How to work with HR Departments

HR Directors are looking for added benefits to give to their employees (especially since most aren’t getting raises), this is a big part of their job. You can help. Reach out to local HR Directors, tell them about the pub and simply ask what works best as an benefit to an employee.

I did this recently with the HR Director at Zappos.com in Las Vegas for St. Patrick’s Day. In their case, you can’t advertise to their employees but if you have an offer special to them, they will broadcast it internally. She was happy and excited to do it. They have 750 employees that work a half mile from the pub. We had around 50 people show up, it was great. This has grown into them doing regular parties at the pub.
Good stuff, especially for happy hour.

How to Buy Radio

Article Summary

We don’t like to buy commercials, we like to buy ‘jock talk’ – commercials are a necessary evil but you should try to maximize all the other ’stuff’ a station can do – liners, giveaways, recorded station promotions, weather and traffic sponsorships, sponsorships of regular features/contests, etc.

Lots of short commercials are better than fewer longer ones – we did radio recently in atlanta and all we purchased were :15 commercials- it’s the carpet bomb approach – a lot of quick mentions of ‘fado’ at a very high frequency. Run commercials Wed-Saturday for weekend events.

Web stuff- make sure to get graphics for the promotion on the station homepage, get promotion in the station email, their FB page and Twitter feeds. Also, have them throw in commercials on their internet only broadcast (commercials that play on the air dont necessarily play online).

Make sure the proposal comes back with ‘reach’ and ‘frequency’ numbers for Persons 21-34. This is a measurement of what percentage of that local population will hear our message and how many times they will hear it. Aim for a 30% reach with a frequency higher than 3. That means 30% of people 21-34 who listen to the station will hear the message at least 3 times.

How to Buy Radio

Radio is best used for big events like SPD, outdoor festivals, etc.

Once you have the right station, here’s how to make radio work:

• Tie your promotion to a high profile morning or afternoon jock that is a fan of the Pub. They should record one of the :30 commercials you will run. They should be given bar tabs. They should be the voice and face of the promotion- they need to make it personal to make it work.
• Don’t just buy commercials. Schedules from the station should include as many of the following as possible (quantities for a 1 week buy noted as well):
• Live mentions from DJ’s (20x)
• :10 recorded promo’s or news/weather ‘billboards’ (15x)
• Recorded station promo’s (15x)
• On air giveaways (10x)
• Commercials (40x)
• Internet promotion on station home page – countdown clock to a big event is cool
• Email promotion week of event: use this to register people to win and sign up for fado email

Additional things to try for:

• Trade out a portion of the schedule for food and beverage at the Pub. Stations need places to entertain clients.
• On air interviews (usually works well if you have Irish or English staff to offer the station)

Rates

A bit arbitrary unfortunately. Work to bring down the total cost of the package, you can usually get 15% off through negotiations. It is usually easier for a radio rep to give you additional non commercial mentions (giveaways, traffic sponsorships, weather sponsorships) than it is to take deep discounts on their ad rates.

Duration and Timing

7 days out max with spots heavily weighted towards Wed, Thurs, Fri, and Saturday. Ask your rep to see the schedule the week it is to run. They will likely tell you they can’t provide it. They are probably lying, insist on getting it as part of the buy. The reason is, other clients (who are paying more) likely want the same Thurs, Fri, Sat inventory you do and the rep does not want to tell you this.

Frequency

Stations will quote you a ‘frequency rating’. If they don’t give you one, ask for it. Schedule should achieve a minimum frequency of 2.5 or up in the persons 25-34 demographic. This means the average person in that demo will hear your commercial 2.5x. There should be a Fado mention every hour (using all the items listed above) between 6a-7p on the Thurs, Fri, and Sat (if applicable) leading into the event.

Dayparts

75% of all mentions (commercials, live liners, :10 promo’s, recorded promos, giveaways) to run between 6a – 7p. Weekend spots should run late afternoon / early evening. Mentions after 7pm will target mostly kids under 21

GTKYC notes

Gerry Leonard – Seattle
Ian Fulton- Las Vegas
Dave Lovett – Atlanta
Eric Peterson (peach shirt day)
John Piccirillo
Ellen Peacock

A few notes from our call today regarding internal incentives and the new GTKYC Log. This log should be sent in each week in the packet. If there were no gift cards given away, mark it as such.

Don’t just reward the people who surprise you, also take care of the people who engage customers on a regular basis. The question was raised – is $25 enough? Not sure, something to keep under consideration.

Coaching and counseling hourly staff through this process is the biggest opportunity. Eric asked the question- objectively, how often do you talk to staff about engaging customers? We talk to them alot about pre-bussing tables but not much about relating to customers. Admittedly it’s hard, but we need to figure out how to do it.

Some ideas-

-’The Ice Breaker’: This was the big aha for me on the call. We have people that are great at this. When these people are chatting up customers, they should bring other bartenders, servers into the conversation, and introduce them. It’s kind of like a matchmaker service- I think this is a great idea.

- You can’t promo a pint unless you know someones’s name

- It never hurts to make it a game: challenge peopele to find out someone’s name or where they are from. Reward them when they get it right.

EPL Fantasy Info

A few changes to this year’s Fantasy game.

For each pub…

Monthly competition – winner gets $25 gift card (hq fulfilled and paid for)
Monthly winners compete on last day of season to win the Grand Finale ($100 gift card, hq fulfilled and paid for)
Overall season winner – VIP treatment during World Cup 2010
Knockout Cup begins in January

Transfer codes will be emailed this year, no cards

More info here- http://fado.fantasyleague.com/

The Stevenson File - Tips from JS

Early week night time business – an important part of driving this business is tapping into the industry crowd. You don’t do this with promotions or gimmicks you do it by being part of the community- managers and our staff are out in their places eating and drinking and they recipricate.

It is agreed by most that we don’t do a good job know our local markets well enough because we don’t spend enough time out in other bars and restaurants. If we do, we will naturally get more industry business, we’ll know more about the local competition and the local talent as well for recruiting.

It does have some con’s, namely discounts and free drinks going over the bar but this can be minimized with good shift management.

BHI FOH testing info

We have a new pre-hire test we want to give to hourly employees. There are only a few mandatories as part of this process:

1. The test must be given to all FOH employees before their final interview
2. The follow up questions provided by the test must be asked

Here is the detail:

The main reason we are using the test is to identify more people who can deliver a high level of hospitality and GTKYC. The test helps identify personality traits that are conducive to maintaining the culture in the pubs and the experience we want for our customers. There are other benefits too.

The test will-

- Improve managers interviewing skills
- Let you get to know applicants more thoroughly before you hire them
- Help you hire more people who ‘fit’ in the pub

For each applicant, you will receive-

1. Test result with an excellent, good, fair or poor overall rating – THESE RESULTS ARE NOT TO BE SHARED WITH THE APPLICANT

2. Follow up interview questions: use these for probing during a second interview if you choose to do one

3. Developmental report: share this info after the new hire has worked in the pub for a while, it’s a good developmental outline.

Here’s some documentation to help you with administering and understanding the test:

Website – How To Guide: BHIonline Hourly Training Tutorial
Website / testing – Qk Strt Cd bhionline
BHI Front of House testing – full users guide and instruction

The Process

MOD conducts screening interview, IF you want them to come back for a final interview THEN they must take the personality evaluation. Let them know it is an online evaluation (see the notes on how to communicate this below) and it will take 10-15 minutes.

- Get candidate email address, IF no email or internet access then…
- Provide paper testing
- Logon to www.BHIOnline.com , enter username and password
- Enter candidate info OR enter results from paper testing. You will be emailed the results immediately (see tutorial above on how to use the site)
-Review test results and the follow up interview questions. Pass this info on to anyone involved in the final interview and use it as an input into your final decision. This test MUST be completed before the final interview.

A few other notes:

The ‘counter productivity’ or the ‘integrity measure
This is a measure of counter productive behavior (tendency to no call no show, theft, drug/alcohol abuse). When current employees take the test they are going to be a little more forthcoming with information so the measure might be high.

If someone scores high on this, they will automatically get a ‘Poor’ rating on the overall score. Use the follow up interview questions to probe deeper into these issues.

Communication about this to applicants
Messaging to applicants is important. We don’t want this to come across as a big brother or corporate thing. Simply tell potential hires that culture is important to us and we use this to see how well people might fit. The test is not the determining factor for whether someone is hired or not.

Publican Guide instructions-hourly Profile Testing