Never a Lack of Ideas

A Fan Club Worth Joining When it comes to providing concert tickets to its most dedicated fans, Pearl Jam has the best ticketing system of any band in the world. The main reason is simple – the band rewards the people who have been fans of the band the longest with the best seats in the house. Any company who runs a customer reward program should pay close attention to the way that Pearl Jam issues tickets to its concerts. The Perfect System Pearl Jam charges $20 per year to join its fan club, called the Ten Club. In a nutshell, here’s how Pearl Jam sells concert tickets to its fan club members: Ticket Pre-Sale. Members of the Ten Club are able to purchase a limited number of tickets to any of the band’s shows via www.pearljam.com . Concert tickets are available to Ten Club members before they go on sale to the general public. Benefit of joining the fan club: The opportunity to purchase tickets before the general public. Ticket Distribution. When purchasing tickets, fan club members ...

It’s Like a Lemonade Stand, but Without Costs Kids who grow up on golf courses tend to try to sell passing golfers the golf balls that they find in their yards. The average proposition is something like: “$0.50 per golf ball” or “10 balls for $4.” I saw the greatest backyard golf ball stand while playing Ruffled Feathers Golf Course in Lemont, IL (pictured above). It’s a fancy course, and it’s the fanciest setup that I’ve ever seen. Yes, We Have That Take a look at the golf balls that these boys were selling from their backyard (pictured, left to right): Titleist ProV1s – $2 each Calloways – $1 each Titleists (non-ProV1s) – $1 each Nikes – $1 each Bags of Assorted Balls (lesser quality) – $5 for 12 balls These boys cater to every type of golfer. Great golfers are going to go for the $1-2 balls. Hackers (like me), who don’t care what type of ball they play, will go for the dozen balls for just $5. They have an impressive line of products and a great, easy-to-understand display. I bo...

A Dance Revolution Organized dances are all the rage at weddings these days. Brides and grooms are even bringing formalized funkiness to their walk down the aisle. YouTube’s newest stars are a recently married from Minnesota who organized the dance down the aisle that you see above. Millions of people have viewed this video. So why hasn’t David’s Bridal taken notice and used this as an opportunity to promote wedding creativity and their brand at the same time? It’s a Dance-Off! David’s Bridal, one of the country’s leading sellers of wedding and bridal party dresses, should partner with theknot.com , the web’s most popular wedding website, in order to promote a wedding dance-off contest. Here’s how it would work: Brides and grooms would be invited to videotape their most creative wedding dances and submit them to The Knot. Visitors to the site would vote on the most creative videos and the winning couple would receive a “retroactively-free wedding” worth $50,000. Return on Investment If...

A Lesson In Simplicity I took the above photo at US Cellular Field, where the White Sox were playing the Yankees. The picture is of the White Sox scoreboard in left field. Read the message carefully. Then let me ask you: if you needed help from security, would you have time to text “rise above,” your location, and a brief description of the problem to 78464? And how are you going to remember that number in the event of an actual emergency? Add This to Your To-Do List Communication is about simplicity. Whether it’s a message on a scoreboard or a proposal in a boardroom, if your message is too complicated, nobody will remember it or pay attention to it – no matter what. When you’re crafting important marketing messages, find someone who is not involved in the process and ask him/her to evaluate the message for simplicity. If your spouse, kids, or friends can’t understand the message, then there’s a good chance that your intended audience won’t understand it either. There’s never a lack o...