Let me start by splitting hairs.
Frequently, publicity gets referred to as free advertising. This is a common misunderstanding. There is an important distinction between advertising and publicity. You pay for advertising and you control the content. With publicity, you don't have to pay (it's articles and shows about your product) and you have no control over the content. It is the journalist who writes what he wants -- good or bad.
However, this just happens to be a story about free advertising.
It takes place during my ice cream days. We were trying to get into supermarkets and compete head to head with Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's. In taste competitions, we always beat them. Journalists would ask why and I would explain that both Haagen-Dazs and Ben & Jerry's were French-style ice creams that used egg yolks in their recipes. Since I objected to the sulphury taste of egg yolks and felt it overshadowed the subtlety of delicate flavors like vanilla and fruit, I didn't use eggs. While my ice cream was as rich and as dense as my two major competitors, my ice cream had a clean, pure dairy taste that enhanced subtle flavors. I would tell journalists that I believed ice cream came from cows, not chickens.
In our efforts to get placed in supermarkets we signed up to exhibit at the FMI convention held in Chicago. FMI stands for Food marketing Institute and they would hold these humongous conventions for supermarket executives who would come from all over the world. This particular year, McCormick Place was the venue. If you have never been there, suffice to say that the exhibition space is large enough to have all National Football League games played simultaneously and there would still be room for several college games as well.
Nearly every manufacturer who sells wares through supermarkets puts on a display. And no one skimps. Floor space is exorbitantly expensive and some large food concerns don't hold back. Companies like Coke and Pepsi construct breathtaking architectural and technological wonders. Some companies (Budweiser, for example) put on stage shows in their exhibits featuring the characters from their popular television commercials. Other companies featured sports figures or movie/television personalities. Wheaties, for instance, had some well-known Olympic gold medalists in its booth. Playboy magazine had its Bunnies and Playmates. And not to be outdone, Penthouse had its "whatevers."
And everyone serves food and/or drink. Even if you are extremely particular about what you eat, you'd more than satisfy your hunger even if you ate just one bite-sized free sample per booth. I am a fussy vegetarian and I was so full at the end of the afternoon I didn't want to think about dinner.
Now, into this arena of excess, marched the "juggernaut" from The Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company. We could not afford even the smallest booth space for ourselves but fortunately we had been invited by the state of Iowa to be in its "Taste of Iowa" booth . This booth wasn't on the main exhibition floor but on a subterranean floor of an auxiliary building. It definitely was far removed from the main action. We ended up sharing this space with two popcorn companies, one barbeque sauce company, and a fruit cake baker from Nebraska.
We had five feet of frontage.
Even given its poor (and tiny) location vis a vis the big manufacturers, we still had plenty of traffic since most executives toured the entire show. Unfortunately, when they finally got around to us, they were so totally over-stimulated, over-titillated, overwhelmed, jaded, satiated, and carrying their overloaded stomachs around in wheelbarrows so the idea of eating another bite, even if this was the premiere taste sensation of the entire show, was abhorrent to these guys.
So, how did we compete in this high dollar and high glitz environment?
It turns out that concurrent with the expo were presentations on various aspects of the supermarket industry to large audiences. The speakers for those presentations were the same executives we wanted to contact. So instead of standing in our booth and trying to entice passers-by to taste our ice cream, we wrote letters of invitation to each speaker to come and visit us and guaranteeing them that just a taste of our ice cream was worth the trip.
Now here is the best part. We then went to a Federal Express box, commandeered a stack of cardboard envelops, addressed them to each speaker, and just before any presentation was to about to begin, we hand delivered the FedEx letter. It created quite an impact. Most presenters were tickled by the chutzpah and cleverness of our approach and actually visited us.
Whatever bad karma I incurred for taking those envelops, I'm sure I've repaid many times over in the high prices I've paid FedEx for subsequent deliveries.
That's funny. I just had a discussion about eggs in ice cream. We decided it was odd. Good call. Way to "hack away the unessential."
Speaking of free advertising, you're never going to tell us the name of the ice cream brand, are you?
Posted by: Rachel Stoltenberg | March 14, 2007 at 06:31 AM
I did. It was The Great Midwestern Ice Cream Company.
Posted by: Fred Gratzon | March 14, 2007 at 07:01 AM
Oops. Silly me.
Posted by: Rachel | March 15, 2007 at 11:15 AM
Ingenious indeed!
thanks for sharing.
Posted by: Wealth Building Lessons | April 06, 2007 at 05:23 PM
Nice graphical refitting! :)
Posted by: Mayo | April 07, 2007 at 04:45 PM
Great article!
Posted by: Thomas Cali | April 16, 2007 at 01:16 PM
Good point about publicity being non-targeted. And how you turned that into your advantage.
Love the new layout!
Posted by: Juho Tunkelo | May 13, 2007 at 10:54 AM
Thanks for your book !
A Really Great Help !
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Posted by: Ng Yong Hui | May 23, 2007 at 08:12 AM
Great story. You know, journalists don't always deliberately misquote you when they're giving you free publicity. The last journalist who interviewed me said that he really struggles to read his shorthand sometimes and has to guess!
Posted by: CathLawson | May 30, 2007 at 05:11 PM
Hey Fred, we just set up our own blog site to talk about our own lazy philosophy of life. Googling around to see if anyone else out there was doing something similar I found your site, and it's already inspired a post (I don't know how to use the talkback thing).
http://lazyview.blogspot.com/2007/06/success-vs-adequacy.html
Posted by: Mike | June 01, 2007 at 09:23 AM
i'm gonna make use of this article.
jenny
http://www.spaml.com
Posted by: disposable email | June 01, 2007 at 03:13 PM
I just love free advertising
Posted by: Steven Carriere | June 03, 2007 at 08:47 PM
Great information.
Posted by: David and Lorrie Couch | July 05, 2007 at 12:41 PM
Sweet! Loved that story. By the way, with all that sweetness, who is taking care of those pearly whites? Get the scoop on where to get a really sweet deal on that too!
Posted by: Jaye Johnson | August 11, 2007 at 03:25 PM
Finally, free advertising is really free.
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Posted by: steven k boughton | August 06, 2008 at 03:01 PM
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Posted by: Rob Towns | August 15, 2008 at 05:18 PM
Nice Job! Here from googlefirstpagetips.blogspot we are lazy laws followers too!
Posted by: andre | November 10, 2010 at 04:23 PM
This is definitely something we would like to share at our social group I hope you can share more in the future .We would love to have you on our show one of these days !
Posted by: Janneth Whitworth | November 23, 2010 at 08:02 AM
This is definitely a topic that would really be great for the full potential show with host James Rick at http://www.fullpotential.com
Posted by: Janneth Whitworth | November 23, 2010 at 08:04 AM
now I'm craving for ice cream after reading this! haha! I think that's free advertising right there!
- Jack Leak
Posted by: Jack's Muscle Building Diets | August 28, 2011 at 03:54 PM