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Thanks to Redbox’s Free Movie Mondays, last night I brought home the the poker flick All In.

I over paid….by roughly two hours.

The poor acting and cheesy dialog (”Is you in, or is you out?”) - forgivable. The ridiculous yet predictable plot (pre-med student finds herself at the final table of the PartyPoker.com™ All In $5 Million Tournament playing against her cold hearted-scam running-doctor nemesis AND her compulsive gambler-navy seal-supposedly dead since she was ten-father) - overlookable.

Naming the movie after a poker term that the writers didn’t understand - inexcusable. Here’s the scene that put me over the edge:

She had 90% of the chips. Her opponent had 10% of the chips. He calls “all in” (which, for any non-poker players, is just a dramatic way of betting the amount that you have left). She answers with her own “all in.” At this point, the announcer let’s everyone know that both players were “all in” and that this hand would determine the winner.

What? That’s like saying she was putting up $90 to cover his $10 bet. It makes no sense. If he won (which he didn’t…surprise) she would have still had 80% of the total chips.

At this point in the movie I went from being train wreck amused to just annoyed. Clearly, as poker hit its peak of popularity a couple years ago, the producers (probably over a few drinks) decided it would be a good idea to crank out a movie about it. Ugh.

It reminds me of companies that jump on every bandwagon regardless of how well it fits with their product. People don’t buy into these attempts because they clearly lack authenticity. It’s going green just to fit in. It’s starting a Facebook page for your facial wash. It’s the kind of thing Seth talks about all the time.

Customers will excuse a lot of things if you’re sincere. Small businesses especially can get the benefit of the doubt if they treat their customers well and run the company with integrity. When you cross the line though, it’s obvious. The collective wisdom of the crowd is much more than you can expect to fake out. Don’t try it.

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What made last year’s Nationwide Super Bowl commercial such a hit? Was it the topical use of K-Fed and “Life comes at you fast”? Surely that helped, but Nationwide VP of Marketing, Steven Schreibman, believes it was releasing the spot online one week before the game.

In his recent Daily Fix blog post, he talks about all the publicity it generated by not waiting for the Super Bowl. Essentially, people respect “Super Bowl Commercials,” and the opportunity to see one online early drove 600,000 people to the Nationwide site.

The point of his post seemed to be that companies weren’t fully utilizing the millions they were spending, and more advertisers should take the same route Nationwide did.

I’d challenge the conclusion of his post.

The question shouldn’t be “Why don’t other companies use this tactic?” The question should be, “What other tactic could be used to set the commercial apart and gain an advantage?”

I think that the early release strategy worked so well for Nationwide because they were the only one that did it. If more companies used the same tactic, they wouldn’t have had the same edge. In other words, Nationwide zigged while the rest of the advertisers zagged, and THAT gave them the added buzz.

GoDaddy was able to build buzz by producing multiple versions of their ads, and then showing the ones censored by the network on their website. Again, if every company had lots of variations and “banned” versions - GoDaddy wouldn’t stand out.

The bottom line is that every company ponying up the cash for a Super Bowl ad tries to produce the most memorable spot. That makes standing out based on content alone a difficult challenge. The real winners are the ones that figure out how to set themselves apart by using some other factor.

Apparently, everyone is talking about the new Pizza Mia pizza from Pizza Hut.

The funny thing though, is that I haven’t heard anyone talking about it. I hadn’t even heard of Pizza Mia prior to the commercial that informed me that everyone was talking about it…

There’s a reason why consumers don’t trust advertising. Marketers have abused their position for too long. They’ve hyped unworthy products and made exaggerated claims. They’ve overused misleading statements and small print. All in all, they’ve just served up too much BS for consumers to take most advertisements seriously.

This may seem like bad news - but it’s not. It actually provides a great opportunity to build a competitive advantage by establishing rapport with your customers and prospects. Doing so can put you ahead of every run of the mill company that thinks candy coating and over promising is the only way.

My advice is to try out some candor in your communication. Tell the unbiased truth and see where it gets you. Sure, it’s going to feel awkward at first; we’ve all been conditioned to over promise and hide shortcomings. However, think about how much more you trust someone when they admit a fault or stop trying to impress you. It works. Give it a shot.

High Fidelity was on VH1 today. I really like that movie, so I put my work aside and decided to sit on the couch and watch it. Five minutes after sitting down though, I regretted my decision. I realized that I was watching the edited for TV version with commercials. Ugh.

What if, when you are watching a movie on TV, you have the opportunity to upgrade to the original w/ no commercials. I see it working like this:

1) I turn on my TV and watch 10 minutes of High Fidelity.
2) A pop-up appears on the screen to tell me that I can rent the movie and watch it un-edited and commercial free.
3) Using my remote, I navigate to the “Upgrade” option within my cable providers on screen menu.
4) They charge me a couple of bucks and tack it on to my bill.
5) The movie switches from live TV to an On Demand type viewing of High Fidelity.
6) It gives me the option to pick up right where I left off on TV, or to start over.
7) I watch the movie without commercials and the cable company makes a few extra bucks.

With TV scrambling to figure out new revenue sources, I think live upgrades could be one answer to their problem. I’d even say that the same thing could be applied to sitcoms. What if, for $1, you could elect to watch an hour of programing without commercials? Just a thought…

Restless Legs Syndrom (RLS) probably affects less than 10% of the population. Studies have found that the number is between 3-15%. So, if it is right in the middle - it’s 9%.

Commercials for drug treatment are shown during prime time television though. That means a few things:

a) The drug company is paying 10x the dollar amount, per acquired customer, then if they were only able to show the commercial to those with RLS. This ultimately increases the price they have to charge for the drugs.

b) 91% of the population has to watch commercials that have absolutely no relevance to them. This fuels channel surfing and DVR commercial skipping.

