PANIC
Marketing
While you have to keep an eye on your competition , reacting to every marketing program is not wise and can be counterproductive
By Julia Carcamo
Suppose you were a physician . A patient comes to you with symptoms . He has done what he assumes is the requisite WebMD and Google search and has determined his diagnosis : he needs an operation today . You clear your schedule and immediately operate . Sounds ludicrous ? Suppose you were part of a Monday morning executive team briefing . A fellow executive saw a business run a popular marketing program , bringing record foot traffic over the weekend . A line of cars snaked their way to the parking lot for hours . He declares , “ We need to copy that this weekend .” You leave the meeting and clear your schedule to create the same promotion . Everything is on hold until you can get this out to the public . You get your team and agency to stop all projects and refocus on this one thing . Sounds ridiculous ? Probably . Sounds a little too real ? More than likely . Unfortunately , this type of panic marketing is the reality at many casinos . Unless we recognize and plan to combat it , panic marketing can run rampant in our marketing departments . But what is panic marketing , and why is it so prevalent in the casino industry ? As the name implies , it is marketing to quickly react to an external force or to leverage the latest trend .
Panic marketing has good intentions — to counteract a disaster of some sort — which is why it can be so insidious . Worse yet , we can often justify panic marketing as a means to “ loyalize ” customers — something that does not happen through marketing in and of itself .
Have you ever sent out a direct mail piece because your competitor dropped a very generous offer ?
Have you ever matched tiers or offers to counteract what the competition was doing ?
Have you ever reached the near end of a month and saw your revenue way behind projections and then dropped a supplemental in the mail in the hopes of stimulating an additional visit even though there were still active offers in the market ?
Any of these types of reactive efforts could be the right thing to do , but only if they are done with the right intentions and with the appropriate analysis .
32 Global Gaming Business FEBRUARY 2022