After chatting last week with Shaun Coleman, area director of sales and marketing at the Sanibel Inn, among others, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the “sesame seed” storyline from the HBO comedy “Silicon Valley.”
Fans of the show know which subplot I’m talking about. It was a turning point for character Peter Gregory, who up until that point was portrayed as a smug venture capitalist and not the eccentric intellect he was meant to be.
Throughout most of the episode, Gregory is seen in his office, mumbling about Burger King and the ubiquity of sesame seed buns on its menu—much to the frustration of two founders of a startup in desperate need of a $15-million bridge loan to keep their operation afloat. They think Gregory’s mind is adrift, lost in a meaningless fast-food-fueled obsession.
In this fictional reality, Gregory is working out a much more valuable solution: Three countries provide the world’s sesame seeds. Two, Myanmar and Brazil, have cicada populations that emerge every 13 and 17 years, respectively. Next year is the first time in 221 years the cicadas from both countries will emerge in the same year, which will decimate crops in both countries. Indonesia, the third country, has no cicada population. By investing in the country’s sesame seed futures, Gregory will generate a return of $68 million—more than enough to grant the $15-million bridge loan and save the struggling startup.
Now, I’m not saying Coleman reminds of the meandering, mumbling and—let’s not mince words—weird Peter Gregory. But both men are able to discern circuitous coincidences to yield profitable decisions for their respective companies.
Coleman’s “Aha!” moment was a little more straightforward: The Sanibel Inn was not seeing a strong return on its digital ad spend on TripAdvisor, so after a few months, he pulled it. Not long after, the hotel saw a drop off in call volume.
A less intuitive marketer might view the two events as distinct and unrelated—and why not? TripAdvisor and direct-to-hotel calls represent two separate booking channels, which typically target two separate customer bases.
But Coleman dug deeper and found that older travelers were doing research on TripAdvisor before calling direct to the property to make a booking. When the Sanibel ads were pulled, they no longer reached this valuable source of demand, and call volume dropped as a result.
“It just shows you that just because you’re doing digital doesn’t mean it doesn’t still cross over to some of the older technologies,” Coleman said.
The same is true for apparent coincidences throughout your digital marketing ecosystem. Unless you pull back and examine your efforts holistically from time to time, you might never realize how one action might negatively (or positively, for that matter) affect another.
Now time to eat some Burger King—and move on to the usual stuff …
What’s making me happy this week?
Changes at United Airlines. My airline of choice—my hometown of Cleveland was once a hub—United is getting a facelift after suffering a black eye earlier this month when a federal corruption probe led to the ousting of then-CEO Jeff Smisek. This week, new CEO Oscar Munoz wrote a love letter to customers pledging change. Empty words? Maybe.
More tangible are changes to the airline’s website that have brought it into the modern digital age. (Finally.) Gone is the cluttered home page design and clunky navigation. In its place is a snazzy tile layout that seamlessly toggles between loyalty account management, travel booking, flight status and more.
I love it, personally, and wouldn’t mind if a few of my favorite hotel chains found inspiration in the design.
Stat of the week
This isn’t so much a stat as it is an interesting factoid: Mantis is the only hotel company in the world that boasts at least one property on every continent. Yes, that includes outposts in Antarctica: the Ultimate Antarctica by Mantis (where guests sleep in custom fiberglass sleeping pods) and the Hanse Explorer (where guests sleep in one of six staterooms as the ship cruises the Arctic Circle).
Now that’s a fam trip I wouldn’t pass up.
Quote of the week
“This is not a recession; this is a temporary thing, an adjustment in the industry. … But it’s a deep adjustment period, and an unexpected (one).”
—Randy McCaslin of PKF Hospitality’s Houston office, discussing the dip in oil prices that have led to a corresponding drop in demand in the market.
Houston suffered for most of 2015, with revenue per available room down 1.4%. McCaslin expects the market to rebound in 2018 and 2019.
Email Patrick Mayock or find him on Twitter.
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