Benedict Cumberbatch would totally play Sean in The Marketing Gateway movie.
Bad marketing can have some adverse effects, like a bad haircut!
This month I am plugging Ranken Jordan Pediatric Hospital. To donate, please visit https://rankenjordanfoundation.org/donate/
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
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TRANSCRIPT:
So if you’re a regular viewer of the video version of our show, you may have noticed that a few weeks ago, I was the victim of one of the worst things that can happen to someone.
I’m speaking, of course, about getting a bad haircut.
Now, I’m not trying to sit in front of the camera here and insist that I always have a great “do.” My wife complains all the time that when she sees pictures of me from high school, I have the exact same haircut. I’ve told her many times to just be glad I still have my hair, because a lot of guys my age start going bald, give up on trying to have hair at all and just shave it all off or wear a hat. My haircut works for me, and hey, I get mistaken all the time for the actor Benedict Cumberbatch, so I guess something’s working.
And if you’ve been watching this show thinking I’m him and he’s just playing the role of a lifetime by being Sean Jordan, podcast host, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
But let’s get back to my haircut. My bad haircut. I got it at a chain that’s supposed to offer quality haircuts. And no, it’s not the one you’re thinking of, but probably one step above it. Usually, I get a pretty decent cut, and I even take in a picture of what a particularly good cut looked like one day so I can show the stylist how things should be done.
Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, something went wrong. I could see it happening, and I even told the stylist it didn’t look right and she needed to fix it. When I got home, I could see what happened – she dug in too deep with the clippers in the middle and then left the top too long to cover it. She’s an experienced stylist, so she must have been embarrassed and was trying to cover it. Or maybe she just thought I wouldn’t notice – it’s not like I have eyes on the side of my head or anything.
But the problem is, I did notice, and now I need to find a new place to get my hair cut, because I not only don’t trust that stylist anymore, but I don’t even trust that chain.
And isn’t that crazy? I have been getting my hair cut there for years and it’s been mostly fine. But I’ve had one bad experience… well, two. Well, actually three or four or maybe even five, over the last few years. Come to think of it, the reason I had to take that picture of a good cut is because the previous time had been so bad and I was trying to make sure it didn’t happen again.
So maybe what’s crazy isn’t that I went to this chain, but that I’ve kept going back. Maybe I should not only avoid going there myself, but warn other people!
And as I process all of this cognitive dissonance, I have to ask myself – there are tons of people who cut hair, so why am I going there in the first place?
I know the answer. It’s not because they’re the best, or the closest, or even the cheapest.
Nope. It’s because marketing got me in the door, and it kept me coming back even though I didn’t always have a great experience.
So you know what? I don’t blame the stylist anymore. I blame my bad hair day on bad marketing!
And we’re going to explore exactly how marketing got me in the door in the first place… and how marketing could even convince me, sucker that I am, to come back and give them another try.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
I want to start by saying that haircuts are a sensitive topic for me because I grew up on a military base and my mom would take us to the base barbershop. And no matter what I’d ask for, those guys really only knew how to do two types of cuts – crew cuts and flattops. Every now and then, my mom would splurge on the hair cut salon in the Officer’s Club, and we’d get our bad cuts fixed up. But then it’d be right back to the base barbershop to get manhandled by a guy who thought electric clippers were the solution to every problem.
So that’s why, when I found a haircut that worked for me, I stuck with it. And it’s really not that hard to cut my hair! The problem is that if it gets too long, I start to look like Bozo the Clown instead having any resemblance to Benedict Cumberbatch because it poofs out on the sides and kind of flattens out on the top. It’s not a great look.
All I ask for is for my stylist to trim my hair back to normal at a reasonable price without requiring an appointment I have to book weeks or months out. And that’s why I’ve wound up going to chains instead of high-end salons. For $20-30 plus tip, I can usually get a reasonably good cut from a licensed professional who’s available pretty much on demand to cut my hair when I finally get around to it. The service model itself works so well.
So, why do I blame marketing?
Let’s first understand the basic model for the barber shop and salon business. In the old days, men’s hair tended to be cut by barbers, and there are still plenty of those guys around. Near where I live, in fact, there’s even a barber college and several barber shops. Salons, by contrast, have tended to be more focused on female customers and offer a wider range of services for more specific types of hairdos. I don’t think it’s out of line to say that barbers generally focus on doing a few cuts well while salon stylists have to think more about the individual style of each person in their chair. And many of the mid-range salons are unisex so both men and women can get cuts there, which adds to the variety of haircuts those salons can provide.
But there’s also the matter of experience – barbers and high-volume salons see a lot more heads come through in a day than high-end salons, and sometimes, those really trendy stylists who’ll charge you a couple hundred bucks for a hair cut are really good at styling your hair with product when you’re sitting there, but cut it so badly it looks awful the next day.
So we can segment the market for haircuts into three basic buckets: low-end, which is mostly barbers and high-volume unisex salons, mid-range, which is mostly salons that are either unisex with more services or focused on women only, and then high-end, which is often trendy or luxury salons that emphasize style, vibe and personal attention to justify their higher prices. And let’s also presume, because this is what professional stylists tend to tell you, that at the lower end, the experience of the haircut provider is higher in terms of total heads cut, but the variety of styles is lower, while at the higher end, the experience of the haircut provider may be lower in terms of total heads cut, but the variety of styles is higher.
Salons often do make extra money selling special products and additional services like facial hair trimming, shampoos and hair dyeing, but again, how these are handled varies a lot, especially at the mid-range level. In the higher-end salons, assistants might handle these services and the revenues from them may be paying for that extra overhead. In mid-range or low-end salons, these may just be part of the business by which the location is judged.
There’s one more factor we need to consider, and that’s how the stylists get compensated for their service. Let’s say I pay $30 for a haircut to a mid-range chain. The salon may pay their stylists an hourly rate plus tips like the barbers and lower-end salons do, or they may require that stylist to pay a rental fee or commission for the chair to cover costs and then keep anything over that. Either way, some of that $30 is going to the salon itself and only a portion of it is going to the stylist. I’d better tip if I want to actually pay them fairly for their service, and yes, I probably need to overtip them if I’m using a coupon.
Now, let’s think about the role marketing plays. For a higher-end salon, you’re generally going to see boutiques where the stylists are working like franchise entrepreneurs, building up their own customer base and piggybacking off the reputation of the salon to build their own personal brand. The products they use tend to be high in quality, may be exclusive to the salon and have a higher price tag than what can be purchased at the store.
Their location is also going to matter a lot. High-end salons in strip malls or distressed retail areas aren’t going to do nearly as well as those in nice, upscale areas because no one’s going to want to pay a premium price for an experience that feels like it deserves a discount. And if you offer a discount to get people in the door, you risk devaluing your premium status. So for a high-end salon, location and word of mouth are key marketing strategies, with maybe some advertising, online presence and referral programs being used to help business stay steady.
For a low-end barber or salon where haircuts are their main business and cost maybe $15-25 depending on the location, volume is key. Every moment a chair is not occupied, the business is missing out on revenue, and every cut needs to be done as quickly as possible to turn chairs over so more cuts can be given. The problem is that this model generally relies on foot traffic that has specific peaks. The customers are also a lot less willing to pay for extra service because they went low-end to cut out the frills and focus on the haircuts.
So a low-end barber or salon really needs to have a convenient and visible location that encourages people to come in, and that’s why you’ll tend to see them along main roads, in strip malls or in distressed areas where rent is cheaper but parking is ample. These businesses also tend to use a coupon strategy or special promotions to get people in and then hope to upsell customers on additional services or sell them product. Unfortunately, their staff are often so busy manning the floor that they’re not particularly skilled at sales, and so haircuts really are the bread and butter work.
And then there’s the mid-range salons, which is where I wound up getting this terrible haircut. They occupy this difficult middle space where they’re either trying to be premium compared to the low end or discounted compared to the high end. Either way, their pricing is going to reduce their foot traffic somewhat for haircuts, but attract more customers who need specialized services like dyeing, highlights, specialty styles and so forth.
It’s a really tough business model to balance because you are trying to attract customers who want a better experience than the low-end, but who aren’t willing to pay high-end prices for it. You need as much foot traffic as possible, but you also have to be careful not to turn too many people away when you’re overly busy because they may never come back.
The type of stylist who wants to work in a setting like this is generally someone who is willing to accept lower-end pay but who is hoping for some higher-end tips they may or may not receive depending on the location. As a result, you tend to see the managers stick around – they get paid a little bit better – but the individual stylists turn over quite often. The stress of having to deal with high volume foot traffic while also trying to provide personal attention is tough. There’s also the problem of turnover and labor costs often making these locations short-handed, which means turning away paying customers.
So, the chains that run these mid-range salons have come up with a solution: allow customers to book same-day or next-day appointments by calling in or using an app or web portal. This helps to ensure supply and demand are more evenly matched, but remember that the mid-range is still trying to keep chairs occupied as often as possible. And so walk-ins are still encouraged and worked into the schedule as much as possible.
On a regular day, that system kind of works. But during peak demand time, it turns into chaos. Especially when the chain also decides to offer a promotion at the same time so they don’t lose customers to low-end competitors.
And maybe now you’re starting to see where I’m going with all this.
I started going to this chain because of a promotion a few years ago. My whole family needed a cut, and we were able to save $20 by going there, racking up some loyalty program points, and getting my son’s hair cut for free. I’ve since been going back to build up more points, because it’s nice to save some money now and then, right?
The day I got my hair cut, there was a handwritten sign on the door saying “we are not accepting walk-ins; appointments only.” They weren’t particularly busy, and so I asked my stylist why, and she said they were overbooked on highlights that day, which can take two or three hours per person, and they didn’t have enough staff available to step away and deal with walk-ins waiting at the counter. She also complained that she was tired and hadn’t gotten a break yet because coverage was even thinner since one of the stylists had called in sick.
And then she additionally mentioned every appointment offered online was filled because there was a special deal going on where people could get $5 off their haircut. I mentioned I hadn’t seen it and she said not to worry – it was being offered to everyone who was already a member of their free loyalty program or who would sign up today.
This, dear listeners, is why she gave me a bad haircut. I was probably her fifteenth or twentieth head that day, and she was worn out because she not only couldn’t take a break, but wasn’t going to get one soon. She also knew she had to make up for the lower pay she’d get from tips because people tend to base what they tip on a percentage of their total bill. She rushed through it, did a bad job on the side, tried to cover it and likely hoped I wouldn’t notice.
I can put up with a bad haircut. I’m even happy to ask people to go and fix it. But did I want to? Absolutely not. I went home and had my wife help me trim up some of it. Even so, it’s grown back weird and I’m waiting for it to come back fully so I can get it done properly. And you can bet that I won’t go back to that location anytime soon.
But I want to be clear – it’s not because of the stylist. She did a bad job, yes. But it’s because the company she works for thought it was a great idea to cut staffing to the bone and then run a promotion at the same time, making this mid-range salon feel like a low-end one and giving me little reason to come back and pay a little more for the same service I could get at a barber shop or low-end salon.
That’s bad marketing, done entirely without purpose or strategy or concern for anyone involved in the process, and it’s definitely something we should all avoid when we’re trying to boost our business, because the end result was yeah, I saved $5 I didn’t even need to save.
But they’ve lost my future business because the service I was asking for got done so badly.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
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