What’s a drug company to do? How can that waste be eliminated? Should networks allow commercials that are irrelevant to the vast majority of their viewing audience? Would people would hate commercials less if they didn’t have to sit though boring and non-applicable product pitches?

I don’t have the answers, but it’s interesting to think about…. at least for me.

Quick Recap:
The David definition of an “up-sell” is making the customer’s decision to purchase more - as easy as possible. The customer’s decision becomes easier as you add more value to the proposition. Value is added though the product itself (tangible and intangible benefits) as well as the terms of the transaction. Finally, the delivery (way you present the up-sell) will influence how effective it is.

Let’s get back to TV. Here are the three tactics again - this time with what I believe to be the underlying delivery concept.

1) The theme song comes AFTER an opening scene
This flip flop of traditional order is the TV equivalent to a “buy now, pay later”deal. Just as the opening credits are much less exciting than the actual show, the work involved in paying for a product can be considered a hassle (depending on the transaction). Patrons enjoy bar tabs because it allows the drinks to keep coming without stopping to pay each time. It’s not like traditional retail of goods in which AFTER paying - the product can be consumed. Again, it’s the shakeup of this order that helps to sell so many extra drinks.

2) Two shows are cross faded
Consider this a bundle. By linking the two shows, they blur the lines between individual segments and offer a seamless entertainment experience. This is in contrast to selling twice, or trying to convince the consumer to accept the up-sell at a time after the initial decision to purchase. In other words, even though it may all be part of one transaction, a customers decision to accept an up-sell is often made separately than the decision to purchase the initial product or service. Not so with a bundle. Think of the value meals offered by fast food restaurants. You aren’t making three separate decisions to purchase a burger, fries, and the a drink - you see the three products as one meal.

3) Extended initial segments without commercials
In TV, the more you watch of a show, the more likely you are to finish it. You get caught up in the program and don’t want to give up seeing the end - even if you do have to pay by watching commercials. I associate this with providing a free trial. There are a lot of companies whose up-sell is actually needed to achieve the first revenue. Consider, LogMeIn, Basecamp, YouSendIt and the many other companies that give the most basic version of their service away for free. Generally, in order to get you to upgrade to a paid version, they offer a free trial so that you can see the difference. They are hoping that once you use the upgraded version for long enough, that you won’t want to go back to the basics.

And so, the delivery of an up-sell can be manifested in many different ways. If you look for them, you will notice it almost everywhere. In fact, you don’t even have to leave the couch.

OK, so you don’t run a network. I get it. However, the tactics they use can be boiled down to some basic principles that that can be applied many other businesses.

Actually, let’s side step that for this post so that I can clarify something. When I say “up-sell,” I’m talking about ways to sell a customer more than he or she originally intended to purchase. I’m not advocating that you find ways to tricking the customer into spending more. Some examples:

Bad:
After choosing your entree, the waitress asks you which side you would like. Thinking it comes with your meal, you pick one of the choices she gives you. Later, you find out that it wasn’t included - and you just bought a very expensive bowl of soup.

Bad:
While purchasing a $29 service online you fill in your information and are sent to a page telling you that your credit card was just charged for $39. You retrace your steps and find that on a prior page you didn’t specifically opt out of an additional service - so they tacked it on to your bill.

Good:
While buying business cards you are given the option to add matching stationary at a reduced price.

My point is, there’s a balance between being persuasive and being shady. I’d define effective up-selling as making the customer’s decision to purchase more as easy as possible.

Within that definition, the line in the sand is that you can’t deceive or make the decision for them. If the customer leaves with a bad taste in his/her mouth, you’ve done it wrong. You may generate additional income in the short run, but over time your going to lose business and damage your reputation.

However, the more value you provide (time savings, discounts, additional entertainment, etc.), the easier the decision becomes for the customer. Within the PostcardPerfect kiosks, for example, we try to up-sell the customer to send additional cards. We make it an easy choice by dropping the price per card and allowing them to reuse components of their first postcard (picture, message, addresses) to lessen the time commitment.

So, the first step in up-selling is deciding what to sell. After that, you have to add customer value to the offer. The final step, which I inadvertently started with by discussing TV, is the offer delivery. We’ll get back to that in Part 3.

I really think that up-selling is underrated. The potential is huge - but many businesses don’t give it much attention. On the flip side of the coin, some are really good at it. You know who upsells millions of people every day?
TV networks.

Think about it. They want you to tune in for as long as possible, right? You tune in to consume (watch) one show and before you know it - you just watched three. How do they do it? Here’s three tactics I’ve noticed:

1) The theme song comes AFTER an opening scene
There’s a phrase to describe this, I just can’t remember it. “cold start?” “dead start?” Either way, it’s effective. It’s much easier to turn off / change channels during the opening credits than it is during the actual show.

2) Two shows are cross faded
Many channels now practically overlap programs to make sure you see the begining of the next show. For example, they will minimize the credits of the show you just finished to a small part of the screen, and launch into the first scene of the next show. Before you realize it - you just got sucked into something you had no intention of watching.

3) Extended initial segments without commercials
Essentially, they show you a nice chunk of the show before any commercials, and then run ads much more frequently for the rest of the program. This further sets the hook so that by the time a commercial rolls around you are too caught up in the show to leave.

So there you have it, the reason why some of my nights are wasted watching shows I don’t really care about.

There’s a lot more to the concepts they use, but this is enough for one post.

WHAT TV TEACHES US ABOUT UP-SELLING - PART 2

OK, so you don’t run a network. I get it. However, the tactics they use can be boiled down to some basic principles that that can be applied many other businesses….

(Gotcha. Seriously though…read part two here.)