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Bullys and the funny thing about being different

May 4, 2014

Dare to be different

This week I was at a really great event organised by the Diana Award, which is the only charity bearing the name of the former Princess of Wales inspired by her belief that young people have the power to change toe world for the better.

The event was held at the European Headquarters of Facebook in Dublin and it was part of the Diana Award schools Anti bullying programme. In their very effective programme they organise activities in schools to help eradicate bullying and as part of that they quite cleverly appoint and train anti-bullying ambassadors in the school.

The ambassadors are chosen from the students themselves and judging from the results we witnessed in the videos the programmes have been very effective. We were invited to the event because of our Safebook poster, which has been used by many of the participating schools as part of their anti cyber-bullying work.

There was one huge common thread to the speeches and stories that I heard on the day.

Tessy Ojo the CEO of Diana Award spoke about being bullied as a child because she was so tall.

Brian McFadden of Westlife fame spoke about being bullied because he liked stage and dance when all his schoolmates were playing football.

Young actor Will Poulter spoke about being bullied because he was into acting.

We heard some of the young children speak in the videos about being bullied because they had red hair, because they had freckles, because they were chubby or because they were black.

The one thing that pretty much everyone being bullied had in common was that they were different in some way – being different in any way can get you bullied!

I was chatting about this event with my son, Brendan and he sent me on a link to a video produced by a really popular guy online, 19 year old Cian Twomey about how he has been cyberbullied. Cian is really popular, producing funny clever videos and on Facebook alone he has built up a following of over 180,000 since late last year.

In his video he explains how along with huge numbers of followers he seems to be gathering ‘haters‘ as he gains in popularity, which really hurts him in particular when they get really nasty. One person was so horrible they even referred to Cian’s father who had recently passed away. Is this another case of someone being bullied because they are different?

Being different

Ironically in our work at Fuzion with clients the first thing we do with clients is find out how they are different!

Being different is what makes you stand out, it’s what makes you interesting – whether its a product, a service or the individuals involved we aways look for how these are different and this is where the magic is, that sets you and your business apart from from the competitors. This difference will get you media coverage and attention from customers and will contribute to your success.

The most successful musicians, artists, models, designers, products and services are the ones that are different.

So …if you are being bullied because you are a little bit different just realise that this is what makes you really special and in time you will be the one getting the right attention.

Vive la Différence (long live difference) as the French would say ! 

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Bullying, Entertainment, Facebook, Marketing, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Racism, Self Help, Social Media | 1 Comment »

Win at all costs?

April 29, 2014

Mourinho celebrating against Liverpool

Besides being totally and utterly devastated after watching Liverpool lose the advantage in the title charge because of a defeat to a very cynical, Jose Mourinho, Chelsea side I was surprised at the mixed reaction to the match.

In my view, (which I realise is totally biased because I am a Liverpool fan) I felt Chelsea came and effectively cheated their way to an awful victory.

Despite having 190 million pounds worth of talent on the pitch Jose Mourinho instructed his team to spoil the football match by constantly disrupting it by time wasting and then ‘parking two buses‘ in front of the goal – it was a successful ploy as Chelsea won the match and Liverpool despite being the better team couldn’t create a clear chance or a piece of magic that would lead to a goal.

How could those talented players want to perform like this? Is this why he lost the support of some of the players at Real Madrid?

I’m gutted that horrible, spoiling tactics won the match for Chelsea and that the win came from an awful, misfortunate slip by the most passionate player on the pitch, Stephen Gerrard, which led to a simple gift of a goal.

In there was any fairness wouldn’t you think that if any luck was going on the day it would be to the team that tried to play football and not to the nasty, negative and horrible Mourinho and his team? I was sick watching him run to the supporters punching his chest after they scored – “you deserve nothing” I felt.

After the game this view was shared by nearly every Liverpool fan I spoke to and so many others – how can such cynicism win through, it’s bad for football, why didn’t the ref punish time wasting at the beginning of the match instead of at 92 minutes when the damage was done?

While this was the most popular view I was surprised by how many others who felt it was a tactical masterpiece, his aim was to spoil and he succeeded, who cares how you do it, isn’t winning the objective?

After all, how you win is irrelevant..

In your business is it win at all costs?

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Management, Motivation, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Sport, Teamwork | 10 Comments »

Good Friday and the Scarcity Principle

April 18, 2014

Good Friday - The Scarcity Principle

I’d do anything for a drink in the pub right now..

