Greetings Fellow Massage Therapists,

Over the past month, I’ve watched an amazing story unfold.  I’ll share the story and some background on it before I explain how you can use the same type of marketing tactics on your own massage business.

I don’t know if you are a fan or not of the TV show Jericho on the CBS network. If you are, you may have heard about a huge online campaign to save the show from cancellation. Despite having over 8 million weekly viewers and being the 2nd or 3rd most watched new show on regular TV, CBS opted to cancel it.

In my opinion, Jericho was one of the best new drama shows out there and definitely one of my favorites. If you haven’t seen it, you will want to rent it once it is available on DVD in September. If you are located outside the U.S. or want to see it sooner, CBS has all of the episodes available online to watch for free through the internet.

Anyway, a huge online effort was been made to get CBS to renew the show.  Thanks to the power of the internet, fans rallied together to lobby CBS to renew the show Jericho.  It started with an online petition where thousands of fans electronically “signed” their name in support of renewing Jericho. CBS didn’t budge—Jericho was cancelled and their decision was final.

Then, one fan contacted an internet-based website called Nuts Online.  The owner of Nuts Online, Jeffrey Braverman, agreed to help the fans with their cause by offering to package and ship small $5 orders into larger orders to CBS.  Fans could go to the Nuts Online website and order either a small $5 order or a full pound order of nuts. They could also include a personal message to CBS, if they wanted.  Nuts Online would ship every order to the programming executives at CBS New York and Los Angeles.  Mr. Braverman temporarily lowered his prices to make it affordable for anyone who wanted to participate.

Why nuts?

Well, when one of the main characters in the season finale was asked for Jericho to surrender, he told the enemy leader. “Nuts!” which was a reference to a historic moment in World War II when U.S. General  Anthony McAuliffe used the word in response to the Germans demanding an American surrender at the Battle of the Bulge.

So what happened?

Well, fans of the show ordered and shipped over FORTY THOUSAND POUNDS of nuts to be shipped to CBS to protest their favorite show being cancelled.  After getting swamped with thousands of pounds of nuts, CBS agreed to renew the show for a second season.  In addition, they will start airing episodes from the first season starting July 6th.

Nuts Online got worldwide media coverage from TV, radio, and newspaper.  Each time the “Save Jericho” campaign was mentioned in the media, Nuts Online posted a link to the article on their site.  It generated millions of dollars of free publicity for Nuts Online.  (To read the full story and see all of the links to media coverage, go to this webpage here: http://www.nutsonline.com/jericho

What’s the marketing lesson?

Well, for starters it was a great example of viral marketing.  That is, getting a group of people to rally around a worthy cause or shared goal. 

Nuts Online was able to build a huge mailing list of new customers.  They didn’t need to turn a profit—or much of a profit on the intial sale.  That huge mailing list can be marketing to repeatedly and generate plenty of repeat business. 

In addition, having a large mailing list opens up additional business deals like joint ventures and cross-marketing with similar types of businesses.

How do you use this for your own massage business?

First, find a worthy cause in your area to support.  It could be a charity fund raiser… or a food drive for the local homeless shelter… or donating monies from chair massage… or giving a percentage of gift certifcate sales.  It needs to be a worthy cause that your local newspapers would feel is worth telling their subscribers about.

Second, do press releases about your promotion.  If you are asked to do interviews about the promotion, do it.

Third, build a mailing list of everyone who donates or contributes to the cause.

Fourth, do follow-up marketing to that list after your worthy cause promotion is complete.

Take some time to do some research in your area.  Find a charitable cause that is worth supporting and put together your own “Save Jericho” campaign.

Until next time,

Michael