snow white.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
How easy could it be, just just be disney again,
right, exactly, well, you knowthat's, that's part of our, our
cornerstone, or mine is, uh,going back to the basics, but
yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I mean, bambi was always a favorite topic of the
philosophers at my universityanyway.
It just seemed too cruel to beAnyway.
Favorite diner in Baton.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Rouge.
Let's see Deerman's.
You got Frank's George'sBeausoleil Love that place.
Jasmine's on the Bayou is alsogood.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, there, love that place.
Jasmine's on the bayou is alsogood yeah yeah, there's a lot of
good.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, uh, we're known for our food.
Yeah, louis, yeah louis.
I was gonna say you gotta go tolouis, everybody goes there.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Yeah, I feel like I I walk into a seinfeld episode
every time that I I get to louisI'm like I don't know something
special about that one um, andyou and I ate at deerman's,
which was awesome.
That was one of the favoritehaunts of my real estate mentor,
mike Falgo, as well.
Uh, favorite place in Louisianaother than home or work New
(04:13):
Orleans.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
It's my escape, okay, um, it's an assault on all five
senses and, uh, no other placelike it on the planet and I can
go there and become invisible.
But it also has a shelf life ofthree to four days, which is
just enough to get yourbatteries.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
I have no follow-ups on that one.
All right, let's start with alittle bit of background.
You're a hospitality veteran,so let's get get us up to speed
with that career journey whereit's taken you, and let's kind
of start from the ABCs of howyou define hospitality.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Well, I got my start.
I did undergraduate graduatework here at LSU.
My family was in thehospitality business, the
restaurant business, with thelocal restaurant, and my dad
famously told me don't get intothe business.
And of course I wound upstumbling on the business
because I used to chase himaround the back of restaurants
(05:11):
stumbling, sliding on the floorsand yada, yada, yada.
But I did undergraduategraduate work, did some PhD work
in the quantitative field, butit was all under marketing
umbrella.
Then I left there and I went towork at the Disney company and
had an absolute you know, youtalk masterclass.
They, you know, wrote the bookin some cases on the customer
(05:34):
experience and how they treatedemployees and how they built a
brand.
Yeah, absolutely amazing.
I was there during the MichaelEisner timeframe, which he was
quite famous.
They often used to say whatwould Mike do, as opposed to
what would Walt do, you knowthat kind of thing.
And then after that I went witha startup company called Grant
Casinos and when I started withthem they had a bingo hall in
(05:57):
Northern Minnesota and I had noearthly clue even how to operate
a slot machine.
But I pitched the owner of theplace and we had a ball.
We were on the cover of Forbesmagazine at one point, for the
fastest-growing company in NorthAmerica opened seven casinos
across the country.
Excuse me, nine casinos acrossthe country, both tribal
(06:19):
American or Native American andnon-Native American, that we
owned and we went public, made awhole lot of people, a whole
lot of money and just I wound upwith the marketing hat on.
But in those days I'm tellingyou one day I would be putting
together a slot machine base andthe covering on some of the
(06:40):
tables and the next day I'mrunning perceptual maps of brand
imaging for some of the tablesand the next day I'm running,
you know, perceptual maps ofbrand imaging yeah, for some of
the organizations then fromthere, and there's actually a
book written about this, uh didyou write it?
yeah, no, no, no there's a uh,uh, this guy pitched our
chairman.
Uh, after we sold grand casino,he pitched our chairman on this
(07:03):
idea.
That became rainforest cafe,and I'm truncating the story,
but, um, anyhow, we said okayand we pulled our money together
and started one at the mall ofAmerica in Minnesota, went
public with our second store inChicago and I wore the marketing
hat again, built 32 of thesethings across the country, all
different styles and, um, and itwas fantastic.
(07:26):
I basically my job as themarketing guy.
I had to make sure they didn'tscrew things up and, uh, because
it was a fantastic brand, as is, uh, you know, we we had two of
them in Disney, you know, ifyou've ever been down there,
you've been to those and, uh,you know, it's just an amazing
experience.
Then, after we sold that toTillman Fertitta out of Houston,
I had some time on my hands,went to work for the Second City
(07:50):
, which is a comedy troupe outof Toronto and Chicago, and it's
fantastic.
You can sit in the back room inthe green room and you got Dan
Aykroyd, martin Short, all theseguys.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
I've listened to Second City just to get a little
bit better at improv.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
And improv, I think, is a fantastic skill that you
can use in corporatecommunications.
I use it in teaching all thetime because it is an improv
fielding questions.
We're trying to get conceptsacross.
So the skill set itself isamazing and that was a revenue
stream that we built at secondcity to help them use that skill
and use these wonderfullytalented comedians and improv
(08:28):
artists, giving them anotheroutlet.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
They can teach management companies how to
communicate properly Shout outto more second city alumni
alumni.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Pick them.
Robin Williams, like I said,martin short, eugene Levy, tim
Conway Gosh we did some of hisDorf videos, which are fantastic
.
Oh, let me see John Candy.
John Candy, of course.
Matter of fact, I work directlywith and for one of his
pallbearers and there are somephenomenal stories about that,
(09:01):
most of which are not safe forbroadcast.
But yeah, they pretty muchanybody you've seen on saturday
night live were in um the secondcity yeah, and walking, steve
corral, steve corral was yeah,all the, all those uh again, if
you, what is the office?
yeah, and all those guys.
(09:21):
They all spent time usuallythere.
Gilda radner yep, um, you knowwe did a gilda radner concert.
Uh, um, that was justabsolutely amazing.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Um, the cast of um ghostbusters yeah, well, I think
improv probably has a lot to dowith good um marketing and
hospitality.
There's probably a lot oftie-ins to that.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
And I gravitated towards that and I saw the
tie-in, the parallels there areamazing, because you're always
dealing with a live audience and, coming from Disney, we always
looked at everything.
You're on stage, you're alwayson stage, whether you're back of
house or front of house, you dohave an audience and you're
always supporting somebody.
If you have that ethos goinginto it, you can put on your
performance every day.
You put on your costume, youput on your your um, you know
(10:13):
your character face and you goout and you perform.
Yeah and uh.
You know that works in improv,that works in hospitality.
It certainly worked at, uh,disney, it worked in rainforest
and arguably, it worked in thecasinos as well.
Yeah, so yeah it's fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Yeah, I love that.
Uh, I tend to kind of playaround with them, probably with
my, my teenagers and all um.
I tell them it's kind of likebeing a wide receiver in the nfl
that's about to get hit all thetime, like you gotta wake up
every day and just go out therereally locked into the moment if
you want to be good at thatkind of stuff.
So it's fun yeah, but um allright, let's get into some
(10:51):
marketing trends.
So they evolve quickly um whatare some of the latest trends
you're seeing in hospitality andhow can smaller local
businesses adapt them to theirscale?
Speaker 1 (11:00):
yeah, if you google marketing trends right now,
you're going to get these big,massive, massive capital
intensive projects which are,which are amazing, but they're
all getting at the core conceptof more personalization, which
blows me away.
If you're in the hospitalitybusiness, how can you go away
from personalization?
You have to be.
I mean, it's a people business.
(11:22):
You have to talk to not onlyyour employees but your
customers coming there.
Now, how do we use this?
We use data-driven decisionsand you can get data.
I don't care if you are a momand pop hotdog stand or if
you're a multi-unit.
You know full servicerestaurant or you know what have
you.
So you're getting into that.
(11:43):
One of the great things out ofthe pandemic is we learned about
different revenue streams andcontactless delivery.
You're getting into places.
Shoot, if you go to an airportnow you got a QR code, you hit
it and there's your menu.
You can actually ordereverything there.
You don't have to see anybodyat all, which is a double-edged
sword there.
Because you can.
(12:04):
It's very efficient, yeah, butthere's the employees.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Don't learn how you're getting rid of that
personal touch and when you showup to order in person, they
don't like it.
They want you on the appbecause, yeah, it's one or the
other, right, right, yeah andthe more we get um.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
These organizations run by the finance guys.
No offense and I'm sort of oneas well.
They cut the costs.
And where do you cut the costs?
The easiest ones are in thehuman cost.
So you get rid of that and youget more technology, but you
sacrifice some of the otherwonderful aspects of that thing.
The other is omnichannelmessaging From a marketing
perspective.
(12:40):
We see thousands of messages.
I think it's now up to 10,000messages a day, which is
ridiculous.
How can you compete with that?
And there's so many differentchannels?
Now, even on our littlebusiness, cardinal Capital,
we've identified about 32different channels that people
can see our brand.
And how do you do that?
We call it omni-channelmarketing, which is the
(13:01):
consistent message across all ofthe channels that you know and
you can control.
So it has a greater impact.
And you know, before it wasradio, tv, outdoor.
What have you?
now it's, oh my gosh, everywhereyeah so omni-channel is another
one um, you know, I laughedearlier.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Go ahead.
Oh, I'm sorry, I was going toask, before you move off of that
, what's a good example of a ofomni-channeling?
Is that?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Okay, let me see how you put me on the spot here.
Let's see Omni-channeling.
If you do any PR work, you'veyou've got press releases out or
you do local radio spots theyall have to be pretty much on
this same image or, excuse me,the same message.
If you've got email campaign,you want to have the same
message.
