- How we made Doyle Brunson a "Household" name.
- Pamela Anderson's PamelaPoker.com was one of the
most successful online poker room launches in history.
- How PlatinumPoker.com registered 5,000 players in
60 days with just SEO.
- How do you sell a window for $5,000?
When the owners of DoylesRoom.com first decided to enter the online poker
space they thought that everyone knew who Doyle Brunson was. Everyone in the
poker world may have heard of Doyle, but they soon learned just how small the
poker world was. Wherever they went wearing DoylesRoom.com apparel they
were asked what's DoylesRoom? Who is Doyle Brunson? Even in the big Las
Vegas hotels people would stop and ask them to explain.
 The
first thing that we did was to revamp the companies logo with Doyle's current
image, the way he looks today rather than the way he looked 20 years ago.
We then used his likeness and name everywhere that we could. Every
advertisement, banner ad, web page, hats, shirts, posters all emblazoned with
Doyle's name and image. Its called Branding, Branding, Branding and it
works.
Next came the PR campaign. 5WPR (www.5wpr.com) out of New York City is
one of the fastest growing PR firms in the US. They did a fantastic job of
getting Doyle's name, image and the name of the online poker room DoylesRoom.com
into every day mainstream media. Time Magazine, major newspapers, major
public interest publications, national radio, television news and talk shows.
"The Godfather of Poker" and "The Babe Ruth of Poker" were planted in
every webpage and all editorial content issued by 5W and the site. Press
releases are one of the best kept online marketing secrets and were used
extensively to spread the word and the legend that has become Doyle Brunson.
Television and online video. Poker shows are still one of the most
watched sports shows on television today. Doyle played in as many
televised events as his schedule would allow. We made it a point to
negotiate for the rights to use as much of that footage as possible for the
website and our own television commercials. If you have the budget nothing
sells like television. Something as simple as another famous player like
Johnny Chan wearing a DoylesRoom.com logo shirt during a televised event could
send thousands of new players to the website minutes after the show would air.
Of course the biggest factor in proliferating Doyle Brunson is the man
himself. He truly is a southern gentlemen and one of the hardest working
73 year old men that I have ever had the honor to work with. Doyle
traveled the country and appeared at events large and small. Always ready
with a smile, a handshake, an autograph and a funny story for all. Day
after day during the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, Doyle would sign
autographs, books and take photographs with his fans.
In just 2 years we helped DoylesRoom.com become the number 5 poker room in
the World. We registered hundreds of thousands of players and increased
sales to over $50 million per year.
 We
registered over 13,000 poker players with just one event. This was
accomplished with the power of PR, and let me tell you when it comes to getting
press there is none better than Pamela Anderson.
We launched PamelaPoker.com from the DoylesRoom.com hospitality suite at the
2006 World Series of Poker. We called an international press conference
and put the 5WPR media machine to work. We closed the doors when the room
hit capacity of about 150 journalists, news outlets and television stations.
The free press generated from this one media event caused a huge surge of web
traffic to PamelaPoker.com and 13,000 players registered to participate in
the site before a single magazine ad hit the streets.
We did this by originally naming the site "TheBinion.com". Any poker
player will tell you that Benny Binion, original owner of the Horseshoe brand in
Las Vegas is also the man that created the World Series of Poker. Jack
Binion, Benny's son proliferated the WSOP and the Horseshoe into billion dollar
brands.
By naming the site "TheBinion.com" and buying Google keywords (this was in
2002 long before Google banned gaming related keywords) and employing some SEO
(Search Engine Optimization) magic on the website, we registered 5,000 serious
poker players in just 60 days. Then in order to avoid any conflict with the
Binion's (they could squash us like very small bugs) we requested and were
granted a meeting with Jack Binion.
Mr. Binion was very pleasant and both he and his council were impressed that
we came to them rather than force them to hunt us down. As much as it
appeared that they would have enjoyed being involved with this exciting online
business, they were in the middle of selling the Horseshoe brand to Harrah's for
$1.5 billion and did not want our use of the Binion name to interfere They
requested that we change the name and we agreed to comply.
 After
months of research, toil and sleepless nights we changed "TheBinion.com" to
"PlatinumPoker.com" and continued to register real money players until we sold
the site to The Doyle Brunson Poker Network in 2005.
 We
helped MegaWood Industries sell thousands of beautiful custom windows for $5,000
and more. As a matter of fact the average project was over $300,000 just
for the windows. Most of us pay that much for the whole house so we had to
target a very exclusive group of people....the "Rich and Famous".
So how do you sell windows to Jerry Seinfeld, Paul Simon, Sandra Bullock and
John McEnroe windows? You Don't. We sold them to their architects.
Some of the most famous architects in the World. So how do you sell
windows to Richard Meier, Gwathmey Siegel, Daniel Libeskind and Michael Graves?
Again.... You Don't.
We created a calendar featuring stunning photographs of some of the most
prestigious projects highlighting the windows as well as the architects that
incorporated them into their custom designs. We sent one to every
underling working in the offices of the great architects. These are the
people that are tasked with sourcing the latest products and bringing them to
the attention of the more senior staff. We created a website with
additional information as well as all of the shapes and details required to make
incorporating the windows into their drawings easy.
We capped the program with creating a lunch time seminar that we could
provide in the architects offices where we provided the lunch as well as the
educational entertainment. In many cases the principles would attend these
functions and get a feel for the product first hand.
MegaWood sales went from $2 million per year to $7 million in the first year
of the program and to $10 million in the second.
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