Great Sales and Marketing Ideas: Pop-Rocks on my pillow!

The Chick Flick floor. That is the title for the 11th floor of “the CURTIS”. Every picture on the floor is movie posters for girlie movies. In the room there are pictures of Marilyn Monroe working out, a kid blowing a bubble, and a Dudley Doo-right bobble head adorns the bathroom. Did I mention they put Pop-Rocks on the pillow?

I had a bunch of choices on a recent trip to Denver, but gravitated toward “the CURTIS”. From the minute I walked in I could tell this place was different. The front desk staff was playing scrabble, and the name tags they had on didn’t proudly proclaim their title but their favorite movie.

I want you to take a minute and think about the last hotel you stayed at, do you remember anything memorable? Probably not. Today, most of the hotel chains across the nation are nothing more than cookie cutter versions with different names, offering us the same saltine cracker choices. It's really disappointing if you think about it.

So what would you do to compete with that?

Promise your guests that they don’t just stay here, but experience your hotel. That’s what the website for “the CURTIS” boldly proclaims.

This isn’t your average hotel. And the staff is way above average, and I didn’t even mention the hula hoop contest they had in the lobby on Friday night! Or the fact that they come by every night to turn you bed down and give you candy.

This shows what a great marketer can do. The color scheme is perfectly carried out, orange and brown (yeah that’s what I thought too, but it works) is everywhere. And what you would expect to have the hotel's name on it does (coasters, pens, paper). But this place is so much more than that. The alarm clock is a VW Beetle. They know your going to steal the door hanger, so they offer to customize it on the website and let you print it out. By the way the door hanger says "If this sign is a-rockin' don't bother knockin'!"

The promise is carried out in EVERY detail. You really do experience this hotel!

The Selling Point:
It's one thing to tell your customers they are going to experience your company or your product, it's another to actually make them experience your product. You can't just say that your product is amazing you must show your customers that your product is amazing! In selling and in marketing DO-ing is much more convincing than SAY-ing.