About a year ago I promised to tell you more about an initia
I had suggested that at this time of year after the madness of the Christmas and New Year period one needed to cast around for a marketing idea unique to one's location, style of business and customer base.
It meant doing a bit of research, thinking laterally and, above all, sticking your neck out in a creative sense. The logic behind it all was to tap into a customer base that might otherwise not be considered and reap some benefit at a typically quiet time of year. It also meant doing something a bit more ambitious than a quiz night or themed evening.
Our first attempt, a regular, monthly jazz night, bombed after only five months. I realised that there was nothing particularly distinctive about what we were offering, and there were plenty of others that did it better. Just because I liked jazz didn't mean our customers would, and without a public entertainment licence we were restricted to soloists or duos, and that's too limiting.
Our next idea, however, appears to be a winner. When thinking about what was unique to our village, we realised it had been immortalised as one of TS Eliot's Four Quartets, and that he was interred in the local church. So we formed the East Coker Poetry Group, an informal opportunity for lovers of poetry to meet at the pub.
Our first event, a "Desert Island Poems" evening attracted 20 people. A month later, 30, and a month further on and we were at capacity. Membership of the group has doubled in only a few months and there seems to be considerable momentum for the group to become a major part of life in the village and at the Helyar Arms.
This didn't just happen of course. There have been countless hours spent talking to people, hand-delivering leaflets, organising the events and publicising the results.
We set up a dedicated website (www.eastcokerpoetry.org.uk), contacted the Poetry Society and succeeded in getting East Coker named a Poetry Landmark, became one of only three national poetry "hot spots" for National Poetry Day 2004 and had the acclaimed poet, Gillian Clarke, as an official "poet-in-residence" for four days in October. She conducted workshops at local primary and secondary schools and judged our local poetry competition.
Other famous names to recite at our evenings include the actors Trevor Peacock and Tilly Tremayne. And then, just before Christmas, came our biggest present, a cheque out of the blue from TS Eliot's widow to help cover the costs of the group.
What all this has taught us is that you need to identify your niche, your point of difference, you need to limit your initial costs and keep it focused, and you need to start small and have modest ideas and expectations. To be fair, it hasn't doubled our turnover or anything near it, but it has helped.
More importantly, it has cemented our pub at the heart of the village, it has attracted new customers who return for other reasons and then tell their friends, and, most important of all, it has given us some very enjoyable evenings.
Ian McKerracher is licensee of the Helyar Arms, in East Coker, Somerset, and former chief executive of the Restaurant Association