It’s always the same on Good Friday – once you know all the pubs and off-licences are closed you want nothing more. We can have wine or beer at home, like we do frequently on a Friday evening but on this day you would just want to go to the pub!

As usual in the lead up to Good Friday we heard the publican and the restaurant lobby groups giving out quite rightly about the antiquated law, which has no sale of alcohol permitted in Ireland unless it is in a club or unless you are a guest in a hotel.

The Scarcity Principle

Robert Cialdini, one of the foremost experts on influence, found that people value and desire something more when it is rare or difficult to obtain. He called this the Scarcity Principle. Across numerous experiments, Cialdini and others have found that making something rare (“only 5 left”), time limited (“one day sale”), or unique (“just for you”), increases its perceived attractiveness and value.

He explains that this Scarcity Principle works on the idea of Reactance.

Essentially, it happens because none of us like to be told no, limited in any way, or have our freedom constrained. So, when we think we might miss out, not be chosen, or be denied what we want, we “react”. That reactance makes us try all the harder and want what is denied us all the more.

In some strange way maybe this is a great marketing trick for pubs and restaurants as all of sudden we ‘desire’ a visit!

Maybe pubs and restaurants should embrace the day and take the opportunity to do some minor renovations, repairs, spring cleaning or take some precious time off and get ready for that rush..

What are you doing to create some scarcity in your business?

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

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Posted in Hospitality, Ireland, Marketing, Motivation | Leave a Comment »

Crisis, What Crisis?

April 18, 2014

Supertramp - Crisis, What Crisis?

Little did I know that in 1977 when I was listening to ground breaking music with our very cool Spanish summer student that years later some of this would continue to make an impact.

I was just 12 years of age and I was listening to music by fabulous bands and artists such as ELO, Lou Reed, Supertramp and Bob Dylan.

That summer we listened to some incredible albums including Face the Music (ELO), Even in the Quietest Moments (Supertramp), Street Hassle (Lou Reed) and one that always stuck in my mind was Crisis, What Crisis? by Supertramp.

I loved the name of the album, the cover was really cool and the music lived up to the promise.

My passion for music kicked off that summer so much so that I ended up opening my own music stores (I reckon I made a lot of landlords wealthy!) in my twenties and now we find ourselves often operating in the Crisis business.

Crisis PR

Much of our normal PR work is planned out in advance with our clients having clear communication objectives – its our job to secure media coverage to achieve these objectives.

With Crisis PR work you can get a call on a Sunday, which requires you to drop everything that you are doing and jump into action for an organisation that requires immediate help to deal with a situation. These situations are always different, they require clever thinking on your feet and inevitably they are very fluid, often changing by the minute.

Sometimes an organisation has the benefit of some advance warning where they have prior knowledge of something that could happen, which they know may require careful handling with the media and other stakeholders.

Over the last number of years this seems to have been an area of our business, which has grown and grown. We have recruited deliberately to give a great service in this area as our team now includes ex-journalists, individuals with political communication experience, individuals who provide media training and others with significant TV experience.

We also find that our expertise in social media is vital in a crisis situation as you can track issues, mentions and sentiment about the issue. This helps greatly with our media communications as you can gauge the temperature of an issue and use this information to often correct misunderstandings.

Crisis Planning

Just like you take out an insurance policy to protect against risk it is a really good idea to have a plan in place to prepare your organisation for a crisis situation.

No organisation can afford to hide in a crisis as it has the potential to damage relationships with clients and stakeholders, wreak havoc with an organisation’s reputation, seriously effect revenue and in some cases lead to closure. Social media in particular can accelerate the speed and damage from a crisis situation.

We work with our clients in advance of any potential crisis, planning such things as:-

  • Reactive Statements
  • Preparing spokespeople, including Media Training
  • Monitoring traditional and online media
  • Devising a plan that will be put into place should a potential crisis become a reality
  • Developing an Internal Communications Strategy to include communications to relevant stakeholders
  • Crisis Social Media Strategy

Hopefully you will never need our Crisis PR services but if that ever happens you know we are ready…

Greg Canty

Fuzion with offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland offer a full Crisis PR Service. Deirdre Waldron, (Partner) heads up the Crisis PR team, which includes former journalists, media training and social media expertise.

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Posted in Crisis PR, PR | 2 Comments »

A Night of Passion

April 13, 2014

Passion

This was going to be a busy night dancing between three events ..

