I over heard a conversation the other day. A girl was telling her friends that a nightclub that used to be ‘cool’ was now un-cool because it had started flyering. I thought that this was a weird statement to make but I thought I’d look into it and see whether there was any truth behind it.
By the sounds of it, her argument was that cool clubs don’t need to flyer because people just go to them. On some levels this is right. Take for instance Chinawhite in London. How often do you see a flyer for this club? You dont. (not an e-flyer. The old school paper flyers that you used to put in your pocket). I can’t comment on what they used to do and whether or not they used to use paper flyers, but what is important is that they have a reputation that enables them to survive without having to use paper flyers and a street team.
(Reminder to self. Write blog on how to form the perfect street team.)
So why would a person label a club as ‘uncool’ for flyering? This is only my opinion, but I think it’s more to do with the fact that the club didn’t flyer when it first opened and it depended on word of mouth. This meant the club had a following who felt they were part of a select few, a secret organisation. If you didn’t hear about the club from someone who had been before, then you would never find out about it. The clubs name and reputation were being spread organically, one of the best promotion tools known to man (5th Element). So it’s understandable that the original clubbers who first went to the nightclub would feel a sense of disappointment that their secret organisation was no longer a secret anymore. Maybe this is the reason she described it as ‘un-cool’.
As technology changes so does promoting, not just night club promoting but all forms. I used to get shoddy leaflets through my letter box asking me to join Kleenez but now I get a full presentation complete with a High Def video posted on my facebook wall. How times have changed eh? Flyers have now been replaced with shiny videos and informative and flashy websites. Is Chinawhite, Paper Nightclub and Aura ( my personal favourite btw) un-cool because they promote online? No. (So, why should a club should be classed as un-cool because it promotes off line?) They are still frequented by celebrities, have waiting lists to book VIP tables and can charge extortionate entrance fees. I’m not saying that these are the signs of a cool club, but you would be wrong to call it un-popular.
These clubs use other ways to promote themselves. PR opportunities are quite easy to come by when you have celebrities frequent your venue. Coupled with shiny imaginative websites, bespoke décor, good music, headline DJ’s, £1,000,000 sound systems and equipment, sexy bar staff, it’s going to be hard NOT to be a success.
The question now seems to be how do we keep the ‘secret society clubbers’ happy and make them feel like they are still part of this ‘cool secret organisation’ but still market to new people and ultimately, make everyone happy? Someone will undoubtedly say ‘you can’t make everyone happy all of the time’, but my answer to that is ‘I’ll give it a bloody good go!’
It’s not often I learn something new at work but the other day we were speaking about how companies can be grouped into 3 main categories. One of these categories was called ‘Customer Intimate’. These customer intimate companies treated their customers as individuals and made them feel special by understanding them, remembering them from past interactions and in some ways predicting what they will want in the future. Take for instance Amazon. When you log into Amazon you are instantly shown something you might be interested in, based on your previous purchases. YouTube is another example. Although it’s not a shop that uses a clever e commerce system, I’m constantly surprised how it guesses what song I’m looking for when I’m using the search facility.
Maybe it’s not so much about being part of a select few, but more about the personal experience you get when interacting with the club, venue or online. It’s knowing that the club knows what you and your friends want. It’s not about the getting as many strangers into a room as possible. There is nothing ‘cool’ about a group of strangers bouncing round a room to a banging song, is there..?
The next challenge is how to create that personal experience in an impersonal situation. I’ve got a few ideas. Web personalisation, login features, database controls, QR codes to secret pages … I don’t want to say too much as I’m in the process of organising some of these things myself and don’t want to tip off any competitors, but those 4 suggestions should give you a pretty clear idea on what to do. IF you have any other question, then ask. It’s free.
So, back to the original question
Q. Does flyering make your club un-cool?
A. No, but if your club is the Brownies, then yes.
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