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The Banana Coast Credit Union .

Sounds like an ordinary kind of bank ….if you live in banana growing county

But this was no ordinary bank. Or perhaps to clarify things….. this was no ordinary Bank Manager! Last week I finished my column promising a story about my old bank manager. This is it.

His name was Barry and he was on first name terms with everybody. A very genial man with a keen mind. He knew how to get to the core of things. And he knew people. He had many genius ideas but his best …in my mind…was when he started inviting 6 or 8 customers to meet for drinks of a weeknight after work. At the bank. These people were especially selected because Barry thought they should meet.

Over a couple of wines and some nibbles people were introduced to someone Barry felt they should know. I was privileged to meet Terry, a Tobacconist who was an ultra-lite pilot on the weekends. Terry had a vision of flying his ultra-lite from Grafton in NSW to an island 20 k off the top of Cape York and back. If you know anything about ultr-lites they need refuelling often. This was quite a feat and would require serious planning to orchestrate all the fuel stops that would be required.

As our conversation with Terry unfolded the idea of making a documentary of this voyage emerged. His ultra-lite, called Mibeyn would be the “star”…well actually Terry would be tha star, because you see Terry was a a good looking man, had an awesome body and was quite a daredevil. Wherever he went things happened! Nothing fazed this guy!

We met again and planned the trip. We planned how we would film it and we taught Terry how to film as we could not follow him all the way on the journey. We planned the stops he would need to make and the likely places he would visit.

And so the journey began. Terry met many people and had many experiences but there were 2 highlights. On a deserted beach in far north Queensland Terry landed on the beach and met a French girl and took her for a ride in his ultra-lite. Only Terry could walk into that…yes she was just beautiful!

He reached the island and was about 2/3 of the way back when he crashed in a cane field. Uninjured, he rang us immediately. My first response was. ..”Is the camera OK?” ( I know who would have thought such a sentence would come from my mouth?) He replied yes and I said “ok, you need to film the rescue!” His rescuers were actually coming throuigh the canefields towards him. So, there he was with the crutch torn out of his very short shorts ( that he had the legs to wear! ) filming the advancing rescue team ( yes we got film of the torn shorts as well !)

We collected him and the wreckage and displayed the engine in his store window and the wings in ours . In 10 days we edited the footage creating a 1 hour documentary . We called it “ Bloody Bloody To the Cape with Mibeyn” and sent out a press release which began…”Ultra-lite down in Grafton Mall…engine found in Shoppingworld” which attracted major media attention. Insert big smile here !

We sold the video in Ultralite enthusiasts magazines selling on average about 50 copies a month. Back then they called this kind of production…low budget , specialty interest stuff guerilla marketing…and we created number of products and sold them into specialty areas. We see the same thing occuring now with e books and products selling online into niche markets.

Guerilla marketing is not about going ape! It is about being clever in production and telling a good story that fits the needs of the target market. This target market was all the wanna be ultr-lite pilots of which there are many in Australia.

My encouragement to you is to foster somebody else’s prosperity by introducing some people you know to each other. Whats that? You want to know how to roll out a marketing campaign that will do something like this for you ?

Good idea…I will make that my next contribution shall I?

New Zealand’s leader in the Science of Positive Psychology and Humour in the Workplace, she has a CV that’s not to be laughed at! Included in her giggliography are some ground breaking achievements, testimony to her ability to successfully combine her business acumen, creativity, and wit.  Pat has presented over 15,000 hours of keynotes, workshops, seminars and lectures reaching an astounding 55,000 people throughout Australasia. She was President of the National Speakers Association NZ 2001, The Most Awarded Speaker at the 2000 NSANZ Convention and 2002 NZ Speaker of the Year. She has coached many people through adversity, is an author, columnist, radio producer and film director.

Tags: good news, Happiness, positive news