First up Eamon Curtin, Programme Manager of the IGNITE Programme had arranged for an incredible speaker to tell us about his fantastic start-up journeys. Raomal Perera, now a Professor of Entrepreneurship told the group of young entrepreneurs about how he scaled the dizzy heights with two companies, ISOCOR (listed on NASDAQ in 1996), which he sold and Network365, which was ultimately purchased by Intel in 2013.

Raomal PereraThe very passionate and honest Raomal,who has won many entrepreneur awards gave the group precious advice about funding a business and dealing with Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists. He told the group that the first things they look for in a young business they consider investing in, is the Integrity and PASSION of the people involved.

Next up we headed to L’Atitude 51 for the International Wine and Food Society “Best of Local Producers” event where we sampled the best of wine which was carefully selected by the joint owner Beverley Mathews who is as passionate about wine as the guest food producers.

The wine was accompanied by the finest food from some of the best of local food producers. We heard from Frank Hederman who has been smoking salmon for over 30 years, we heard from the owner of On The Pigs Back about the fantastic cheeses and best of all was our butcher from Kanturk.

Jack McCarthy, Butcher KanturkJack McCarthy, 5th generation butcher was both entertaining and no-nonsense as he lit up the room with his passion for spicing beef, black pudding, haggis and tongue – you just wanted to plan an immediate trip to Kanturk and stock up on anything that this passionate man was selling.

Our final event of the evening was the Mark Geary gig at Coughlan’s Bar, which has just been voted IMRO’s best live venue in Ireland. This is an incredible and well deserved accolade for this cosy venue, which is a huge credit to the woman behind all of this, Edel Curtin. Bands all over Ireland and Cork music fans are lucky to have such a passionate person as Edel bringing us great gigs in such an intimate venue on a regular basis.

Mark Geary

After a little wait our buddy Mark Geary and his band of merry men and the fabulous Grainne Hunt came on stage and entertained us in his inimitable style complete with great songs, great story telling and a special sense of humour. This was a great gig with a special solo cover of a Tom Waits song by Grainne ..beautiful!

Mark could have brought a small band with him for this intimate gig but this is a passionate artist who prefers to give his audience everything instead of making a few extra bob and doing just enough.

We had a really great and quite diverse night, but the one thing that was the same and made everything special, whether it was business, wine, food, music or running a venue was Passion.

Raomal was right …Passion is the most important ingredient of all.

Does what you do allow your passion to shine through? 

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

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Posted in Business Start Ups, Customer Care, Entertainment, Events, Motivation, Positivity | 2 Comments »

Seven Tips to Building Your Online Tribe

April 8, 2014

Tribesman

“I’ve set up my social media platforms but I’m finding it very difficult to build a following” is a problem I hear from many of our clients and I know they look to me for a simple solution, a magic trick, a special feature or some nugget of advice that will solve this dilemma easily.

I’m sorry, the bad news is that there is no one trick or piece of magic but of course it can be done if you follow some of my tips. I’ll assume in preparing these tips that you want the right people following and not just numbers purchased online from click farms for the sake of looking popular.

Here are my seven magic tips that I believe will work for you:

1. The Tribe Mentality and Getting the Basics right

You must think in terms of building your tribe at all times and this involves exercising a discipline and structure that allows you to easily pick up new followers.

When you set up any of your social media platforms make sure you execute the process of inviting your email database to follow you, include social media links on your website and on your email signature and make it easy for people to subscribe to your e-newsletter or follow your blog.

Another simple piece of advice here is to highlight your social presence offline on all posters, adverts, signage, shopping bags and other materials where someone may interact with your business or service.

2. Start the chat,  you’re not Kim Kardashian!

Kim Kardashian & Greg CantyWe all have to do a little reality check about what type of business we are and realise that it is quite possible we do not have the natural appeal of  Kim. This is a real dilemma for certain businesses who being honest you may not be inclined to automatically follow such as the Insurance Broker in Ranelagh or the Chiropodist in Gort.

My advice to any businesses without the “Kim” appeal (that’s most of us!) is that they must initiate a lot of the social media chat by first doing the following and then interact with what that target audience are saying.

While it’s vital that we get our own message across in our communications it’s just as important that we achieve awareness for ourselves by interacting with others. Join the conversation of others, share and retweet their posts and in no time at all you will find they will do the same for you, which will bring you new followers.

3. Lose the robot, talk about the match

At some point in time we were taught about formal business communications, which has us often behaving like robots. The beauty of online is that we can lose much of the formality that can choke normal written communications and this allows us to show some of the really important attributes about our business such as our personality, our humour, our interests, our caring side and how passionate we are about things that matter to us.

