This article was originally posted on Small Biz Marketing Specialist, written by “Small Biz Stacey”
What Your Business Can Learn from a Rock Band and M&M’s
In order to scale your business, you need to have business systems and processes in place. “Small Business Stacey” shares how detailed your processes must be by sharing a story about a very famous rock n’ roll band. #SmallBizMarketingWiz #ASmallBizLife
Hey everybody, time for an afternoon snack. Now, are you eating carrots and celery or are you kind of like me? I’m having M&M’s.
But that’s because I’ve got a lesson to share with you today. Now I love M&Ms because they’re crunchy and it’s chocolate, but there really is an important marketing lesson to share with you here. Now I was watching a movie the other day, Bohemian Rhapsody. Have you seen that movie? Such a great movie about the story of Queen and the lead singer, who has just an amazing voice. Now I was an 80’s girl. I actually used to have really big hair. And so one of the popular bands during that time was Van Halen.
Now, Van Halen was very particular when they went out touring the country. They worked with local teams at all of the venues that they went to, and their productions were known for being so theatrical and impressive, extreme. And while a normal band would bring in three 18 wheelers, Van Halen would bring in at least nine 18 wheelers. So it was really important that all of the details came into place. So what does that have to do with M&M’s and marketing? Well, what Van Halen did was they made the local crew have bags of M&M’s in the back and they had to separate the brown M&M’s out from the rest. And if that was not done to perfection than David Lee Roth knew that there were going to be some technical glitches in the show. And they even had it in their contract that if it was not done, that if these M&Ms were not sorted out, they would not perform and they would still have to be paid.
So looping this to your marketing, what it means is that brown M&M’s matter, the little things matter. You need to have sustainable business systems and processes in place to make sure that your show goes off without a hitch. In my coffee and smoothie business, this was the lesson that I learned very early on as I was getting into catering because the teams would just go out and they would forget something. Well, you can’t really make smoothies without the blender or the pitcher and you can’t make coffee drinks without the espresso. And after a few times of teams forgetting things, I realized I need to sort the brown M&Ms. And that worked. So now all of my businesses have systems, processes, checklists, so nothing gets forgotten. And also it doesn’t rely on me. The team knows what to do and they get it done so that it is an amazing theatrical performance.
So are you gonna have colored M&Ms or are you gonna have brown M&M’s? They both go well together, but just make sure that you have the processes and the systems to ensure that those brown M&Ms get separated out. So you can have an amazing theatrical performance.
This is Small Business Stacey, your Small Biz Marketing Specialist here to help you get your marketing into action and help you become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz.