The Most Efficient Marketing For A Bar Or Pub (or any other place that sells alcohol)

When I mean efficient, I mean, you need to make one purchase a year for incredible results.

To be more exact, it’s a few purchases, but only once.

I am making the assumption that if you run a pub, bar, or restaurant, you already have mirrors in your bathroom.

This article may have you purchasing more.

The Big Questions

How many people look at themselves more when they are slightly buzzed?

How many people take more selfies when they are out having a good time?

Do the levels of selfies increase or decrease with the amount of alcohol being consumed?

Exactly.

Why not take advantage of that?

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. They are all being used constantly on Friday and Saturday nights.

Why not take it to another level?

How?

With mirrors and Fatheads. (this is not an ad for Fatheads by the way).

A quick explanation: Buy a bunch of Fatheads, cut off the heads and arms (so your patrons have their arms and faces in the picture), and stick them on the bathroom mirrors. Make sure you have the name of your place on the opposite wall so it shows up in the photos, and just watch it explode.

The advertising will take care of itself.

Why? How?

Because you will be creating your own stand in!

What the hell is a stand in?

I actually had to look up what the name was. Seen them my whole life, no idea what they were called.

You know those things at carnivals where they give you the body, and you stand behind it and it’s your face? Then you take an adorable picture?

That’s a stand in!

What if you had those at a bar? With drunk people? Already taking selfies?

Holy crap is right!

Options

Women: Disney characters, famous singers, characters from movies, etc. You could have: The Little Mermaid, Beyonce, and Kim Kardashian. You could have a good looking dude (me, just kidding), with a slot cut out on his arm where the girl could be in her selfie.

Can you see it?

The possibilities are endless!

Men: John Cena, The Rock, Terminator, Trump (with the hair), etc. Maybe get a fat guy for something funny.

Can you see it now?

Obviously you would have to pick a person that represents your bar, but other than that, the sky is the limit.

Still need to be sold on this idea?

Ok, just imagine, you are in a bar, a couple drinks deep, and you go to the bathroom. You see an opportunity to take a funny picture and share it with everyone right then. Are you going to take the opportunity? Of course!

Because it is awesome you are going to show everyone.

Because you are showing everyone the place where you took the picture will be getting free advertising.

Because you can take unique pictures (with you in them) at your bar that everyone thinks is cool, when people are deciding where to go out tonight, it will inevitably be your place.

Why?

Because you have something awesome that no one else has.

Yet.

Be the first to market on this one.

Be a game changer.

Be a pioneer.

Joey

MediaMedia

A Comprehensive Guide To Church & Social Media

The strategies you are about to read are designed to shake things up. The fact that you even opened this at all means you are looking for some new ideas to spread The Word.

This is not designed for any particular type of religion.

Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Jehovah’s Witness can all benefit from this.

The world has changed.

Duh.

One of the pillars of the church, any church, is to go to the people. Pilgrimage is a foundation to their beliefs. For centuries it has been literal. You would literally go to another neighborhood, another city, or another country. You would use your feet, cars, planes, trains, boats, whatever would allow you to “go.”

But the world has changed.

What are you reading this blog on?

A computer?

A tablet?

A phone?

Where are the people today? The people you want to share The Word with?

The truth is they are nowhere and everywhere, but they are on their phones. They are on their 

devices.

That’s where you need to go. That’s the new pilgrimage.

The Push-back

Churches want people in the seats, not at home, and not on their tablets or phones. Part of having a church is being around church folk. Fellowship, or whatever your church calls it, is vital. What you need to realize is relationships are the same as they have always been. People care for one another, people interact, they talk, they write, but the method is different now. People have relationships on their phones, on their apps, with people thousands of miles away, whom they have never met in person. The interactions are the same, the feelings are the same, and the caring is the same. It just looks different.

Did people stop communicating when phones were invented? No more writing? No more waiting 3 weeks for a response? Insanity!!!

They were having the same conversations we are having today. Talking about how human interaction is going to poop. This generation doesn’t do it right. Sound familiar?

The ones that embrace and utilize the power and ability of technology, that reach more people more efficiently, will be the winners. On the flip side, those that are resistant to change, will slowly dwindle, some in to obscurity.

Go to the people. They aren’t on a map. They’re on an app.

These strategies are designed to maximize the reach of what you are already doing. Is there a little extra work? Yes. But the ROI (return on investment) will blow your mind.

This is how you are going to do it.

Live Streaming

Most churches have two services. My church (Emmanuel Baptist, San Jose, CA) has an 8am and 11am (on Sundays, just in case that is not clear. It is church after all).