It’s amazing the difference it makes to a business relationship when you discover that a prospect is also a hugely passionate Liverpool FC fan!

4. “Like” and Stop Selling

Being realistic why would someone want to become a member of your online tribe?

The Facebook word “Like” can really focus you here when you are communicating and the word dislike can be just as useful. I’ll follow you on twitter, subscribe to your blog, read your newsletter or connect with you on LinkedIn as long as it delivers some benefit to me – it should be an experience that I “Like“.

Are you going to give me advice, make me smile, be nice, let me be the first to know about special offers, offer me samples, invite me to exclusive events, promote my business, help me to solve problems, enrich my life in some way or do you just want me to Buy, Buy, Buy?

If  the online platforms are used to deliver benefits to your tribe, to build relationships and rapport with them, the sales will look after themselves.

5. Brushing your teeth

In the same way that brushing once a month won’t do your teeth any good, posting infrequently online will do your business no good.

The biggest stumbling block to success that I see with clients is that they struggle to make online activity part of their regular routine. It’s vital that you do your weekly blog post, that you schedule your newsletter, that you post daily on all of your social media platforms and this becomes part of the normal running of the business.

Every time you post you are effectively promoting your business, which is a great habit to get into just like brushing your teeth!

6. The Power of You

Just as we want to build our tribe of followers it’s really important to leverage the tribe that you have within your organisation. Online activity comes alive through person to person interactions – I’d much prefer to talk to a person rather than a logo.

Where possible I would encourage as many individuals as possible to pro-actively wave a flag for the business online, which spreads the workload, maximises the reach but also increases the effectiveness. This works as long as there is a good solid social media policy and a clear understanding around objectives and key messages.

Where companies have accounts online it is always a good idea to introduce the person behind the posts where appropriate. I have seen Eircom doing this quite effectively on Twitter and it adds a degree of trust to their content.

Show me the money

7. Show me the money!

While you can do all of the right things to build the size of your online tribe there is a time where you just have to advertise to accelerate this process.

With Facebook, advertising is essential both to build a following and then subsequently to reach them with your communications. At the moment success on Twitter isn’t as dependant on budget but unless you are as popular as Kim you will need budget to build your following quickly.

Summary

Like everything else in business nothing comes easy and if you want to build your online tribe you either get a body like Kim, do a reality TV show and have a baby with Kanye West or else roll the sleeves up and do it the hard way!

Good luck with your tribe..

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion PR and Marketing who offer Social Media Consultancy and Training to clients from our offices in Dublin and Cork.

http://www.fuzion.ie

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Posted in Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media | 2 Comments »

Career changing photographs

April 6, 2014

Tommy Doyle, High Court Case against Guinness

I walked out the door of the High Court with my good friend, Tommy Doyle and out jumped a photographer.

Before I knew it Tommy put his arm around me and “snap” the photo was taken, which appeared in national newspapers the following day as they covered Tommy’s high profile High Court case against Guinness, which had been settled on the day.

This court case was very high profile with the media as Tommy Doyle was a former Kerry GAA star with seven All-Ireland medals and here he was taking on the might of Guinness in a constructive dismissal case with strong suggestions of a price fixing cartel, which was a potential time bomb for the industry.

When I was General Manager of a Guinness subsidiary in Cork, Deasy & Co., Tommy was our very brilliant sales manager and a really great guy to work with. You could see all of those motivational traits and steely determination which brought him huge success on the field transferring to the business arena.

To this day Tommy is the very best sales/relationship manager I have come across.

After I left Deasy’s to take a senior role with Guinness things fell apart with the management of Deasy’s and Tommy. In my view the wrong person was put in charge of the company and instead of working with Tommy he put the boot in and they clashed immediately. I believe they tried to force Tommy out but they underestimated his steely determination to hang in there.

A super effort eventually broke him, which led to a serious bout of sickness and the court case, which was eventually heard the day of this photo.

Unfortunately for Tommy he became one of the most hated man in the drinks industry because of the court case.

On the day of the court case Tommy’s solicitor had summoned nearly every senior player in the drinks industry as witnesses around this price fixing issue. Needless to say this colossal time bomb was of huge concern to Guinness and all other industry players, which they would really want disarmed.

I was at the court case on the day because I was also summoned by Tommy’s solicitor. At the time I was doing well in my early days as General Manager of Nash Beverages, a subsidiary of Heineken. The nervousness was obvious with all of the industry heads who were there.

