Tom Carvel and Cookiepuss..
When I was a kid growing up in NYÂ there used to be ads on the local TV station, WPIX-9 for Carvel Ice Cream.
The ads featured Tom Carvel, who believe me, was no TVÂ professional. But he did own Carvel Ice Cream, a very local chain.
In those days you didn’t get too many ads like those.
In fact, you didn’t get any.
And maybe that’s why Tom Carvel and Cookiepuss (a kind of ice cream cake) still stick with me after all these years.
Cookiepuss
I was astonished to discover that Cookiepuss has its own entry on Wikipedia.
Tom Carvel started out driving an ice cream truck and ringing the bell. By the time he was finished, he had built a multi-million dollar ice cream empire.
How did he do that?
It was the commercials.
(It certainly wasn’t the products! Ben and Jerry’s this was not).
It was the spots that featured Tom Carvel in all his unvarnished glory. He had one thing going for him: he loved the product and he could convey that to an audience. Also, he ‘personalized’ his ice cream.
When Tom Carvel started making TV spots, the only place you could air them – or see them – was on the local broadcast channels. Cable didn’t even exist yet.
For Tom, this must have been a hell of a risk and a hell of an expense for what started as a little ice cream store.
But he did it and he succeeded.
In those days he would have had to hire an ad agency to shoot the spots and to place them and to do the ad buys.
And there weren’t that many places he could do an ad buy. Network or local. And a network buy would have been ridiculous.
Today, the world is much changed. There are many platforms to put video up – from your own website to Facebook to Youtube.
But one thing that has not changed is the intense marketing power of video.
People love to ‘watch stuff’. And they also love characters.  Real characters.
So how hard is it to construct your own videos, about yourself, and put them up and put up links to social networks?
Remarkably simple.
Today’s Tom Carvel is Gary Vaynerchuk
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVotSf2aK4g[/youtube]The Gary Vaynerchuk Show
Here is a guy who started with next to nothing.
His parents, recent immigrants from Russia came to the US in the 1990s and opened a small liquor package store in New Jersey.
Gary might have spent his life working there, except he had an idea.
He realized that the nexus of The Web and Video gave him a chance to create his own ‘TV Personality’ around wine. So he began to webcast from his Brooklyn apartment. A camera, a desk and a bottle of wine.
That’s all it takes.
Today he has built an empire worth $40 million.
Trust me. If he can do this, so can you.
2 Comments
steve November 14, 2011
yep.
i commented elsewhere about a buddy of mine shooting a pretty crappy :40 video containing what may be the only eyewitness to that deadly helicopter crash last week on moloka’i.
cnn, abc and global toronto all ran the video, but what struck me more was another video he posted on themolokanews.com about the latest skirmish the island’s people are having amongst each themselves- is it an aquatic tour bus or a cruise ship? you be the judge.
that :35 video told me all i needed to know about the “protest”- 30 protestors, 5-0 on the scene, etc. .
i got more out of it than a 2 page story someone might write about it… and without the spin.
i keep telling him “video, video, video”… i think he’s coming around.
i love the good people of moloka’i. not only is life real simple there, but i suspect we’ll be seeing video soon of “occupy kaunakakai harbor”.
kenny November 14, 2011
Vaynerchuk is a visionary with social media. he’s 10 steps ahead of most people with new platforms because he always sees the potential of the coolest ones and acts on them. His energy is unending and his passion is palatable. he also has a ton of ebooks and audios on how to succeed in social marketing. this guy is awesome!