Strategy:

8am Service: Facebook/Facebook Live. Set up a smart phone to do a live stream of the service (I suggest just the preaching, unless you have a killer choir like us. Just post the good stuff). Anyone who is “friends” with you on Facebook will not only be able to watch it live, they will be able to re-watch it anytime they want. They can post questions during the service that you (whomever is assigned to answer those questions) can answer either later that day, or the following day, or whenever they get to it.

Imagine the connection you will make by clarifying the sermon, answer deeper questions, and responding in a one-on-one manner? Talk about fellowship!

Having the sermon available immediately is also great for the people who were actually in church as well. I take notes, I review them, but being able to revisit the message during the week? That would 10x the power and message of the sermon, and all with a phone. No video editing, no CD burning, nothing. Click “record”, preach, the click “stop.” Done, and probably better video quality than whatever you are recording on anyways.

11am Service: Periscope. Just like first service, but for a different audience. This is worldwide. So your audience is ……… 10 million using Periscope itself, and 310 million Twitter users. Keep in mind, Periscope is owned by Twitter. When you go live on Periscope, it sends out a tweet. Who can read tweets? 310 million people. Think about that reach? Not just your neighborhood, not just your city, the entire world. Boom!

Again, this allows people to watch and re-watch the sermon. Connect, reconnect. Etc.

Power. Reach. A social media Pilgrimage.

Are you starting to see what I am talking about?

Good.

Weekly Messages

You have to at least write notes for your sermon (or whatever you call it) on Sunday. Maybe you wing it. Maybe you preach like Jay-Z. I don’t think that would be the best route, but to each his (or her) own.

Why not take your notes and create a blog? Sunday nights, you post it on Medium, Blogger and/or Quora. You can go a little deeper than your sermon allows you (or time). It will be available for people to read any time. As you accumulate blogs, when things come up either locally or globally, you have a written, well thought out response that you can re-post on your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts.

So often we find ourselves receiving the word we need when we need it. Imagine having it with you at all times? Imagine being able to help thousands of people the same day in completely different ways? That’s the power of a blog, especially when you use the other social media to distribute.

After a year or two of weekly blogging and messages, guess what? You go through all of your posts, rearrange them, update and edit them, and release a book. Now you are an author. Maybe you are the next T.D. Jakes. Maybe the next Joel Olsteen. Paperback, e-version, and audio book. Now you are reaching even more people. You excited yet?

You are already writing, it’s time to look at different avenues of distribution to maximize the reach of your lessons. That’s what this is all about, right? Getting the message out there? So do it!

Daily Messages

These can either be fresh ideas, or they can be main points from your service. Get some good pictures from the weekend service, make them look nice, then superimpose a quote over the top. Entrepreneurs are doing it all over social media, why aren’t you? Create a look for your “quote” posts, go crazy. Make them unique!

Take these 5 or six posts a week and put them up on: Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram. (Are you noticing a pattern here?)

Remember, once they are done, as things come up in your church or in the news, you have access to nuggets of gold to throw up for the world to see. You are versatile and up to date on your content, your messages, and your ability to reach people during the times they need it most.

Use what you are already doing and maximize your reach.

That’s what this is all about.

Fear

The world is a crazy place. The further technology advances the more freedoms we are going to have. Where to go, who to talk to, what’s right, and what’s wrong. Messages of who we are and what we should be have us under attack constantly. It rattles our foundation, it has us questioning everything all the time. If you are not out there as a church and community leader. If you are not getting your message to the eyes and the ears of those who need it, then what are you doing?

What are you holding on to?

Do you feel your grip slipping?

Do you fear for the future of your church? Your city? Your world?

Then please understand the power of social media.

The world that you are so worried about is at your fingertips.

Get your message out there.

Go to where the people are, not where you want them to be.

Joey

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Embrace Social Media, Dominate The Wine Industry

I love wine.

It’s art.

From the growing to the harvesting, fermenting to aging.

The bottle to the glass.

And finally, the complete embrace of all of my senses at once.

Nothing does that like wine and food.

I love wine.

My issue with wine has nothing to do with the product, it’s with the wineries.
And it’s not even the wineries themselves, it’s with their media. It’s pathetic.

It’s disturbing actually.

We live in a time where there is access to hundreds of millions of people 24-7. Creativity and out-of-the-box thinking creates superstars on the internet and in social media every day, and you would think wineries were using a cookie cutter for their media content, and the cookie cutter was made in 1998. It reminds me of the scene in Edward Scissorhands when the men leave for work in the morning. Each house looks the same, each car looks the same, leaving at the same time, in the same direction.

That’s the wine media.

Everything is the same.

EVERYTHING.