As the day progressed it was clear that Guinness were making a huge effort to kill this case and were prepared to settle. With my close relationship with Tommy and my good relationship with senior Guinness personnel I ended up being a go-between. Both sides were open to a settlement and this was quickly negotiated with everyone going home late in the afternoon.

This was a huge day for Tommy and when the settlement was agreed he asked would I stay in Dublin for a bite to eat and a chance to chill out.

I decided it was the right thing to do and felt it was ok not to attend a Heineken conference later that evening.

Out we walked and “snap“…that photograph.

The following day the picture appeared in the national newspapers who covered the case and I was politely told in a few quarters that appearing in “the photo” was a big mistake for me.

After that day I must admit I did feel a change of attitude towards me by senior management and a promising start seemed to turn cold despite my input that day, which resulted in a quick conclusion to a case that everyone was relieved with.

Ultimately maybe friendship and loyalty is a better choice than keeping up appearances and other people happy?

Greg Canty

Greg Canty is a Partner of Fuzion who offer Marketing, PR and Graphic Design services from our offices in Dublin and Cork

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Friendship, Media, Motivation, Personal development, Personal Marketing | 2 Comments »

Leo Varadkar – The man who answers questions!

April 4, 2014

Leo Varadkar - Fine Gael

I was listening to George Hook on Newstalk as we were travelling down from Dublin. He was broadcasting from San Francisco and he was chatting about some politician and he described him as being a “Leo Varadkar type of politician“.

Immediately you know that he means a politician who will give a straight answer to a question when asked.

When you think about it this is quite an incredible and simple attribute to be known for!

In assigning such an attribute to a politician you would imagine  that no one single name should stand out – surely there are plenty who demonstrate this attribute on a regular basis either currently or in the past? Can we name them?

In truth there should be so many with this quality, that describing the straight talking/answer a question when asked attribute by mentioning a single politicians name would be confusing!

How is it that the youngest member of the Irish Government carries this torch?

Is it youth, is it not enough time in politics to be ultra cautious, is it a lack of fear of making an error against party policy, is it 100% confidence in his own ability and capability, is it not caring too much about politics and being prepared to simply say it as it is?

Is it his upbringing or the career he had before he became a full time politician – he lived in a relatively good part of Dublin, he studied medicine in Trinity and he worked in hospitals before opting for General Practice.

As a doctor do you get used to answering questions when asked?

Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport Leo Varadkar of the Fine Gael party was appointed by the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny in March 2011. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 2007 and prior to this is served as a member of Fingal County Council since 2003. He received the highest vote in Ireland in the Local Elections of 2004.

Did his constituents like him because they saw him as someone who was prepared to answer their questions?

It is a great thing to see him doing really well and to see someone with these attributes progressing effectively in the Government but it is a very poor reflection on our recent political history that being prepared to answer a question is something that makes you unique!

Is there a lesson in this for all our politicians? 

Is there a lesson in this for all of us?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

 

 

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Posted in Irish Politics, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Politics, Tourism | 4 Comments »

Time to give up what you’re doing?

March 29, 2014

Flatpack furniture

Edel called me from Dublin to say that the guy who was sent from Viking to assemble the furniture for the new office was grumbling, moaning, huffing – he would be back the next day to start the job!

We finally managed to get the keys for new office and now we had to kit it out. Viking is a great option with their wide range of furniture at reasonable prices but I’ve learnt the hard way that the assembly of the furniture is a big undertaking – even the smallest pieces can be more than awkward.

I had thought that finding someone to do this was going to be difficult but much to my relief it turns out that Viking were now providing this service as part of the package – major phew!

However it looked like Mr Assembly might be hard work ..

I joined Edel in the office the next morning and she gave me a “look” as Mr Assembly and his co-worker could be heard inside the adjoining room grumbling, moaning and huffing about the task ahead.

I made an attempt at cheering up our happy friends by buying them coffee early on but the effect seemed to wear off quickly. It was clear that we would have to tip toe around these boys.

Suggesting our preferred height between shelves was just about digested. They reckoned they didn’t have to assemble the smaller desk units – Dee’s suggestion of a clarification call to Viking seemed to sort out that one and when I asked them if they would be taking away the packing materials it was if I said something really horrible about a close relative!

I had to leave before they finished up so I told them there was a few quid in it for them if they managed to take away the packing materials. I thanked them both for their work and the quieter of the two wished us the best of luck in the new office. That was nice.

