Business experts call it "anger-based marketing." Strong emotions become selling tools when businesses tap into them.
Jeff Draeger, left, the Bier Markt's "gunslinger of beer," holds a Lebron James jersey as co-owner Mike Foran hacks away with garden shears. Customers got a free beer Friday if they brought in LeBron gear to be shredded.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After LeBron picked Miami over Cleveland, you knew a lot of us would be furious.
Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert sure was.
"I personally guarantee that the Cleveland Cavaliers will win an NBA championship before the self-titled former 'king' wins one," Gilbert wrote in an open letter to fans Thursday night.
The rant of an angry owner? If so, it was good marketing. Anger, like any strong emotion, can be a powerful selling tool, as several Cleveland-area businesses are finding out.
Gilbert's tirade let the angry fans know he felt their pain. And, coincidentally, he gave them a reason to buy tickets.
"Emotions are a very, very powerful force," said Derek Rucker, a marketing professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. "Anger is an approach-oriented emotion. It's about taking action, doing something."
The team says Gilbert's comments were the words of a passionate fan expressing his disappointment, not the Cavaliers' new marketing strategy.
"Our focus is, and will continue to be, on the many opportunities we have ahead of us," Cavaliers' President Len Komoroski said in an e-mailed statement. "This entire organization will continue to focus on winning. That will be central in our communication to our fans."
Still, the anger's out there, and for companies willing to tap into it, there could be rewards.
Friday night, visitors to McNulty's Bier Markt in Ohio City could turn in a No. 23 jersey or LeBron T-shirt and get a free beer. Showing off a T-shirt, hat or tattoo featuring another Cleveland sports star - or anything that promotes the city - got people a second round for free.
Those LeBron shirts? The bar issued each bartender a pair of garden shears to shred them on the spot.
"We're going to do a finger count at the end of the night," Bier Markt owner Sam McNulty said Friday before the shredding party. He added that he and his employees "drank up" the idea last night after watching the infamous news conference where James announced his plans.
LeBron James is gone, and his 10-story mural will soon follow. The Nike mural depicting James' pre-game powder-tossing ritual will come down next week, said David Sternberg of Gigantic Media of Solon, which coordinated installing it in September 2007. It covers the side of the Landmark Office Tower at Ontario Street and Prospect Avenue, facing The Q. A specific date has not been set, and Sternberg said Gigantic and Nike are still working out details.Rucker said McNulty stumbled across the key on how to sell with anger. Don't try to calm people down. Angry people want to be happy, not serene.
In travel ads, if marketers think the audience seeing the ad is angry, they're better off showing a smiling person shooting the rapids in a kayak. It's when marketers think someone is anxious or stressed that they show people lounging on the beach.
"Apple is really good at this," Rucker said. "Their ads all show the kind of emotional experiences you're going to have with their products."
Anger and other emotional appeals can work to sell products, but there are limits, said James Martin, a marketing professor at John Carroll University.
"You can't keep playing on it," Martin said. Appealing to angry fans may sell some Cavs tickets, he said, but fans won't come back if the team is no good.
Anton Gorkavchuk, owner of Medina's Nifty Nerd computer services company, said he wasn't thinking about anger-based marketing when he decided to offer customers a $23 credit for turning in a LeBron T-shirt. He was just a fan angry that another top-earning athlete was abandoning Cleveland.
He said he'll probably donate the shirts he collects to clothing drives or "send them overseas to people who don't know how badly he betrayed us."
Pat Conway, co-owner of the Great Lakes Brewing Co., has seen this before. In 1995, he released Cleveland Brown Ale and donated a portion of the proceeds to groups fighting Art Modell's decision to move the Browns to Baltimore.
"We're all about catastrophes and sinking ships over here," Conway said. The brewery has beers named for the burning of the Cuyahoga River and federal bailouts of banks and automakers. He takes things that get customers angry and uses them to make people smile.
"We connect to the city. It's all part of being in the community. It's part-and-parcel with our marketing plan," Conway said.
Next week, he'll release a new beer -- Quitness.
It's a bitter ale.