How do you get the staff of nightclub, bars, restaurant, and lounges to support, endorse and recommend your product to customers?

The other day I was asked by a colleague of mine named Gerard Jansse, for some effective/creative techniques to get bartenders and venue staff to support, endorse, and recommend a new product. Gerard informed me that his client was looking to launch a new rum into the already crowded category. After thinking about the task that Gerard had before him and how difficult his task was, I began to craft my answer to his question and this is what I came up with:

When looking to market a product in a nightclub, bar, lounge setting, the marketer must remember to get bartender and venue support. The marketer must not forget to embrace those that interact with the consumer, or face the consequences. Unfortunately one marketer in general is starting to face the consequences. The marketer I am referring to is the liquor industry. The liquor industry has lost their way and seems to think that if you buy your product into a bar, nightclub, or lounge and get product on the shelf the job is done. Unfortunately this is not true. Once the product receives bar or venue space, and your signage is prominently displayed in the venue, the marketer must now figure out how to move that product. If the marketer is ignorant to the workings of the restaurant, bar, nightclub, and lounge industry, the product that they just paid to get into the establishment will die a slow and painful death due to the staff being unrewarded and uneducated. In order to get your product moving and gain the support of venue staff, one must embrace, reward, and educate them. The staff must know what makes your product, in this case rum, different from the competition. Differentiation comes through education (making this fun, maybe a game show setting where the staff can win cash and prizes when questions are answered correctly) and the way the product is displayed and served. The way the staff serves the product must be turned into an event. The staff must know unique mixology points about the product as well as the normal mixology. One can launch a master mixologist contest for the staff member that comes up with the best drink. You can also spur sales by incentivizing employees who meet certain sales goals for the next three, six, and twelve months. You can reward the individual bartenders or entire establishment staff with things such as being whisked away for an all expenses paid 3-5 day vacation where everything revolves around the product (i.e. distillery tours, manufacturing, tastings of upcoming products, booze cruises, etc), over sized tips at the end of the night if a certain number of bottles are sold, the opportunity to guest bartend at a world famous club, the label of master mixologist or head brand ambassador of your product where the staff member is used in ads, sent on tour, and is paid a salary. One thing that assists the staff in moving your product is visible signage throughout the venue.

Venue staff is a great way to get the ball rolling but even a rolling ball loses momentum after a while until someone gives it a push. Just like a ball needing a push, so do your sales, so don’t be scared of using promotional models to give sales the push they need to continue their momentum. If you decide to use models, remember one thing, make sure they know your product inside and out. No matter how hot or good looking the model, if they do not have product knowledge and I mean know everything about your product, you might as well flush your marketing dollars down the toilet. Please remember that a good majority of promotional models drink on the job when in a bar setting, can't tell you a damn thing about the product and think that doing an on-premise or in-store promotion is all about handing out premiums. Truth of the matter is the goal of doing an on-premise or in-store promotion is to educate your current and future customers and get them to try your product through education.

UNDERSTANDING THE NIGHT: A Marketers Guide to Product Marketing in the Nightclub and Bar Scene - Part 3

Now that you have become further educated on the industry, lets get back to these recent articles that have crossed my desk so I can show you why this is an area where companies should allocate more of their marketing budget. The first one was a press release from a company called Zoom Media, which is the nation’s largest nightclub/bar restroom billboard company. Below are two quotes from the press release:

“An overwhelming majority or 78 percent of bar visitors surveyed could recall at least one of four advertisers that ran ads on bar-based digital billboards according to the Zoom survey administered by the media research firm Arbitron. Additionally, the survey revealed that brand aided recall ranged from 37 to 53 percent, confirming that people not only saw the ads on the digital billboards, but remembered the advertisers.”

“According to the survey, 40 percent of the people polled said they frequented bars over 10 times a month. Additionally, Zoom estimates actual time spent in bars and clubs averages 2.5 hours per visit. "There's no question that the significant dwell time in front of these digital billboards allows for long exposure and increased awareness," said Lee Levitz, Zoom’s VP of Marketing. "Just as importantly, people are choosing to be in these social settings and consequently are much more receptive to advertising messages. When it comes to bar media, the ad opt-out generation is opting-in."

The second article that crossed my desk is also very relevant to this industry. It was in regard to sampling and ran in the May issue of Advertising Age. The article talked about how sampling is becoming the new mass medium. This article is relevant because liquor companies have been doing sampling in nightclubs and bars since the beginning of time. This alone should be more than enough justification that sampling is an effective medium. It is a medium that is accountable. Sampling offers accountability in a couple of ways:

· It is a medium that allows the marketer to give a URL to a micro site at time of the sampling to determine return on investment.

· It also allows companies to determine ROI by seeing if the sampling effort creates a spike in sales in the ZIP codes relevant to the sampling.

· Sampling can also be tracked via the issuing of coupons with the product sample for a discount on the product at point of purchase.

The third item was a press release issued by ASI (Advertising Specialty Institute) to see the cost-effectiveness of advertising specialties over other marketing mediums. This study proved what liquor companies and banks such as Commerce/TD Bank have known for years: that branded t-shirts, hats, key chains, pens, etc., are effective tools in building a brand no matter what the venue is. The data that this study uncovered is below, and it truly is remarkable:

• 84% of people remember the advertiser on a product they receive.
• 42% have a more favorable impression of an advertiser after receiving an advertising specialty.
• Nearly one quarter, or 24%, indicate that they are more likely to do business with an advertiser on items they receive.
• Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a product after receiving it.
• Writing instruments are the most commonly-owned advertising specialty, with 54% of respondents owning them, followed by shirts, caps and bags.
• The majority (81%) of promotional products were kept because they were considered useful.
• More than three-quarters of respondents have had their items for about seven months.
• Among wearables, bags were reported to be used most frequently, with respondents indicating that they use their bags on average nine times per month.
• Bags deliver the most impressions, with 1,038 impressions per month on average.
• The average cost-per-impression of an advertising specialty item is $0.004, making it less expensive per impression than nearly any other media. (According to Nielsen Media data, the CPI for a national magazine ad is $0.033; a newspaper ad is $0.0129; a prime time TV ad is $0.019; a cable TV ad is $0.007; a syndicated TV ad is $0.006; and a spot radio ad is $0.005)

The nightlife scene itself is truly remarkable. It is a scene that gives birth to fashion, music, culinary delights, technology and more. This scene allows people to get creative and reinvent themselves. This scene allows the consumer to let their guard down and get bombarded by different forms of brand marketing. Brands that most likely have been created with influences that have evolved out of nightlife. So stop procrastinating, loosen your tie, let your hair down, and start allocating more of your marketing dollars to reaching your consumers of today, tomorrow, and the future in an environment that offers your brand consumer interaction for every budget.