If you've got an online campaign, the same message and make sure
(13:52):
if you're running a promotionfor example, if you're giving
away oh I don't know Um you knowfree dinner, um, a night, you
know, for a family for the nextfour weeks you're giving them.
You know, every Friday they geta free dinner.
Come on in, you know what haveyou?
It's gotta be across everysingle channel that you put out
there.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
So it's a uniform, seamless experience Exactly,
exactly.
Okay, so let me think about, uh, nfl, I get, I get that vibe
from NFL.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Um.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
I feel like they're the same.
You know from the football thatI might buy at Walmart that
says NFL on it through.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Yeah, and you've got brand discipline on there.
Yeah, you know, and you've got.
You know your visualrepresentation, your obvious,
the brand ID.
And then you've got the soundas well.
Everybody knows the jingle ofthe.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
NFL yeah exactly Crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
So, and it's on everything when it's available,
it's on everything.
Yeah, so it is consistent.
Now you want Monday NightFootball, You've got Monday
Night Football across all oftheir channels online and what
have you?
Speaker 2 (14:52):
It's hard to put you on the spot.
No, no, no, but you made methink Even.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
ESPN.
They just launched ESPN Bet andit's even an extension.
It's the same thing.
You look at it and you realizeit's ESPN.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
You, but Bud Light was synonymous with NFL at one
point.
Now I'm starting to see a lotof Miller Light out there, but
you mentioned it.
We can go there.
Sure, I'm just going to let youlead it.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
Yeah, sure.
Well, what Bud Light did is andwe've learned so many lessons
from that particular instance.
And for those of you that don'tknow, yeah, if you're in
marketing, you really know it wecall it Bud Light's.
Marketing Blunder, what they.
Yeah, if you're in marketing,you really know it.
We call it Bud Light'sMarketing Blunder and they went
out there and they I can'tremember the influencer's name-
(15:40):
I can't either.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Oh, I can look it up.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
Yeah, dylan Mulvaney.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah, and it was a fraction of Bud Light's budget,
but the impact it drove their,their revenues to I mean down.
They just, they just lost share, absolutely Everything took
forever to recover.
They lost two of their seniormarketing people as a result of
this.
They they aligned themselveswith a cause supposed to be or
(16:14):
their idea was to be inclusiveamong everybody, Right, which
means you're nobody, you're notan identity to anybody.
At that point, they dilutedtheir brand to such an extent
that what are you talking about?
You're not talking to me as acustomer.
Yeah, whereas Miller Lite,they've been pretty customer.
Yeah, whereas Miller light,they've been pretty consistent.
(16:35):
Yeah, they're always good.
I mean, we all think, still tothis day oh, what is it?
Great taste, less filling, yeah, you know, and they've come
back to it.
I'll be darned if their marketshare isn't going up.
All right, they were fantastic.
Now, what you've seen Bud Lightdo is they came back to their
original concept of we're just agood beer and we're here for
everybody, haven't we?
Not everybody, but we're forthat guy that goes to the bar
(16:56):
and watches the game.
You know?
Your dad's beer?
Yeah, yeah, you know, andthey're having a ball with it.
Now they brought in some.
Well, they paid a lot of moneyto bring in.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I think it was Peyton Manning, for originally they
brought him in and he was here.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Hey, I'm drinking bud light.
I can't remember the line hewas using, but you know that
wasn't cheap for them to do, butthey had to do something pretty
darn quick, yeah and um, youknow it was.
They learned their lesson.
We learned it.
Uh, we learned.
You know, if you commoditizeyour product in that industry
you could argue almost everyindustry it's a very dangerous
game to play.
You know.
(17:42):
You got to carve your spot outwith your specific industry and
own it and, what most, to bringit back to the local area here.
What a lot of companies in thismarket will do is they'll react
to their market and I'll talkrestaurants and bars and they
listen to their market and theythink this is what we're doing.
Well, guess what?
If they listen to the market,they're all going to wind up
selling Michelob Ultra andshowing SEC Sports all the time,
(18:03):
which is fine.
That's what the market wants.
But you know what?
You can carve out a really coolniche by doing something
different and unique.
And it takes time and mostmarketers and most business
owners will not.
They don't realize it takes alot more time than normal.
(18:24):
We have a saying it's the ruleof threes.
Everything costs three times asmuch, takes three times as long
and it is three times asfrustrating.
And I got to tell you you overthe course of my career, that's
pretty much been the case.
So if you're trying to teach amarket to like, um, you know,
craft beer that is grown, youknow, or that is that is
(18:45):
distilled within south louisianaonly, and that's all we're
going to serve yeah, it's goingto take a while for people to
find out and get accustomed to.
That's what you serve.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Right yeah, you can be chimes and attract people
that want to do the beer aroundthe world thing.
Might have a lot of stale beerif that doesn't work out.
Right, right.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
It's, it's, but it takes time.
Like I said, it takes time todevelop that.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Yeah, that's interesting, all right.
So let's segue from here.
Just kind of we're takingthings back, these grand
scholastic marketing conceptsand applying them locally.
So Zachary is this bedroomcommunity.
You know we had Mayor SharonWeston, mayor President Sharon
Weston Broom on sitting in thatchair right before you and she
(19:35):
even mentioned it.
Zachary is a bedroom community.
That's busting at the seams andtrying to figure out that
identity, right?
So how can we benefit from someof these larger concepts?
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Well, again, I go back.
I always go back to the basics,concepts.
Well, uh, again I go back.
I always go back to the basics.
But the place, the place tofind folks that like your space,
whether it's a restaurant or acommunity, what have you are in
your restaurant or in yourcommunity.
You get them to activate more.
Yeah, imagine what it'll do foryou.
(20:09):
That's the easiest and cheapestway to drive value.
And think about it For arestaurant if you brought back
every single 50% of your clientbase one more time a year, what
would that do to your revenue?
You wouldn't have to spendmoney on acquisition tactics,
bringing new customers in.
(20:31):
You could just spend everythingfor that one guy sitting there.
You know he comes here, youknow, three times a month.
Get them to come back fourtimes a month.
Yeah, you know how.
How hard would that be?
You do that with, you know,half of your customers, a
quarter of your customers.
Your revenues are going to gothrough the roof.
So that's the same thing about,um, you know, bedroom
communities.
(20:51):
You look at it that way.
Where do you find people thatlike your place?
They're here, yeah, you getthem to talk about it, you get
them to do more, you get in, getmore active in it, or you get
just a fraction of them andyou're going to do some good
stuff.
You know it's going to grow, aswe call it, organically.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Yeah, yeah, um, you're the the breadth of your.
Your career experience is kindof uh, it's hard to focus in on
on one thing, but, um, maybegive us some examples of how you
created Stark raving fans in,uh, in just one of those
companies, cause I think that'swhat we're talking about is just
taking your existing base andenergizing that.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Um, your existing base and energizing that.
We're going to have to editthis cause I you're catching me
on one, one of the best you know.
Go going back to the casinos,and we really, in grand casinos
position, we carved out a nicheof putting casinos in places
nobody would have thought youwould have ever had.
A casino In Minnesota, milleLacs, the Mille Lacs Band of
(22:01):
Ojibwe.
It's a tribal casino in themiddle, absolutely nowhere, 90
minutes from Minneapolis-St Paul, yeah, and we had to get people
up there.
Well, we wound up employing themost people there, um, and we
were good employers, I mean, wepaid well, and to get people to
experience it, we would do crazypromotions, just tactics, like
(22:22):
crazy.
One of the um, one of the localradio stations, was 101.5.
It's country music station, andwe garnered up 101 limousines,
yeah, and we did a parade fromtwin cities up there.
Um, what a sight, yeah, and itwas, and you had the press out
there.
You had people you know, liningthe sideway so we gave away four
(22:46):
seats per limousine, so we had400 seats now.
Now we're driving people upthere and blah yeah all of stuff
.
So we would do crazy things likethat.
And, um, you know, in themillennial we had a uh, what was
it?
2000?
Hot air balloons on the Gulfcoast.
That was just one of our, our,our deals down there, yeah, and
we carved out a niche of, uh,creating these unbelievably well
(23:09):
put together, well-designedcasinos in the middle of nowhere
.
I mean, you've got Marksvillehere.
It's now Paragon Casino, yeah,but it was Grand Casino
Marksville.
You've got Cushata, which theyjust advertised, I think, on the
Saints game, as being thelargest casino in Louisiana, and
it is.
It's a monster over there.
Is that part of the Grand?
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Casino show.
It was ours, oh really, overthere is, is that part of the
grand casino?
It was ours, it was ours, yeah,oh really yeah, yeah, I mean
we've.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
We have sold it.
We sold grand casino back tocaesars yeah and uh, the tribes
now have the casinos.
In some cases they change thenames, in other cases gotcha,
not, yeah, um, and grand casinogulfport and biloxi went to
harrah's, so did tunica, and Ibelieve they closed tunica.
Stratosphere we sold off as itsown entity, yeah, so uh, but
all of them had their own uniquedesign element that did attract
(23:58):
them and it created somethingfor people to come back to.
But if you want to talk aboutcreating raving fans, another
perfect example of that is atdisney, where, um, you know it
literally was that stagepresence, and Disney had a
wonderful way of every year theywere creating something new.