Edel called later when the job was done – our happy men took half the packing materials away and once all the units were assembled they refused to push them into position in the office “We assemble things, we don’t move them” – Nice!

Edel who lacked the energy to cajole them took just 5 minutes herself to pull and drag the desks and cupboards from the middle of the room to where she wanted them.

I wondered about our two happy men.

I have no doubt that they were on a tight fee to complete our assembly job but very early on they made a choice about what mood and persona they were going to bring with them to work including a clear decision to do as little as possible.

Were they totally miserable doing this work, was something awful going on in their lives, were they treated really poorly by the last crew they assembled furniture for, were they being treated badly by Viking or by nature are they just grumpy people?

Whatever was going on with them they were miserable and brought this misery with them this day.

If this is how you feel at work is it time to give up what your are doing?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

 

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Posted in Customer Care, Motivation, Positivity | 9 Comments »

Searching for Gold in the world of Glamour

March 22, 2014

Panning for Gold

Is there one thing that you can do can that can help you find gold for your business?

Back in 2001 I had this crazy idea for an event – how about getting the best models in Ireland, with the best fashion brands, adding in a beauty exhibition area, spicing it up with some entertainment and then taking this on tour to the best hotels in the country in major locations?

I woke in the early hours of the morning with this crazy idea, insisted that I explained it to Dee before I forgot it and then I turned around and went back to sleep.

Soon after that we met Michael Doherty the owner of VIP magazine who liked the idea – if we went ahead with the event he would come on board as a Media Partner.

That was the last piece of encouragement we needed and from that conversation “Catwalks” was born. Both Dee and I had the job of bringing Ireland’s most glamourous fashion and beauty event on tour around the country.

Blossom Hill CatwalksWe met model agencies, we chose models, we chose a fashion show producer, we met staging companies, we booked hotels, we chose menus. we set up a lo-call number, we developed a brand and we sold the idea to top national brands and before we knew it we had six dates booked around Ireland – all we needed now was to sell tickets to the women around the country. Simple!

We went back to Michael Doherty and sure enough as promised he agreed to be our media partner. He believed in our event but he also agreed that it was a great fit for VIP magazine and it’s readers. He boldly predicted that the very first double page advert in VIP magazine, would effectively sell out the event.

When we heard this we were delighted – if that was the case our events would be a huge success, we would make money and there would be little need for all the other planned promotional activity.

The day that issue of VIP magazine hit the shelves across the country we braced ourselves. Our phone was manned and we waited for the avalanche of women booking tickets for this first of it’s kind event. We’ll never forget the name Marie Carroll, a hairdresser from Tralee who rang and booked two tickets – Yes, we were up and running!

And that was it ….nothing for another two weeks.

Panic started to set in big time. Was this great idea such a great idea after all?

Our other advertising started including local radio and newspapers. We ran competitions, we managed to get media coverage through Dee’s PR skills including a great piece on TV. We sent flyers and posters to each of the participating hotels who promised to distribute them.

Slowly but surely we started to get bookings but not enough to take away that awful sense of panic.

Tony Hadley - Catwalks

We made a decision to hit the road and visit each of the locations where we were holding our events. When we went to a town we distributed large quantities of flyers and posters – we went into the boutiques, the hair salons, the beauty salons and any place where we felt we could grab the attention  of our target audience.

We handed out our flyers and posters and we could see the reaction of the women we handed these to. What was this event all about? We stopped and we chatted and we explained what it was all about. Boutiques asked could they participate – “If you buy a table at the event we will give you a segment of the fashion show” was our response. We shifted a lot of tickets through this simple mechanism.

We got a call from our girl manning the phones. “Where are you?” she asked “I’m getting lots of calls for tickets from Limerick“. We had just spent four hours hard slog in Limerick and were totally exhausted. My shoulder was nearly broken from the weight of the promotional material I had been carrying around the place.

This was the day we learnt some big lessons:

There is no one thing that will make the promotion of your event, initiative, product or service a success – It is the combination of everything.

The one absolutely essential ingredient for success was us working our socks off!

The events turned out to be a huge success and in total over a four year period we ran 72 separate shows with our final event being in Killarney with Tony Hadley of Spandau Ballet fame closing it with an incredible version of “Gold“.

Gold….it is never easy to find!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion are a Marketing, PR and Graphic Design agency in Ireland with offices in Cork and Dublin

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Posted in Advertising, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Events, Graphic Design, Marketing | 2 Comments »

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