[Community Service] Now That's Service!

When the work day ends for Drew Cowley, another round of work begins. For instance, on a typical day in October, the New Jersey PCO leaves his office to take his daughters to their soccer games, then he’s off to coach his 10-year-old son in football, and finally rushes over to coach his daughter’s travel basketball team. Come November, Cowley’s busy coaching three of the six basketball teams his kids play on. And in the spring, baseball demands much of Cowley’s time. “No matter what season it is, there are at least five things going on,” Cowley said.

Cowley may not be all that different from the average parent of school-aged children when it comes to youth sports. However his multi-tasking abilities take on new meaning when you consider that, in the midst of all these activities, he’s also promoting his own company, Cowley’s Termite and Pest Services, based in Neptune City, N.J.

Cowley and other PCOs like him seem to have mastered the art of one of the best-kept marketing secrets: That community service-driven public relations can be a powerful — if intangible — business generator. These PCOs have taken the concept of community service to a new level, creating good will among residents and incorporating innovative ways to support their customer base.

HIGH VISIBILITY. Much of the exposure Cowley’s company receives occurs at sports outings. At practice and games, Cowley parks his white, prominently lettered truck on the fields. Hundreds of families walk by every night. And it doesn’t hurt that the truck virtually pops with information, being wrapped as it is with bright, clearly visible graphics featuring the company’s name, phone number and logo.

For the Cowleys, community involvement is a family affair. Cowley’s brother and business partner, Bill, also coaches numerous sports teams and serves as the commissioner for his town’s Pop Warner football league. The Cowleys’ wives coach soccer. Bill has four kids, Drew has three, and any team they’re on is usually sponsored by Cowley’s.

They have many reasons for giving so much back to the community. “We love being around our kids,” Cowley said. It also creates good will for the company, he notes.

But a secondary motive is also drawing attention to his desired place in the community: being the one company you need to call if you have pest problems. Cowley admits that coaching is a “huge time commitment,” but it also presents a win-win situation. “Number one, it’s great for the kids. Number two, it’s great marketing.”

And there are many ways Cowley passively, even unwittingly, communicates this message. During baseball games, a sign on the fence year-round lets everyone know Cowley’s is a major sponsor. The company’s name is on the back of Little League uniforms. Basketballs donated by the company feature the company’s logo. And both brothers coach football, too.

“Everyone knows that we’re coaching and it’s Cowley’s Pest Control that’s coaching the kids,” Drew said. Families from all teams he’s involved with are customers of the company, he said, “and it’s all due to coaching and my kids being involved and all the sponsoring.”

Cowley also shows his support in other ways. When his daughter’s school softball coach asked Cowley if he could help with fund-raising efforts to pay for a fence for the softball field, Cowley simply donated the fence. The school acknowledged his gift, and the local paper published a photo. “It goes a long way,” Cowley says.

“We’re always getting involved in anything in the community,” he said. Some of those have included 5K runs and surfing contests. “Anything and everything that will draw a crowd,” Cowley said.

For instance, Cowley’s is a sponsor of the annual Brielle Day Celebration held each September in Brielle, N.J. Cowley got involved four years ago, after a friend who is a fire fighter asked if his company would consider donating the beer sold by the fire department during the event. Cowley agreed, and has been the sole supplier of beer for that event ever since. Cowley believes sponsoring the beer tent has led to a lot of visibility for his company. And the costs for sponsoring these various teams and events isn’t high when you consider the exposure it provides. He says the beer for Brielle Day costs about $1,400. But in return the company’s name appears on 1,500 plastic beer mugs, the event banners, and hundreds of T-shirts worn by workers or sold at the event.

For Little League, it costs $200 to sponsor a team, plus $250 for a sign in the outfield that stays there all year. The company’s name goes on the back of the uniforms. It’s also used wherever standings are posted. “They constantly mention the sponsors because you’re helping them out,” Cowley said.

And Cowley’s has supported a number of other organizations, including donating service to such facilities as the Ronald McDonald House and the Mercy Center in Asbury Park. The company also provided free Christmas decoration services for a family whose father was stationed in Iraq.
But his biggest time commitment is still the coaching, Cowley said. “Coaching is a huge time commitment. It’s all after work, on weekends.”

Cowley tries to track how customers hear of him, but he admits you can’t fully measure how much business a company receives because of its community involvement. “When anyone calls our office, our staff is asking, ‘Where did you hear of us?’” he said. Very often the answer is something like “one of your owners coaches in my town.” Toward that end, Cowley is attempting to collect information about how his involvement in youth sports teams is impacting business. “We gave it a whole category in our computer,” he said.

WORTHY CAUSES. For some PCOs, marketing and public relations aren’t even considerations when it comes to supporting the community. Jim Maurer, owner of First Choice Termite & Pest Control, based in Winter Park, Fla., said he simply wants to support worthy causes. “I’m not looking for recognition,” Maurer said. And more often than not, he will help those groups or individuals who ask for support. “If I know the person, then I’ll usually participate in some way,” he said.

“I do it because people ask me and I just want to do it,” Maurer said. “There’s potentially some residual business we get from that but that’s not the intent. I don’t do it to try to get business.”

And when Maurer has agreed to help support an organization or cause, they often are bowled over by his support. Recently he sent a donation to a colleague who manages a local bank, in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. “I sent a hundred dollars and she freaked out,” he said. “She thought it was a lot. I thought it was nothing.”

When one of his employees’ daughters called Maurer to ask if he might purchase a tub of cookie dough in support of her school band, she was shocked to hear that Maurer wanted to buy 12 tubs, one of each flavor. “I wished I could have seen her face, but it didn’t matter, I could hear it in her voice,” he recalled. Maurer then gave the dough to the first 12 new customers as part of a promotion. “They went fast,” he said. “I think they were gone within a week or two.”

