912 – Publicity stunts can work: Tom talks Topless Carwash

Episode 912 – Topless Carwash
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 912 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about a topless car wash at a church. And believe me, there's a lesson here. Okay, hope you didn't miss episode 911. Or I don't like to say 911. That was on reputation management in the face of an AI world, and pick up a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

[00:01:03] All right, so let me tell you what what I saw a couple of years ago. I'm driving down Little Neck Road here in Virginia Beach. I think it was I think it was here locally. I may be wrong about that. It's been quite a few years, but it's something that definitely sticks in your mind. And I see on the marquee of the church, topless car wash, $5, and I can see a line of cars a mile long, and I see a great big tent covering up this place where they're washing the cars. And so I had to see what's going on here. So I got in line and I waited, waited, waited. And when I got up to have my car washed, it was a bunch of fat guys with no shirts on.

[00:01:52] And I know the church made a fortune that day. They probably got some backlash from some of the elders, I imagine. But this is what we call a publicity stunt or a PR stunt. And, you know, publicity stunts are designed to grab media attention and public attention and get consumer engagement, which is they got from me and also to raise a lot of money. Now, that was didn't cost them much or anything to have that just changed the sign out front, put a tent up and and get some hoses and buckets. All right. So so it wasn't very expensive to pull that off. And I know they made a fortune that day. And a lot of the guys got tips too. People were trying to stick a tip under their fat bellies under their belt. It was just it was crazy. And again, years later, I remember it. I don't remember which church, but I just remember they did it, you know? So So my point is, is it doesn't have to be elaborate. In fact, here's a simple one that's in my crowdfunding book, and I was reading about this guy who was doing some crowdfunding for something, and all he did was go to a 24 hour Denny's and go on Facebook Live and say, hey, I am not leaving Denny's until I get 25 new contributors to this crowdfunding campaign.

[00:03:19] And he just stayed live and and sat there and his friends were with him and he started getting, I think, hundreds of people signing up. And he ended up staying there all night and made a massively successful crowdfunding campaign just from sitting in Denny's all night. He probably spent a lot of money buying Grand slams and eggs and everything else. All right. But but anyway, that's a very simple one. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, you got Richard Branson from, you know, that airline and you know, he did this hot air balloon stunt. You had Tesla sending a Tesla up into space on SpaceX, you know, so you got elaborate ones. But in the middle of this you have, um, ALS Foundation. I forget what that stands for. Some, I think, some type of charity. And they did that ice bucket challenge and that was going everywhere. People were begging you to dump a bucket of ice on it. Right? It raised $115 million for their, uh, you know, for their charity or their foundation. Now, I'm all for you doing this, but there have been some colossal bad ones. I mean, as colossal as the Secret Service director said about the failure of the that rally the other day, that presidential rally, one that comes to mind recently is the Bud Light thing with the Dylan Mulvaney.

[00:04:50] They want to try to be woke and everything, and they lost billions of dollars in market share. And now they're being made fun of because they're going back to cowboys and stuff, and they're just all everybody's just ragging on him for how pitiful they are of trying to make a comeback from this woke thing that they did. Another one, the LG, the that big electronics manufacturer and phone manufacturer, they did this balloon release I think it was in South Korea or Philippines somewhere. And the deal was they were going to release these balloons that had vouchers on them for, uh, you know, some of them had vouchers for free phones. And so this is supposed to be a really big deal, right? People were showing up with B-B guns and sharp sticks and people were going the hospital. And one of the, I think the local TV station said it was it was World War G or World War LG, which was a play off on the movie World War Z, where zombies were scrambling over each other to get over a fence or something. So colossal failure. And remember now Elon Musk had that, you know, when he sent up SpaceX. Beautiful. But then he had that one where his new crazy, weird looking pickup truck was supposed to be like impervious.

[00:06:16] And somebody I think they threw a baseball and broke the window and and he's standing there. Oh, well, that that didn't work. Um, some other ones you can do that don't cost a lot. Really is, you know, go for some kind of world record, go to go to the Guinness Book and see what it takes to do a world's record and and do it and publicize it. See, they're supposed to you're trying to get media attention. You're trying to get, you know, something going with your, um, you know, so it goes viral and, uh, you know, really highlights what you're doing, but you still you still have to have some kind of plan. What do you want out of this? Do you just want to become an influencer and well known? Hey, it's getting harder and harder because there's millions of young people out there doing basically publicity stunts to get their TikTok views and so forth. So, it should be something that pushes your brand or sells your product or raises money for your charity or something like that. And let's see, what else. Oh, another colossal one. Oh, my God, that the Department of Defense did. Oh my goodness. In 2009, they did a low altitude flyover with a 747 and and, you know, fighter jets escorting it over Manhattan and didn't tell anybody about it.

[00:07:47] People were evacuating buildings and just caused massive panic. So some idiot pencil pusher thought this up, probably some general that just kiss his ass all day long. And then, uh, it ended up costing $329,000 just to do the flyover, not to mention all the damage and fear it put into the public. So but anyway, they don't have to be expensive. And I mean, they can be. But it doesn't matter that what matters is does it get the job done? Does it get what you want to have done? So yeah, you can research lots of the best and worst publicity stunts. Or sometimes it's called PR stunts and put one together for your business, you know? So. So I've done them in the past. When I had the nightclub, I did a lot of them, you know, uh, crazy stuff that we would do challenges. And that was before challenges were cool. Right. So. So anyway, that's my story. I'm sticking to it. Uh, topless car wash, if you see a sign for one, Ah, you could either go and have a good laugh or it's doubtful it's going to be what you think anyway. Publicity stunts can really, um, you know, do a lot for your business. So check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.