Some do the “everything” much better than others, but it is still the same crap.

This is every wine website:

1. Pictures of sweeping views of beautiful vineyards (no s***, they are all beautiful. It’s beautiful greenery in rolling hills. Guess what? They all look the same). What makes you different?
2. Beautifully placed wine glasses, with gorgeous golden whites and deep reds. Wow. Wine all looks the same. What makes you different?
3. Wine tastings, VIP tours, “cave” tours, concerts, wine clubs. What makes you different?
4. Buy our wine. Everyone wants me to buy their wine, what makes you different? Some wineries don’t even explain their wine flavors, differences, nuances, what they pair well with, anything. It is so arrogant. Why would ANYONE buy your wine if they hadn’t already tasted it? Think about that.
5. Videos, usually consisting of beautifully majestic scenery. I admit, it is beautiful. But you know what? It was beautiful in the 200 other winery videos too. What makes you different?
6. This is actually really cool (but I love cooking, so I’m biased), but everyone else is doing it (the good ones). What makes you different?

I know what you are going to say, “the wine speaks for itself.”

That’s arrogant. Snooty Patooty.

That’s why you are ok with your page looking exactly the same as everyone else’s. That’s why you offer the same thing that everyone else does, because once they try yours they will “fall in love.” That may be true, but you have to get them to try it first. Take whatever number of people come through your winery a year, now times that by a 100 million, that’s what you are leaving on the table with your weak a** media. 100 mil. That’s 8 zeros.

What is driving people to your site?

What is driving people to the store, to your bottle, to the checkout, to their house, to their family, to their dinner table?

Because you have rolling hills and pictures of wine glasses in HD? Well, whooptie doo!

I saw the same thing over and over. And over. And over. It was like Groundhog Day. No one does anything different.

I take that back, I saw one that was great, Tooth and Nail Winery, in Paso Robles (http://www.toothandnailwinery.com/). Totally different look, works great on a desktop or smart phone. It totally distinguished itself, bravo! But then everything it linked to was poop. It’s Facebook looked like everyone else’s. Instagram, Twitter, etc., same ‘ol same ‘ol. Their “buy” page was bad too. Ugly. Outdated. Not one descriptive word about their wine. Not one. Gorgeous bottles. Amazing art. No description. Blended red. What the hell does that mean? I’ve had it, it’s fantastic wine, but if you didn’t know about it already, why in the hell would you buy it? It gives nothing to draw you in to what the experience would be like to drink their (very good) wine. A+ on the website. C- on everything else (it would be a D if the wine wasn’t so good).

Wineries need to think about the potential customers that have never been to their winery. There are a lot of people that will never make it to Paso Robles, or Napa, or Washington. Your wine is in their local stores I am sure, but what is going to draw them in? Treat it as if they were walking by on the street. You have a cool storefront, but what’s inside? Entice me. Find me where I am, and lead me to you.

Where am I you ask? On my phone. Flipping through my apps, begging for something to be presented well enough to draw me in. Please do that for me.

I saw two other wineries with great sites: Lightfoot and Wolfville Wines (http://lightfootandwolfvillewines.com/) and my favorite wine and winery in Napa (and I am a Cabernet/Bordeaux guy, not Pinot Noir), Domaine Carneros (https://www.domainecarneros.com/).
But guess what? Gorgeous websites. Impeccable. But. It’s still that same ‘ol s***. If I didn’t go to Domaine Carneros on the suggestion from a big time wine consultant (http://www.hrbp1.com/), I would have never known, or wanted to know, based on the website.

Think about that. Really think about it this time. I don’t think you really did last time.

You Are Missing Out On A Golden Opportunity

Henry Ford. Andrew Carnegie. John D. Rockefeller.

What did they do?

They seized an opportunity.

What are you going to do Mr. Winery guy? Are you going to attack this opportunity, or are you going to keep doing what you are doing?

Showing people pictures of your winery, your bottles, blah blah blah. It all looks the same. They are ALL beautiful! How are you going to separate? Stand out? I am sure your wine is fantastic, but why would I want to try it based on the millions of other sites that look the same? Word of mouth? Awesome. In the digital age, where information travels as fast as light, you are going to rely on the same thing cavemen did. Awesome.

How A Winery Can Separate

1. Pay someone to do ALL of your media: Web page, social media, videos, blogs, vlogs, short-films, long-films, etc. There is huge money in wine, drop $100-$200k and get an exciting, entertaining, innovative person in there to dominate it. Find the right person, give them the “keys to the car” and watch them take off. This is a huge job, so be very careful on who you hire. They will be one of the faces of your winery, so make sure they exude all the qualities of your winery and the image you want to portray.