One of the company’s biggest displays of support was its recent fund-raising efforts for the Autism Society, on behalf of the Apartment Association of Greater Orlando. Maurer is a member of the association and serves on its charity committee. For that fund-raiser, Maurer sold tickets to an Orlando Predators football game. Half of the ticket proceeds went to the Autism Society. “Every time I would go to an association meeting I would pressure people to buy tickets or make a donation,” said Maurer. He also asked vendors and clients for donations, and his company matched any contributions made to the society dollar for dollar.

“We ended up with about $1,000,” he said. He also sold 30 tickets to the game.

Maurer’s interest in charity work was piqued while working at Middleton Lawn & Pest Control, where he was previously quality control service director. That company has been very active in supporting the community, Maurer noted. He left Middleton in 2002, to start his own company.

Maurer admits his company may receive some business as a result of his community involvement, however he doesn’t bother to track it. But it’s clear that he’s doing something right: Recently, while talking with a colleague who’s been in business three times longer, Maurer found out he’s doing an equal amount of business.

GIVING BACK. Mike McCauley, owner of The Bug Man, Benton, Ark., feels it’s important to give back to the community. “You have to put back in the community that gives to you,” he said. “If you’ve been blessed like we have, I feel like it’s our responsibility.”

This is a notion he’s also trying to instill in his sons, ages 18 and 25, who are working in the business. For the last 15 years McCauley has coached a middle-school football team, and now his 25-year-old son is coaching, too.
McCauley is one of the major supporters and a board member of a 40-year-old non-profit youth football program for kids in grades four through seven, the Future Panthers Incorporated. He also serves as secretary/treasurer. “Football at our school doesn’t start until eighth grade,” said McCauley. “We provide this as a service to the community.”

Over the years the group has purchased land; built a stadium and football field; and supplied equipment, a press box and parking lot. “We have almost 300 kids playing football,” he said. McCauley and his staff handle maintenance of the field and all the paperwork for the league.

Like other PCOs, McCauley says his involvement in the league does bring business, but that’s not his ultimate goal. “I don’t do any of this to get business,” he said. “I feel it’s a part of your social responsibility.”

However, McCauley’s community commitment has undoubtedly worked in his company’s favor. “Everyone knows us around town, and when they have a problem they think of us,” McCauley said. “They feel they can trust you because they know what you’re doing.”

McCauley is involved in other efforts, too. For several years he has supported the Saline Memorial Health Foundation’s fund-raising efforts by providing and cooking lunch for participants and supporters of its annual golf tournament. He also enjoys sponsoring events with Special Olympics and luncheons for school teachers in his area. And he recently started a contest among local schools for the best bug collection.

“You pick and choose based on where you can do the most good,” he said. “I try not to turn anything down if I’m really helping a cause.” McCauley sponsors events and Little League baseball in a number of different communities where he operates. “I feel like every community we’re in, we need to put back into that community.” Toward that end, employees throughout the company are involved in such groups as Rotary and Kiwanis.

NEW AVENUES. As Buffalo Exterminating of Orchard Park, N.Y., illustrates, ideas for supporting the community are limited only by the imagination. This company has found some unique ways to show support for the community and at the same time also promote its services. For one, the company was the sole sponsor for the Buffalo Museum of Science’s Bug Bash exhibit, held in the summer of 2007. The company helped by providing financial support for the exhibit.

“They approached us with the notion that maybe we could sponsor it,” said John Zimmerman, general manager of Buffalo Exterminating. Zimmerman said the company doesn’t do a lot of advertising in the local market, but working with the museum fit two bills for the company: to instill a sense of good will in the community, and for public relations purposes.

The Bug Bash exhibit comprised a collection of interactive stations and mounted specimens throughout the museum targeted for children that provided an up-close look at the insect world. For instance, kids could wear prism goggles to learn how insects’ eyes work. They crawled through tunnels wearing Velcro® jackets to learn how pollen sticks to bees. And a long-jump experiment showed them how far a cricket can hop.

Zimmerman said the museum has for years had a strong entomology department. The company already had a connection with the museum: The company’s quality control and training director, Marc Potzler, used to work as the museum’s entomologist.

Working with the museum was especially timely for the company which, in recent years, adjusted some of its marketing strategies. “We developed a branding and marketing campaign around families and children,” said Zimmerman. The campaign was based on research indicating that today’s consumers place a high value on family-centered activities. “That was the philosophy of getting in these local museums and kids sports,” Zimmerman said.

Furthermore, he said, sponsoring the children’s activities at the museum “met our branding requirements of what we were trying to promote. The customer base fit our demographics and part of it was just the community service.”

Zimmerman said the company also sponsors some youth sports teams as well, and hopes to do more. “That kind of stuff,” he said, “is relatively inexpensive and it gives us a little exposure in a different area.” For a few hundred dollars, the company gets its name and logo on banners used during games, he said.
The company also has sponsored a local amateur hockey rink, where they advertise on dasher boards behind the goals. This has even given the company some free TV exposure, particularly since the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres practice there. Zimmerman says he’s seen the company’s name and large red “X” logo appear briefly on newscasts of the Sabres.

But, he notes, sponsoring sports teams as a form of advertising can’t be tracked. “We’re going on common sense and good faith,” he says of these more personal community sponsorships. “I wouldn’t ever make that the primary marketing source,” but, he adds, once the primary demographic is covered, mixing in these community sponsorships seems to be beneficial. “I’ve got a belief that if you’re in a community and you’re going to support some of the functions in the community, that’s a good thing to do.”

It seems to be working for Buffalo Exterminating. “We’re up 23 percent so far, in a market that hasn’t been growing at all,” Zimmerman said. “(2007) was a great year for us.”

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT.