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By FRANK E. JAMES Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Like the old Hollywood press agents, Jeffrey Slutsky will do almost anything to get a client's name in the newspaper. Mr. Slutsky has become a master at getting free or cheap publicity for small businesses that don't have much money for advertising. His consulting company, the Retail Marketing Institute Inc., uses an approach he describes as street fighting. "Street fighting is outthinking your competition rather than out-spending the," Mr. Slutsky says. "It's vital if the small guy is going to survive." Consider, for example, the problems of plain-as-dirt Wisman's Trusted Appliances & TV Inc., a Fort Wayne retailer that had a lot of browsers but not enough sales. All too often, the browsers moved on, comparing prices and eventually buying elsewhere, particularly at the better known, heavily advertised Sears, Roebuck & Co. store nearby. Mr. Slutsky's solution? Ice cream. All the customers who looked at a Wisman freezer received a free half-gallon of ice cream. Of course, that prompted them to race home, eschewing further shopping, less their gift melt. Portable Billboards Wisman's also gave away folders with its name in bold print on the cover. Customers could stick promotional brochures inside while getting a continual advertising message. "They were like portable billboards," says Bruce Wisman, the store's co-owner. He estimates that the Slutsky-inpired promotions brought in about 11% more second time lookers and resulted in higher sales. To get maximum expose from small budgets, Mr. Slutsky favors the unorthodox, such as the ice cream gambit. He | concedes the idea wasn't original; he appropriated it from a mobile-home salesman. "One of our rules is that if you see something work for someone else, steal it," although he says "we prefer to call it creative borrowing."
Another client, print-shop owner Jack Caffray, was asked by organizers of last year's Mad Anthony Hoosier Celebrity Golf Tournament to donate $750 to the popular local charity vent. But his donation would merely have gotten him listed on a sign with about 50 other contributors, and he wondered about whether he could somehow get more attention. The solution? A hole-in-one contest. The print-shop owner put up $10,000 to be split between the charity and the first golfer to ace the ninth hole. Soon he was up to his printing presses in reporters. His picture was taken with a giant facsimile of the $10,000 check, which was then hung for all to see from a tree by the ninth green along with a gulag bearing the company's name. All three local network affiliates trained their cameras on the hole throughout the event. "Streetfighter" Gets Big Publicity For Small Firms On Tight Budgets A Surge in Business Nobody collected the big prize, but Mr. Caffray wouldn't have minded. A winner would have meant even more publicity and it still would have cost only $450-the premium Lloyd's of London charge to insure him against loss of the $10,000. That was $300 cheaper than a line on the donor's board. "We got more publicity than we deserved," says Mr. Caffray, who credits the promotions for a surge in business. "I was even embarrassed because the contest got a little ahead of the tournament." Not too embarrassed, however; he is running the promotion again this year. |
As a former advertising man, Mr. Slutsky contends that "there's a tremendous amount of advertisers' money that is usually wasted in traditional advertising." He counsels clients to drop radio stations that promise long periods of commercial-free music because that makes it too easy for listeners to tune out before the commercial. He also believes that media time salesmen sell companies too much useless time at too high a cost. "I get a lot of hate mail from media
representatives," he says. In one letter, for example, a local radio station official says, "You are so misinformed that I'm surprised you get away with calling your organization a marketing institute."
"Institute" is a bit of a misnomer for a business comprised of a consulting service, seminars and a newsletter named, naturally, "Street-fighter." Mr. Slutsky sells a year's subscription and a taped marketing lesson. About 300 clients have bought this package. A Serious Operation Mr. Slutsky's promotional flair probably stems from his affection for Hollywood. While at Indiana University, the star-struck undergraduate called television producer Norman Lear to ask for a job as a writer, but he apparently didn't market himself too successfully. Mr. Lear said no. Some of his street-fightering tactics have left him bloody. During the height of the mechanical bull phase, to promote a bar he partly owned, he decided to introduce Fort Wayne's first mechanical animal at a "Bourban Cowboy Night." Only he didn't want to spend $8,000 for the real thing. On the appointed night, with a substantial crowd and a group of reporters present, he ceremoniously whipped a sheet off of a used, $50, kid-sized mechanical pony. "There was 30 seconds of silence," recalls Mr. Slutsky "One guy had driven 150 miles to practice on this thing. He wasn't amused. But with enough Jack Daniel's he went riding happily into the sunrise." |