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Donut Wars, Part 2

It’s Time To Officially Declare War On Krispy Kreme. This Is Going To Be Tasty.

It’s Time To Officially Declare War On Krispy Kreme. This Is Going To Be Tasty.

Now That The Force Of The Brand Is In Place And Customers Have Been Recruited, The Final Blow To The Evil Empire Can Be Dealt…

By Rich Harshaw

Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Outside The Box” series, which feature ideas, strategies, and case studies from OUTSIDE the remodeling industry, with suggestions of how to implement those ideas into your contractor marketing efforts.

Click here to read Donut Wars, Part 1 before reading below….

Episode 3: The Kill Shot

Please be advised that the following strategy is not for the faint-hearted. It would take tremendous audacity to even attempt it… and unwavering courage to follow through, especially as the opposition toughens up and strikes back. Some of you will read this and say things like “I would never do that” or “that’s totally unprofessional” or “that’s just not very nice.” If that’s you, you are cordially invited to NOT execute this strategy should you ever find yourself as the owner of a local donut shop. You can be the owner of another crummy little store that perpetually gets stomped on and is happy to just eke out a meager existence. Good luck with that.

Our program is called Monopolize Your Marketplace. Monopolize. Think about that for a minute.

The Kill Shot strategy for our little donut shop is to declare war on Krispy Kreme. Not war as in “we are going to do our very best to get as many customers as we can” war. But war as in “we are going to openly declare to the world our official intention to take you down” war.

Sorry, Krispy Kreme. You are now in our crosshairs.

Some explanation might be in order. The real problem with donut shops in general is that nobody cares about them. Donuts are not a big enough part of our life to put much effort into having a favorite donut shop. They’re kind of like air filters, fingernail clippers, and garden hoses—we need to buy them from time to time, but we don’t really care which brand we get. We just buy whichever ones happen to be conveniently available when we discover we might need one. Same thing goes for donuts.

At least that was true until Krispy Kreme came along with its big fat brand and made the donut emotionally relevant. Krispy Kreme essentially did to donuts what Victoria’s Secret did to bras, what Calloway did to golf clubs, and what Oprah did to talk show hosts. Now people rave about Krispy Kreme. They wait in line for Krispy Kreme. They don’t go get donuts anymore, for crying out loud. They go get Krispy Kremes.

Good thing, too, actually. See, now that the donut has some emotional relevance attached to it, we can now tap into that emotion and use it to our advantage. If nobody cared about donuts, then nobody would pay any attention to our little war we’re about to wage. But when a nine-foot tall Goliath is walking around bullying the townsfolk, everyone will gather round to see what’s going to happen when a puny little David starts talking smack about bringing the giant down. And guess who everyone roots for? That’s right: the puny one.

So let’s get this battle on. To fight it effectively, we have to enlist lots of troops—in this case, customers. If we’ve done our job right in branding and marketing, we should have a nicely appointed shop with good food and a good brand identity (Episode 1 and Episode 2). We should also have a good-sized customer and prospect list built up. We absolutely cannot execute the Kill Shot strategy unless we these things are already in place. The opening salvo is launched via email to that existing database and should say something like this:

Subject Line: Help Us Take Krispy Kreme DOWN

Dear Customer,

You are hereby enlisted to help us defeat Krispy Kreme once and for all. Our donuts are clearly superior in tastes, size, customization, and value—and as a result it infuriates us when we hear people talking about how great Krispy Kreme is. No, they are not that great. Just because they have that big conveyor belt thing and frosting waterfall does not make their donuts better.

So we have decided to take Krispy Kreme down. And we need your help. We need you to pledge allegiance to Texas’ Best Donuts. This will require you to sign a promise to only buy your donuts from Texas’ Best Donuts from now on—no exceptions.

If you do this, you will be rewarded handsomely with the following benefits:

  • You will be issued a TBD Pledge Card for your wallet, which includes the following benefits:
    • 50 cents off every dozen donuts you ever buy from TBD
    • TWO Dozen free donut holes with every purchase, forever
    • TWO FREE coffee/hot chocolate coupons every month
    • Special “Free For All” offers periodically throughout the month
  • You will be issued a TBD “I’m Taking Krispy Kreme DOWN.” T-shirt.
  • You will be issued a TBD “Krispy Kreme Sucks” bumper sticker.
  • You will be issued a TBD “VOTE for Texas’ Best Donuts over Krispy Kreme” yard sign
  • You will be issued a TBD “Texas’ Best Donuts Eats Krispy Kreme’s Lunch” mouse pad

All of these items are waiting for you at our store right now. All you have to do is stop in at your convenience, sign the pledge, and grab your stuff. We’re looking forward to defeating Krispy Kreme together.

Sure some people might sign the pledge and then buy from Krispy Kreme anyway. But who cares? A large percentage of pledge signers will at least pause to think about where to buy donuts in the future—and the law of consistency states that many of them will honor their commitment since it was made publicly and they signed their name to it. Several of these customers will even become fanatical about their allegiance. And we all know that a few fanatical nutbars always seem to be larger in numbers than they actually are.

Then we will create signage for in the store that supports and explains this program to those who are coming in for the first time. We’d need to switch all of our regular marketing activities (explained in Episode 2) to include the Kill Shot messages. We need to set a goal of getting 1,000 people to become enlisted by signing the pledge. Then 2,000. Then 5,000. Then 10,000. Trust me, it will grow. We’d need to get a “thermometer” in the store that shows how many pledges we have vs. our goal.

Then here is the final blow. About two weeks after launching the email campaign (sending the Kill Shot message more than once), we’ll need to contact the local news media about the story. To understand how to make this happen, you don’t need to know squat about Public Relations, writing a press release, or any of that junk. All you need to know is that the press knows a good story when they hear one, and this is a no-brainer good story for them to cover. We might even get CNN or Good Morning America to show up on our doorstep.

People will jump on the bandwagon and support the little guy. The news media will follow the story to see how it turns out. People will be polarized… they will have opinions. And through it all, we will be getting plenty of people to pledge. And come back. Again and again.

It’s true. The little guy can beat the big guy if he is determined enough to outthink and out work him.

And that my friends, is how I would take down Krispy Kreme and restore the peace to the galaxy.

The End.


Advertising Audit: Let a seasoned Monopolize Your Marketplace expert give you advice and recommendations on how to make your contractor marketing perform better. Just fill out the form below and we’ll contact you to arrange a time to talk. Be ready for candid feedback—we’ll be as nice as possible, but our real objective is to make sure you’ve got good stuff!

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© 2015 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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