Or take some of that money, and either hire or consult with guys like: Chase Jarvis (@chasejarvis) and Casey Neistat (@CaseyNeistat). They are genius creatives. 10 minutes with them could change your lives. They are brilliant and can see things that normal people can’t. They will show you your potential.

1. LINK EVERYTHING TOGETHER!!!!!! Make sure everything is tied to the other, PLEASE. There are a lot of ideas here, you are going to have a ton of content, but if you don’t link everything together people will not find what you want them to. Are all these ideas designed to “find” people where they frequent? Absolutely. Once they are “found” they can be lead through everything else, but only if you link it! You should be able to bounce between: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and iTunes (for podcasts of course) seamlessly. People are on their phones, they need smooth transitions or they will be “on to the next one.” Jay-Z knows what he is talking about.

1. Copy What Others Do Well: Check out the top 100 wineries and their sites. Things that they do well, make sure you do well too, preferably better. This is competition. Survival of the fittest. Beat them at their own game, then beat them at a game they aren’t even playing yet. Always be a step ahead.   

Copy Club W (www.clubw.com). Seriously. They have a very cool thing to determine your palette. You (wineries) are throwing out all kinds of crap about your wine that sound wonderful, but what if I don’t know my palette? Maybe I don’t know what I like. Maybe I am too afraid to experiment. Come up with your own “palette evaluator.” Customers fill it out and then you tell them exactly which of your wines meet their particular tastes. Make it personal. It is a beautiful, heartfelt, personal relationship all the way through the wine making process, why stop at the bottling? Continue it on to your customers. Don’t just tell them about your wine, let them find the ones that they will like based on them personally. So many people don’t know!

1. Use the customers you already have: Go through all of your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram friends. Take the five (5) with the most friends or followers and give them a free tour/tasting for them and a couple of their friends. The only stipulation is they have to “document” it on: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat. Hell, forget the “or,” AND! For $100 worht of touring and wine tasting you could advertise your winery to thousands of people from a trusted source, not a winery that is trying to get your money. Use the power players on social media. They are easy to find.

If your “friends” aren’t very popular on social media, find someone who is and pay them to come out and story tell. Make sure it is someone in your demographic (I am guessing 25-55, professional, $75,000 - $200,000 take home? Sound about right?) and go for it. Hell, go big and pay someone like Gary Vaynerchuk (@GaryVee) to come out and do a special episode of Wine Library TV (http://tv.winelibrary.com/) all about your wines. Boom! Millions of views all over the world right there. You’re welcome.
Have customer competitions: The best recipes for certain wines, a cook off, have them shoot commercials, the best pictures (do different categories: funny, beautiful, inspiring, etc), best videos for why your wine is so great. You can do anything. Get the customers to participate. This is where I think wineries totally miss an opportunity. They always tell you what is good, why it’s good, it’s time to share in the experience. 10,000 ideas from 10,000 different people is better than 10 ideas from one (even if that one is me).

1. Youtube: Make movies! Not just a, “Hey, look how pretty my winery and wine is” movies, make movies of every aspect of your winery. Get a camera and some editing equipment and go to town. I would suggest getting some decent equipment. Check out this blog post (https://medium.com/creating-videos/what-equipment-i-use-to-create-the-askgaryvee-show-7a24fe7d1ef#.bxh6ks2z8) for some suggestions, and get to work. Or find someone to get to work for you. Remember, you are putting in a couple bucks to get this done. Don’t be cheap. Find the right people to do the right thing.

Show the process: Wine making is a process, duh, let the consumer see the process: pruning, bud breaking, flowering, canopy, harvest, crush, aging, bottling, everything! There are 9 movies a year, just for that, and I know there is more to the process! Do a vlog (video blog) once a week on what you are doing in the wine making process. Document everything, put it together and make it interesting. Everyone is different. You are going to have a different audience for different aspects of the creation process. Cover all your bases.
Do a Q & A: Let people ask you questions. Wineries are so in to telling people information, let them ask about the information. Let them ask the winemakers directly. Let them ask whomever they want to ask at the winery. Maybe they are interested in starting a winery and they have questions. Open up the entire team to be able to answer questions. It’s content that is created by the consumers. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit back and wait. No one asking you questions? Make some up and answer those! Make it look like people are asking you questions until they actually do. It’s called being scrappy. Respect it.
Short films: Serious, funny, informational, documentary style, skits, etc. Do them all! Don’t know what to do? Search those topics on YouTube and find a topic or a style that you could emulate, or do a parody of what’s popular at that time. Remember #2? Copy what others do well. You could hire people to write out a few funny sketches, or a few screenplays. You are a winery, trade wine for ideas! It’s a win win!     

1. Twitter/Instagram/Facebook/Snapchat: These are all different, but similar enough to group together. People need to see what is going on with your wine and at your winery. Show them. Not just the beautiful wine glasses with the rolling hills in the background. Not just (another) concert in your Summer Concert Series, show them the guts of your operation. Tell them about the behind the scenes. Show them what isn’t obvious to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE. Stop only showing pictures of weddings! Everyone knows there are weddings at your winery. I know it’s a money maker but you need to be thinking long term, think big picture. Not the $50k that that ONE wedding will bring you, but the hundreds of thousands that better media will bring in. Big vision. Long game.

Find some great personalities at your winery and make them a part of your story. Create mini celebrities. People will connect with them and want to visit. It’s so easy! Use what you are already doing with the people that are already doing it! Howard Stern, Dave Letterman, Rod Dyrdek, they all took the people around them and made them stars. Find the stars around you!

HASHTAG SEARCH!!! This is huge. This is interaction at it’s finest. Hashtag your name, like and respond to EVERYTHING using your name. People love crap like that. I was in San Francisco at the Grand Hyatt in Union Square a month ago. I got there, went to my room, took a picture out of my window at the beautiful view, and hash-tagged #GrandHyatt. 2 minutes later I got a “heart” and a reply, “Hope you have a great stay, please let us know if there is anything we can do to make your stay more enjoyable.” You know what I said? A whole lot of bad words (but in a good way). That is immediate interaction with a client. Immediate. Guess who has two thumbs and loves the Grand Hyatt? This guy (picture it). You can do that! Do you have any idea how powerful that is? Of course not, or you would be doing it already. Seek out #wine, #wineries, #winetasting (and whatever wines you sell, #cabernet, #chardonnay, etc.) every day and interact with people. Don’t sell your product, interact. If you are social, witty, charming, they will look at your profile, and because everything is linked, BAM, they are locked in. Be social. Think of Twitter like a cocktail party. Go mingle.
I discussed the “power” players on social media earlier. Get them in the door. Treat them well. Treat their friends well. Have them share their experience with their followers. It will mean more coming from them anyways, more personal.

Use an official Snapchat. Tell stories, share experiences from around the winery. Or, have customers share their experiences with you, then you share them on the official Snapchat of the winery. Check out the 59parks on SC. They do an awesome job of sharing the stories of their followers when they go to different National Parks around the country. You could also check out ArsenicTV. Models send their personal SCs directly to ArsenicTV and then ArsenicTV decides who goes up and who doesn’t. I am not endorsing this at all by the way. It’s just a bunch of hot chicks talking about bs, but it shows what I am talking about, input from the masses. (Not that there’s anything wrong with hot chicks talking about anything, but it’s not exactly going to revolutionize the world, know what I mean Vern?) Mixing up the faces and voices you are sending out will keep the feed fresh for the consumers as well.

Share the best stuff on one thing on the others. If there is a great snap, share it on FB, Twitter, and Instagram, and vice versa. Use everything for everything. Link up YouTube posts and tweet them out, post a still frame from the video on Instagram and have the link to it in the bio. Make sure every blog post (#7, spoiler alert) is shared on all of these as well. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
This is all VERY time consuming, which is why #1 was to hire a professional to do all of this. Pay them well, they could change your life forever if they do it right. Don’t be short-sighted. Don’t think of what you are, think of what you could be. What you are leaving on the table. Make sense? Good.     

1. Blog/Vlog/Podcast. The same way you create content for your videos, you do here as well. The process, common questions, uncommon questions, funny stories, history, etc. Put out strong content on a regular basis. You can blog about things you vlog about, and the vlogs can be used for the podcasts. Don’t think of everything as it’s own separate entity. These all can be manipulated to fit the other’s medium. Speaking of Medium (www.medium.com), that’s where you should post your blogs! Hell, post your blogs everywhere: Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, your website (duh), LinkedIn, and make sure to share those on all of your social media (very important).

1. Revolutionize Wine Parings: I love this. This is going to be huge. Wineries give you recipes to follow for certain wines, everyone knows the general pairings depending on the meats you are eating, or the cheeses, chocolates, etc.

BIG IDEA TIME! Start your own wine pairing app. People input their ingredients and it tells them the perfect wine of yours that fit their meal. You know how many people would use that? Right. Everyone and their mom. Probably even YOUR mom. Man, I should go find an angel investor myself and start this. Why am I giving all my good s*** to you guys?

Stop telling people what they should drink with which wine. Go to them! Pair your wine with things they already eat. Go crazy. What pairs well with all the different items at McDonalds? Or Taco Bell? Burger King? Chick Fil-A? Focus on things they will bring home. Things they could drink your wine with. Then get in to restaurants that you are served in. You are going to be so popular on social media, restaurants will WANT to serve your wines. Do them a “solid” and run through their menu with your wines (except Cheesecake Factory, that menu is too big. It’s like a novel for food, too many choices). Make funny videos and blogs out of it. Remember, your media guy/gal is great in front of the camera and with people, utilize that in videos like these.  Who does wine tastings with McDonalds? You do!! You are standing the hell out now baby!

Bring out food trucks that have foods that pair well with your wine. Make it fun. We are drinking after all, right? Even if it’s not fun, it will be after a couple more glasses. Am I right or am I right?

1. I know you have events already, but mix it up. Country music and 70’s rock are great, but make sure you have some comedians in there, maybe even some sketch comedy. Vineyards are huge, host a 10k race. They run all over your vineyard, then hang out all day drinking and eating! Sounds pretty good to me!

Who Is Going To Take Over?

There is someone out there that is running a winery that is going to take this challenge on. Is it going to be you? The first one on board is going to corner the market. Do it soon and do it well. Bring in the best. Spend the money to get the right person. The right person for this job will need to be very dedicated and very hardworking. You will know if they have the right personality the second they walk in the room. It will be obvious. Make sure they have the tenacity and grit. This is a huge project, it will take time to build, and it will always be growing. The right person is key. Check out the book Grit (https://goo.gl/EBngww) to have some idea of who I am talking about. I have no affiliation to the book, just finished it and think it’s awesome, even if they do talk about the Seattle Seahawks a lot (go Niners!).

The ball is in your court. The gauntlet is set. It’s time to separate. I don’t mean build a huge castle in Napa to get people to your winery but your wine sucks (not naming the winery). This is not a gimmick, this is a New World Order for marketing your wine.

Please. Someone. Get on this.

I can’t wait to see it. Tell me when you do. I’m excited for whomever takes this on.

Go get ‘em tiger.

Joey
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Snapchat: JustOneJoey
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Baseball Could Learn From Metallica

Baseball?

Looking to Metallica?

The heavy metal band?

That Metallica?

Yup.

Not kidding.

Instead of fighting the ever changing technological landscape, baseball needs to embrace it!
I know they have softened their stance on Periscope, but they are just scratching the surface.

The speed at which things are changing, having a stance other than “learning, using, and adopting all popular technology,” is like trying to get out of quicksand.

You are just going to lose. The tech will never stop.

They need a group that takes all of the apps that show any promise of mass popularity, figure out how they work, and then use the crap out of them. Period. Either that, or hire VaynerMedia, which will essentially, do the same thing.  

You will either die fighting the next thing that comes out, or do like Metallica did: embrace it and crush your competition.

A Little History

Before music was “free” on the internet, bands had to worry about bootlegs. I am sure it was a real issue, but have you ever listened to or seen bootlegs from the 90’s? They are horrible. Anyways, they were still an issue, pulling potential revenue away from the musicians. Metallica basically eliminated them, and in a time when bootlegging has never been easier. You have a whole recording studio in your pocket nowadays. It’s almost too easy. And by almost, I mean it is.
How did Metallica do this? By making their own bootlegs! By taking the thing they were fighting against, embracing it, and then doing it better than any bootlegger could ever do. It’s like befriending an enemy. So, theoretically, baseball could also take a few pointers from The Real Housewives or any other stupid “reality” show.

Anyhoo…..

You can look up virtually any concert Metallica has played the last half dozen years, and it is available for download, with THEIR mix, through THEIR board, and all for the price of a CD. It’s amazing. The two shows I went to at The Shark Tank a few years ago? Got em. I can relive those nights any time I want. Did they play and awesome song? Did James say something cool or funny in between hits? I got em. I can relieve that in-person, thrilling event any time I want.

Pretty awesome, huh?

(**bonus idea: Baseball? Maybe sell DVDs of every game for $5? Or a free download with the purchase of a t-shirt at the game or something. They get a code if they spend a certain amount? Think about it. Let it marinate for a bit, but it smells good already.)

You Can Do It Baseball!

Baseball should take the “Metallica” approach. (or the “Metal Up Your Ass” approach for all you fans out there) No matter what the technology, no matter what the app, or soon, no matter what the VR tech, no matter what the problem, hit it head on. Infiltrate it and take it over. Seek and Destroy. Keep in mind, we are dealing with people that have unimaginable power at their fingertips. Every owner knows someone in their cell phone that could take this on and destroy anyone trying to capitalize on it. It’s just a willingness to go for it, to attack the enemy on their home soil! Let’s do this! We’re Americans damnit! We take the fight to the enemy. I can’t speak for the Blue Jays. I don’t know enough about Canada. Or as our intelligent brethren call it, Canadia. But I know the rest of the teams are up for it!

Let’s talk turkey.     

Here are my ideas:

Periscope/Twitter: I hope you have already read my article on helmet cams. If not, here is a brief synopsis: When your team, or your player is up to bat, you get a message from Twitter/Periscope that you can watch live. That means you are watching the game with the batters point of view. Buster Posey, Jose Bautista (imagine that punch with a helmet cam!!), or Bryce Harper. What he sees, you see. It will be like being up to fricken bat in the Big Leagues! If you have Samsung, or whatever company is pushing the goggle things, you will be money! (That’s a 90s term kids. Forgive me. I turn 37 next week).

Can you imagine the interaction? Twitter is hopping when a game is on already, imagine if the phone told you every time you should tune in? The amount of interactions you would have throughout a season with your fans would be amazing. There are 162 games! There are 30 teams! MLB would basically be tweeting you saying, “man, you should really check this out! Just looking out for you! We’re buds, remember?” All season! On top of that, even if you are busy, the at bats will stay there in the Twittersphere, so fans can catch up later. They won’t depend on ESPN or FOXSPORTS or anyone else, because MLB will have conquered the Twitter/Periscope world.
Boom.

Let the dust settle in your mind before moving on.

Ready?

You can use it for: at bats, and in-between innings. Put cameras all over the park so fans can choose the experience they want, the way they want to view the game. Go nuts! Umpire helmets, a catcher cam. The possibilities are endless. With cameras getting cheaper and cheaper, the cost to actually set this up in minimal. I mean, these owners aren’t exactly collecting food stamps, know what I mean Vern?

With Twitter, you can connect just as easily visually as you can in writing. Whatever type of interaction the fans want, even if it is with the other team’s fans, they can have it. A total experience.
A totally personal experience.

These same ideas can apply with Facebook Live as well. Really, you could just have them bid it out. It could be one big ‘ol contract for the MLB as a whole, or better yet, just individual teams. Different markets are going to require different things. Just check out the interactions of fans on Twitter during a game. Diamondbacks? Not so much. Yankees? Insanity.

Would it really matter in the long run which social media powerhouse is doing the streaming? No. Or for our Spanish speakers, no. As long as you are giving in-depth access to the game the fans love, in the way they want to consume it, it’s a huge win. It’s an enormous win.

Throw some advertising in there because the engagement will be unreal, and everyone wins. Yay!

Snapchat: Again, the possibilities are off the charts. Please keep in mind that baseball is losing popularity in America. Face the facts. Instead of denying it, and not addressing it, embrace IT, and embrace the youth. They are the future and they are on Snapchat. If each MLB team had an official Snapchat, it not only could attack the “popularity with youth” issue, it would bring a ton of adults to Snapchat just to follow their favorite teams. Could you reach a huge audience with enhancing the Twitter/Periscope connection only? Absolutely, but we are attacking on all fronts here, and Snapchat is a MASSIVE front. This is like World War 12 people!

Ideas for Snapchat:

Each official team Snapchat “snaps” out every pitch of every game. Seriously. You could watch the whole game in 10 minutes. Let’s do some math: the average number of at-bats per team is about 34, times two, that’s 68 at-bats per game total, average of 3.5 pitches per at bat, carry the one, that’s 238 pitches on average per game. Each pitch takes what? 3 seconds? So in 11.9 minutes, you could watch every pitch. If you don’t have 8 hours to watch a Yankees v. Red Sox game, snap it up baby! Who wouldn’t want that if you missed the game? If you only have a short break at work and want to catch up on your team? For the watercooler the next day so you could join in on the discussion without sitting around the night before for 4 hours (unless Kershaw is pitching, then you would only need 2), and actually watch every pitch?

Try this one: each game have a different player do “snaps” for the team. Find the guys with the best personalities, or the funniest, or will go nuts and snap everything. Give people the chance to fall in love with the players. That’s what really attracts fans, loving players. Not just every 3 innings when they bat. Not every 5 games when they pitch. Fans want more of them, and this allows that.  
Honestly, I would sign Brian Wilson just to run this for my team. $1 million a year, just for his on-camera personality. Is he a dick? Maybe, but he’s a funny dick. Sign ‘em!

Can you imagine the interaction with the fans? Think depth and width here. It’s like the ocean. Try and wrap your head around that.

The sheer consumption of the sport! It would be so personal, and so intimate. It is exactly what baseball needs. The superstars aren’t superstars! This would solve that issue!

Pop a couple ads in between “snaps” because the consumption rate is so high, and BAM! Everyone wins, yet again (with a British accent).

Players become personalities off the field which will make them more popular, which will make the team more popular, which makes the sport more popular. Can you smell what I’m stepping in?

I don’t want to make this too long, so I am going to stop while I’m ahead

You want to discuss more stuff like this? Hit me up! I love sports and I love tech. I want them to have beautiful babies. If you are from MLB, PLEASE hit me up! Me and Manfred, Netflix and chill. Can you feel it?

I Love This Sport

Wouldn’t it be great to see baseball regain its popularity? Spring training, The Boys of Summer, The Mid-Summer Classic, and now the World Baseball Classic. The sport is beautiful. It’s the history of The United States wrapped up in a wooden bat and yarn. It’s awesome.

People need to be reintroduced to America’s Pastime.

It was never a better opportunity than now.

The thing that made it perfect for radio is what makes it perfect for tech.

It is slow and beautiful.

You can take the time to describe it in a way that allows the audience to see it clearly in their mind. Social media allows the same thing. No other sport can do this. Basketball? Negative. Football? Eh, not even close. Hockey? Come on. Tech can take you IN to the game, to be a part of its beauty and grace.

This is it. This is the “white” space that other sports can’t operate in. Work in THIS space, get intimate with your enemies, and take them over.

This is baseball’s Renaissance.

It’s time to grab your paintbrush.

Joey
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Maximize Your Shareability With Snapchat's Custom Geofilters

Custom Geofilters are awesome. I think we can all agree on that. They do come with two (2) dilemmas though:

1. Where do you put them?
2. What do you design?

If you can take your product and answer these two questions, you are golden. If not, you are like me!

1. Where Do You Put Them? I wrote a book about my time at San Quentin (not as a visitor by the way, I was an idiot). My intention was to show how low a person can take themselves and then the steps to pull yourself out of the hole you dug, all while making jokes to try and deal with the severity of the situation. Uplifting, right? Right.

Soooooooo, where are people that are in to uplifting, funny, prison comedies?

Exactly.

I don’t know either.

Orange Is The New Black fans? Yes.

Prison Break fans? Yes.

People who like documentaries and people who like comedies? Yes and yes.

Well where the hell are they? Where is a place where they will be in a large group? I have no idea.

My strategy: I think this book is great (I am completely biased by the way). I think it has the potential to be another OITNB, and be something prisoners could use to help transition to the “outside”, or be a hilarious comedy by Judd Apatow with Seth Rogen playing me in it. (I swear I feel this way). So how is that going to happen? By getting people in Los Angeles and New York City to see it. Where do large amounts of people gather together, take lots of pictures, and are likely to be in the “snapper” demographic?

College graduations!

Condensed area (to keep costs at a minimum), tons of people, tons of pictures, and in a town where things get done! LA or NYC! It’s perfect! Make sure you put your “fence” around the right area. I put mine up at the Pepperdine graduation and s*** the bed, totally missed the mark. Live and learn.

I have one coming up for USC in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I have better luck with my fencing. The location was much more specific, so I don’t think there will be an issue.

That leads to the second dilmma….

2. What Do You Design?

I am, technically, a small business. Just a dude selling a book. I want to make sure my product name gets out there, so i have to be VERY strategic. I want people to see it, but more importantly I want people to use it, duh.

How usable do you make it? I think the Ad Geofilters for movies and restaurants are stupid. Why would anyone use those? Maybe as an example of what is possible, but who cares about a movie and a hamburger? I may be way off, or just too old to get the appeal of the ads. Anyways, I DO love the other filters. Half of my posts are as a dog or a bunny, or a cowboy. I think they are awesome.

So should my Geofilter fit that model instead?

Should I risk creating a Geofilter where my design takes up more space that usual?

How interactive should it be?

Here are my options. This is my real dilemma:

Option #1 — Just A Standard Filter

 

 

 

Option #2 — Greater Interaction With The Subjects, but still an ad

 

Option #3 — No Ad, but then I flood other social media with the “unhappy” face to link it

Option #4 — No Ad, even less context, but then I flood other social media with the “unhappy” face to link it

 

I am thinking about just throwing a few up there and see what works. Use one with the title and where to buy it to offset one of the other more interactive one, which has no context.

Tough decisions. With this being such a new platform to jump on, we are going to see some unbelievable things in the next few months.

I want to be at the front lines, taking the shots. I know you do too.

Hope this helps get your problem-solving juices flowing. Please let me hear any thoughts you have. The sooner we figure this out the better for all of us!

Good luck out there!

Joey