Most of the team went to Las Vegas this weekend to help run an autocross event for Hotchkis Performance, and we had a great time. Mopars at the Strip is a fantastic all-Chrysler car show held at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, and this was the first Autocross of its kind at the show. The Chrysler community in general is pretty conservative, but once we started giving rides everyone warmed up to the idea and soon we had a line wrapping around the tent for rides with Mary “the legend” Pozzi in the Hotchkis Challenger, and all three staging lanes were filled with rides ranging from Vipers to pickup trucks.
When the smoke cleared on Sunday, over 60 vehicles had run through the cones and the Hotchkis team gave over 400 rides in three company test vehicles. Formerly conservative, drag-race-only Mopar fans were raving about how much fun they had, and many trekked back to the booth in the Manufacturer’s midway to learn more about suspension systems. We shot about 20 hours of high-def video, so we’ll have several chopped up and posted soon. There was a visible perception shift with the crowd by the end of the weekend. They understood handling for the first time, and they were pumped up about it.
Changing hearts and minds is what PR is all about. I just finished reading What the Dog Saw, by Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point. The first section of the book focuses on Ron Popeil, the owner of Ronco and the innovator of using late-night infomercials to push products like the Showtime Rotisserie and Food Dehydrator. According to Gladwell’s book, Popeil comes from a long line of pitchmen, who in the ’20s and ’30s would sell their wares on the Jersey Shore boardwalk with live demos. Ron took his live demo to late night TV and made millions.
In the age of social media and short-attention-span theater, human nature remains the same. People want to experience something in order to buy it. Magazine articles are great, but reading a story about something someone else did is a very passive experience. The beauty of events like Mopars at the Strip, any of the GoodGuys Shows with autocross or shootouts like the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge is that they get people to partake in a real-world roller coaster ride. They have a great time, then they tell their friends. The key is tying that experience to a product. Otherwise its just entertainment – which is fine and good, unless you’re trying to make money on the deal. Having a sponsor banner hanging next to the registration booth for an event is good. Giving the participant a ride in a vehicle with your products on it where they can actually feel the difference is great.
Taking a cue from Ron and his rotisserie, we recognize that giving a few hundred people a ride is wonderful, but then sharing that person’s experience with the world is much more powerful. Since TV has become fractionalized by DVR technology and hundreds of channels, spending tens of thousands of dollars on a 2am airtime slot probably isn’t the best choice. Instead, we’re sharing the experience with the world through real-time Facebook and Twitter updates, and video posted to YouTube and the forums. The goal: to help people live in someone’s shoes as they have a thrilling ride for a about two minutes.
With that in mind, one of our other clients – Spectre Performance – is sponsoring a wild event called the Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge. It’s the rebirth of an old Ferrari Club event called the Virginia City Hillclimb. They’re closing a mountain road in southwest Nevada and letting supercars run the road for time. It’s scary, dangerous, and very very cool. So far we’ve signed up several major car builders, supercar owners, a few superstar drivers and most of the major media outlets to cover the event. Only a few dozen will participate, but hopefully thousands can experience it. To illustrate, we put together a little video featuring footage the Spectre crew shot in 2002 when company owner Amir Rosenbaum set the record (which still stands):
Anyway, those are just some random thoughts on why experience is making a comeback. Stay tuned for some vids from Vegas.
-Dan
Our friends at Spectre Performance have a serious addiction to speed. We’ve followed Amir and his crew to Bonneville and were part of a 340 mph world record land speed run, have witnessed several of the Spectre muscle cars on the race track – but now the team from Ontario are taking the speed addiction to a new level.
About a decade ago, Amir was involved in a crazy full-throttle racing event held on a closed mountain road in the middle of the Nevada desert called the Virginia City Hill Climb. It was officially timed and held by the Ferrari club. In fact, he set the record (which still stands) in a Ferrari F40. Since Spectre is focused on spreading the word about its high-performance intake systems and proving its street cred, Amir decided to bring the event back for 2010.
Jimi Day and the FM3 crew (the same group that runs the Optima Ultimate Street Car Challenge) is running the logistics, and we’re helping with promotion and PR. Should be an incredible event – including a media vs forum shootout with representatives from most of the major magazines and forums/blogs. We also have received entries from some of the top tuners and supercar shops in the country, so it will be an incredible event. Stay tuned for updates, but in the meantime you can check out the Speed by Spectre 341 Challenge website for more info.
Wow, it has been FAR to long since the last blog post. And here I’m supposed to be a social media guy. The good news is, we’ve been running like crazy creating blogs and posting for clients, launching social media apps and doing good ol’ fashioned PR for our clients. But, I promised myself with the new site I’d get back to posting on regular basis. So here we go.
First and foremost, welcome to the new Kahn Media website. While the last CSS based site was fine, it didnt’ really convey the look and feel of our work the way I wanted it to. As most of you blog-savvy folks have already figured out, the new site is based on WordPress software, with lots of custom HTML tweaking thrown in for good measure. If nothing else it’s easier to navigate.
Other big news – we made several new hires in the past few weeks, and our team of hardcore social media geeks and gearheads continues to grow.
Last but not least, we’ve signed up several new clients, including one of the most well respected wheel brands in the world. Look for an update on that one shortly in the news section. In the meantime, I’ve got lots of social media stories to share so standby!
Thanks, and sorry for the long wait!
Dan
The Facebook Business Model (w/ a side rant about over-sharing)
First and foremost: I know there are companies out there that develop and make money with those cutesy little social networking games like Farmville. Strictly speaking, I’m not a fan. I don’t care how many pigs you bought or chickens you traded, and don’t really want it cluttering up my news feed. However, there are a few companies out there doing an excellent job using Facebook to help further their business. They key here is that they don’t push a specific product or try to tell you anything – they use Facebook the way it was originally intended when it was a social tool developed by a few Harvard students – as a fun, entertaining branding tool. The best corporate Facebook pages I’ve seen weren’t even profiles, they were fan pages.
A company with an active fan page that gets updated regularly, has an energetic fan base that posts and replies to content daily and grows constantly is a powerful thing. Again – not to sell X number of widgets through SALE SALE SALE! type tactics, but by developing a relationship with an audience so they look forward to and enjoy your content – and by extension, your brand. We do that through on-the-scene video clips, guessing games, behind-the-scenes photos and more. Comp Cams does an excellent job with their fan page, and I have to give a big tip o’ the hat to Chris Douglas and his crew for the work they do – if you haven’t seen it, log into Facebook and search Comp Cams, it’s worth it.
Now for my rant – having recently been inundated with a few hundred resumes before hiring a few new staffers, let me float this out into the ether: to all of you under the age of 30 hoping to one day gain work in the real world: over-sharing on the internet is not a good idea. I have friends, family and even some business associates that insist on sharing totally inappropriate stuff on Facebook on a regular basis. No, I don’t care when you’re eating chicken. I don’t want to hear your racist political statements, and I don’t want to see a picture of you hammered in the bathroom. Please keep in mind this content lives forever on the web and can one day bite you in the ass. A status update is not a note passed in homeroom, it can’t be thrown away. Same goes for your business fan page: have fun, make it entertaining, but be weary – it will live forever.
To wrap things up, I’ve got a link to a fantastic story about how to best utilize Facebook for business written by Ayelet Noff at at TheNextWeb.com. From tips on increasing exposure to making the most of your content, her story – 10 Steps to Create The Ultimate Facebook Fan Page for your Brand – is a great read. Enjoy.
Until Next Time,
Dan