So every time you came back,you had a new experience.
(24:19):
So, again, where do you findpeople that like it?
Oh, there, you get them toadvocate for you and you get
them to come back once more.
Now we're giving them acompelling reason to come back
by creating something new.
And at the casinos, we hadpromotions all the time, yeah,
and they wound up loving us.
It was really, it was fun andit was new at the time.
Let's, let's face it, yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah Well, let's talk about marketing spend.
So I think we could, all youknow, point to a large marketing
agency that that you know, ifwe had 75 grand, we could
probably get our foot in thedoor over there and start
spending some money and seeingsome results as a small business
.
But social media most powerfultool on marketing earth right
(25:02):
now.
How can local hospitalitybusinesses leverage it
effectively to boost their brandand connect with the community?
Speaker 1 (25:07):
Well, there's a ton of tactical elements that get
people to sign up for a post onbehalf of advocate for use,
hashtags, those kinds of thingsand you can come up with some
really fun, creative ways ofdoing that.
One of the best ones I saw Iwas in oh gosh, I can't remember
, I think it was Memphis andthey you would take a selfie,
(25:30):
you would put a hashtag and theywould print it out and put it
up on a wall, like a wall offolks that were there, and
underneath it it would say whattheir favorite dish was, what
they did.
So it not only created thesocial.
Yeah, exactly, it was verypersonal.
It also created a database forthem, because all this was
digitized and they had adatabase of what those people
(25:50):
liked and they also had apicture of them so when they
came back in they could identifythem.
They could say hey, mike, comeon in, I know you liked xyz.
Yeah, guess what?
I got another one for you totry.
Yeah, you know, and what's morepersonal than that?
I think that's just you know.
Fantastic.
Yeah, so you can build that.
Of course you want to.
But marketing spend in thatarea, let me tell you, it's
(26:12):
getting just as expensive,expensive as over the top you
know, uh, five thousand a monthon, that is just scratching the
surface forsome of these, these
organizations, yeah, but you gotto be at it.
You got to stay at itconsistently.
Um, if you're doing it and notspending money, um, you know,
you literally have to stay on itand try to get creative and
(26:34):
keep going.
Once you think you're tired ofit, let me tell you you've only
scratched the surface out there,because you need to stay at it
10 times more Because when youthink, oh, my gosh, everybody's
heard it.
No, no, they haven't.
Because again, you're competingagainst all kinds of other
messages out there.
So you've got to stay at it.
And if you think you're tiredof it or the market's tired of
(26:56):
it, they're not barely heard it.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
I love that back in my commercial real estate days.
It's weird to say that now.
You know there's there was thisdebate.
Do you make cold calls or not?
You know, is it good to peoplehate it?
You know I always like to callthem warming up calls.
But the people that did itreally well they, they kind of
brought a mentality to themarket that if you exist in this
market you're going to get acall from me.
(27:22):
You just will at least onetouch point.
And if you really think aboutthat, you know we're.
We're all probably wasting alot of time not getting out
there, right we're.
We're missing a lot of shotsbecause we're all probably
wasting a lot of time notgetting out there, right, we're
missing a lot of shots becausewe're not taking them.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, I call it the top of the funnel and the old
marketing adage.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
You know, the funnel Get awareness up there and you
go all the way down to thedecision.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Everyone's in the funnel, yeah yeah, and I
remember doing a presentationfor our board once and I went
through the whole databaseprocess.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And you, you know they come in the door, they sign
up, they do this.
We spend this much back on them, or we call it investment and
they come back and they do theirwhatever behavior we wanted
them to do and we just kept thatcycle going dead silent.
The chairman stood up and saidrob, I know exactly where you're
missing the boat here.
Getting them in the front door,the top of the funnel, is what
(28:15):
he was talking about.
It's creating awareness for us,because once they get in the
door, he goes.
I know you'll get them Once weget in the door.
I know you got them, but getthem in the front door is the
biggest thing.
And if you look at and I talkabout casinos now they all play
the locals game.
They all continue to feed on thepeople that are in there, Got
it?
And a lot of restaurants arethe same thing.
(28:36):
They live and breathe by thelocals.
Yeah Well, how many new peopleare coming in the door and how
much are you spending?
How much time and investmentare you spending in getting
those new people in the door?
Speaker 2 (28:46):
introducing new people.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Yeah, and it's a very common thing to see, especially
with small one-off shops hereand it's a fantastic problem to
have, because if you're existingon your locals and on your
consistent customers, that'sgreat.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
All right.
So here's the toughest questionthat I'm going to hit you with.
You knew it was coming already,but I prefaced this a little
bit before the interview.
We've got this thing calledRants and Raves, and, zachary, I
think I talk about it everyweek.
I hope I'm not driving peopleto Rants and Raves by talking
about it, but maybe I am.
(29:24):
Maybe I'm the problem.
No, but no.
When we have new businesses intown, especially these poor
restaurants, they get beat up.
It's like they can't doanything right.
If the food's not hot, if theyI don't know, if any of the
accommodations aren't right, ifsomebody doesn't get water on
(29:45):
time, if somebody has a criminalrecord at the restaurant, we're
all going to know about it.
And so what I'm witnessinghappen is Everybody is on rants.
There's a few people that speakon rants, but most people are
just watching the show and nevercommenting.
How do we get in front?
Speaker 1 (30:06):
of this I mean because it's driving businesses
out of this town.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, is it really?
It's actually puttingbusinesses out and it's almost
kind of like to the level wheredo we need a lawyer on this?
You know, like if, if you'rethe business owner, do you
actually need to show up with alawyer, cause it's that.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Well, there's a difference between encouraging
good feedback and a positive ornegative view of that kind of
stuff versus doing harm.
And in my opinion, you know,complaining is the easiest damn
thing to do.
Excuse my language, it takes noskill to do that.
It takes extreme skill tocomplain and then come up with a
suggestion yeah and um ordiscipline right yeah, yeah,
more discipline in their thing,and a lot of people like to hide
(30:46):
behind the keyboard, which Ithink is is a.
You know it's a cop-out whenthey do that level of damage.
Yeah, um, but I think feedbackcan be great.
How do you get out in front ofit?
You know that's, that's the,the million dollar question.
Um, but you have to bycontrolling the narrative.
You give a story to talk about,you know, and that sometimes
(31:09):
takes, um, you know, it's, it'skind of tough to do, and I'll
give you an example of what wedid.
Or you can turn it into apositive again, sometimes
difficult.
We had a casino that, um, thebig, you know, early on in the
casino days, emerging markets,the big, uh, rant and rave, if
you will, was, you know, we'restealing everybody's money, blah
(31:30):
, blah, blah.
And uh, look in the backparking lot there there's all
these cars for sale and all thisstuff.
They're repossessing cars andselling them and all the you
know, and they take their moneyand they put it in a plane and
fly out.
And we had a plane and we flyourselves out.
Right, right, right, you knowme being the smart aleck I said,
no, we wire our money out whichthat got all over the
newspapers, which was stupid,but what we wound up doing?
(31:52):
is.
Uh.
We turned around we said, okay,look, we don't possess stuff.
That's not what we're in thebusiness of doing.
If you want your property, youthink you've been possessed, you
know repossessed, or you knowwe've taken anything to settle a
debt.
Why don't you come here on aTuesday afternoon at two o'clock
?
We'll give it back Press.
You're invited here.
(32:14):
We are.
Tuesday at two o'clock, by theway, was our slowest day part.
So we had all these people showup.
We served them drinks.
We said hey, here you are.
So who's lost their thing?
What are all those cars in theback that are for sale?
Oh, those are the employees.
They're selling their carbecause they're upgrading, and
(32:35):
if you want to go buy one, I'msure they'd be happy to do that.
So we turned that bit ofnegative into a positive.
We also bought the dinner toall the people who wrote into
the paper that complained.
We bought them dinner and saidcome on in.
We were in a position to dothat, sure.
So we got out, kind of in frontof that kind of stuff.
Yep, we did another one atRainforest.
(32:55):
I don't know if you want me totalk about this one enough.
Yeah, rainforest.
I don't know if you want me totalk about this one?
Enough, but it's Rainforest wehad when we first started
Rainforest Cafe.
We had live parrots out infront.
Every Rainforest Cafe had acurator in the back and let me
tell you, mike, these parrotswere treated better than my kids
are.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
It's a Disney parrot right.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Yeah, they were live parrots and we only had four on
stage at a time.
We probably had 20 were liveparrots and we had.
We only had four on stage at atime.
Yeah, we probably had 20 25parrots per property, but most
of them are in the back in theirown little aviary and they had
showers every other day likemike the tiger level
accommodation exactly at everysingle one of our restaurants.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Yeah and well pita people for the ethical treatment
I was just going to say if youbelong to p PETA, please just
hold your ears.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Well, no, they had a great, you're mistreating it.
They just weren't informed.
Yeah, so they came and they hada demonstration in front of our
place at the Mall of America.
Well, our parrots got prettyfreaked out and they flew down
the mall.
No, they're not wing clipped atall, they're flying because
they're concerned here.
(34:01):
And, by the way, you guys wantto come on in the back, we'll
show you everything we did.
They became really goodadvocates and, uh, really, peta,
you flipped PETA.
Well, not completely flipped,but they were like okay, you're
doing it right.
Wow, you know, yeah, and uh, wehad, uh, at the time, we had
license to handle endangeredspecies.
We had black macaws andeverything.
Wow it was phenomenal Gorgeanimals, but you know, it's one
(34:24):
of those situations.
It's a case of where you have abad situation, yeah, and again
we had the resources andcreativity to turn it around a
little bit.
Yeah, and deal with them andshow them the facts.
Wow, and that was good.
And we had a cooperating mediaas well.
Yes, in this channel of onlinecomplaining, you know, um, you
(34:47):
know, the only thing I'd say tosome of these people who
complain is what would you doabout it?
You know what?
What suggestions do you have onthe other side?
And there's no way you couldpredict all of the complaints
right now, because people likeyou said water didn't come on
time.
Well, you know what it was?
A.
They're probably right.
Sorry, come on in, we'll giveyou free water.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
I'm kidding, probably a straw man argument.
Anyway, I mean it's, you know,it's always like yeah, it's
something to complain about.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
But um, yeah, it's a tough one.
I like the more um offensiveapproach to where you give them
a good story to talk about.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Yeah, that's good advice.
So, yeah, my core question isdo you respond or do you not
respond?
And so the offensive approachbetter?
Yeah, maybe you DM them andoffer them a chance to
re-experience the amenity?
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Absolutely.
You want to do what's calledservice recovery?
Okay, and you know we alwayswant to have those folks turn
into advocates.
If you're complaining aboutsomething, you have to get to
them quickly.
You have to get to thempersonally.
The response has got to beexactly unique to them.
It can't be boilerplate.
You know, I see it all the timeit drives me crazy them.
(36:00):
It can't be boilerplate.
You know you go to.
You know I see it all the timeit drives me crazy.
And the advice I give um, themanagement, management companies
on this is they'll, they'll putout on social media the same
boilerplate response to all ofthese.
Response you know things.
Yes, you can't do that.
There is a formula, you knowtimely response, acknowledge
their concern.
You know all of those.
There's steps you go through,yeah, uh, but you got to make it
(36:22):
unique to them.
You got to make it, you know,relevant to them and address
that.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Excellent and, by the way, it does take time to do
that.
It can be a full-time job doingthat.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
Oh, just responding alone.
Speaker 1 (36:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
I know it makes me feel for these, these little,
these smaller businesses thatjust aren't staffed up enough to
even handle that right.
And then, uh, the recovery partis expensive as well, isn't it?
Speaker 1 (36:48):
just to earn back customer yeah and it's, it's, um
, it's funny there, my fatherwho's in the restaurant business
, he's.
Back in the day we had commentcards and now we have, you know,
digital tattoos, which are, youknow, comments online yeah um,
he would respond to every singlecomment card or make sure
somebody did, and he would goback and check.
Yeah, um, we did the same thingin the casino business.
(37:10):
Everyone who wrote in somethingwe would respond to and we
would check it.
Yeah, um, that they wouldrespond, and every different
everyone, every response, got aunique answer.
To the point of where we hadsome consistent ones, we'd
invite them in.
Come on in, come back in thekitchen.
Yeah, and let me show youwhat's going on here you know,
and we had the product to provewhat was going on.
(37:30):
So we made them part of thesolution.
Yeah, made the complainer partof the solution.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeah, so, yeah, cool, um, one of the the the greatest
parts about zachary is it.
There is a.
It's weighted more towards ayounger audience.
So I say we're graduating someof the smartest and finest minds
out of the schools here.
You know, whether they chooseto come back is a matter of what
metric, and I the best answer Ihave for it is how can I, as a
(38:00):
local, create nostalgia for them, something to come back to, and
so tying that into hospitalitybusinesses, restaurants, how can
local businesses createnostalgic experiences for the
youth?
Uh, one example, kind of helpwith this.
Uh, I was just at a burger Kingwhen I was little and for some
(38:23):
reason the manager was like hey,kid you look, you looked at my
mom, do you?
Do you want to come back withhim and I'll give you all a tour
of the kitchen.
And I had a tour of the kitchenat Burger King and I just felt
and they gave me the crown and Iwas like I'm locked in.
I still go king over mcdonald's.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
It's just locked in yeah, yeah, they hit you at that
time frame.
No, you felt important yeah, um, you know, and that's that's.
You know, a lesson we can takefrom the casino business.
They well-run casinos make youfeel important.
Yeah and uh, you feel like awhale when you walk out of there
, even though if you spent 20bucks and uh um, you know you
can do that.
(38:59):
Making those people feel givethem a reason to be tied to it,
yeah, uh, as opposed to all thereasons not to be tied to
something.
You know we're running away.
It does not help that thisregion gets all the negative
press, you know how is ithappening?
I mean, you can't open a paperwithout stumbling across.
You know we're last in this,last in that, yeah, and that's a
(39:23):
shame because we've got a lotof good things going on.
But you've got to make itpersonal.
Yeah, your example was perfectbecause they made that a
personal.
It was personal to you andimagine if we did that to every
graduating senior you know, thatkind of thing.
So, or I'd ask the seniors whatwould you do to make this you
(39:49):
know your legacy, place yourheritage here?
What would you do to?
What are you going to think ofhere and how can you think
positively about that?
Um, I wouldn't phrase it thatway, but I'd, you know, make
sure they have something, aninput into you know their memory
here.
(40:09):
Yeah, as opposed to just saying, oh, you got to remember this,
you gotta.
No, no, they'll do it, it'll be, it'll.
Let them create it.
I have a lot of faith in ourkids.
I think they are you know,teaching.
I've got roughly 200 students,200 and change.
Speaker 2 (40:24):
LSU or Arkansas, arkansas.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
And uh, oh, man, they're fantastic.
They are just some of thesharpest I have seen in a long
time, and every year they arethey still amaze me different
than when I went to school, butdifferent is good, and they
learn differently and theyexpress themselves differently.
But boy, they are sharp, youknow.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:48):
And they'll come up with it.
So if you put it in their shoes, in their hands, I'm sure
they'll come up.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
I think the adults and and you know, I don't know
our generation who shoot, are alittle bit more open with the
kids.
These days just kind of sharingthe dirty truths.
Sometimes I look at my kids andI'm like do y'all have the
answers?
Because I don't.
But they're digital natives.
I wasn't, you know.
I had to learn to type an essayas opposed to writing it.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
My students all take their exams on their phone.
Amazing, yeah, it drives menuts and I'm like well, hey, if
you want to do that.
That's great.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
I had to adopt.
They're texting an essay.
Speaker 1 (41:27):
Yeah, pretty much Incredible when they text it.
I have to push it back because,no, this is not text language.
You've got to learn how to doit properly here, but it's, I
think they're fantastic, crazyyeah, well, I think that's a
good place to segue out.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
Um, why don't you give us a huge shout out to
cardinal capital and everythingthat you're doing there, and and
how can you help localbusinesses, uh, through that
channel?
Speaker 1 (41:51):
appreciate that when I yeah, when I came back here um
gosh, it's almost 10 years agoum, I came back here.
By the way, like a lot of usthat are boomerangs, come back
for family reasons.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Spend time with my dad.
I came back and my gosh, thisplace did not have any money,
you know.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
I left 25 years ago.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Right and some, you know, some just firing your
belly kind of companies aregoing all over the place raising
money, going public, yeah, withthese two companies and just
having a ball.
And I came back here and it'slike, wait, nothing's changed.
So the way we raised money wasusing a service like Cardinal
Capital, which is, in essence, acommercial loan broker, and we
(42:31):
go out and find money for abusiness.
We don't work for a bank oranything like that, although we
work unbelievably well withbanks to help them, help their
customers.
That's why we're buddies.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Yeah, and if you guys have got some stuff that's on
your books, that's hey, thisguy's got a problem or a unique
challenge, we'll go.
How do we help them?
And we go all over the planetwell, all over North America and
find money and deploy it forour clients yeah, and we are
agnostic in terms of category.
(43:05):
We'll help them all.
I'm the marketing guy.
I tell bad jokes and my twobusiness partners are savants
with this stuff.
They know this stuff and canthink so fast on their feet.
And I'm the guy who says wait,here's an opportunity, here's a
solution.
I have no idea how we're goingto get them together, but we can
and we will find it out.
(43:25):
And that's what CardinalCapital does.
We work with businesses toconnect them to the money and
show them how to finance theirendeavors and reach their goals.
And it's fun.
Yeah, it's fun, you know it's.
It's fantastic, it's fun, youknow it's.
It's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Thanks, thank you for the opportunity absolutely
absolutely yeah all right, thatis it for this week's episode of
pnp.
Catch us on all localnewsstands or on the worldwide
web at porchandparishcom.
Immense thanks to all oursponsors, who make this content
free to you, so please go outand support them.
And why don't you, uh, give ussome contact information if
(44:00):
you're open to it?
Look, if you're a small tomid-sized local business and you
need some help.
I have a feeling like this is agood resource and a great
opportunity.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
I'd be happy to help At Cardinal Cap.
It's rob at cardinalcapnet orrp RP025 at UARKedu.
That's my um University ofArkansas email address or
612-805-8601.
I don't mind giving myself anumber.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
Yeah, yeah, excellent , all right, thank you.
Thank you so much, yep.
Talk to y'all next week.
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