Wiener Dog Marketing: A Silly Sounding Book about Serious Business Growth

By Peter Nevland

Wouldn't it be amazing to know whether your business idea is going to be a success before you spend any resources pursuing it? In 1998 Diane Krejci approached Roy H. Williams with a proposal for him to sponsor one of 3 different events for the Buda Lions Club's annual festival. Instantly a superpower t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiener Dog Publishing
• Release date: Jun 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9780578373621

Peter Nevland

Peter Nevland lives with his wife and three children in Austin, TX. His teams of Wizard of Ads partners have helped grow businesses since 2008. It's very common for his clients to double and continue growing year after year. He holds a masters in materials science and engineering and worked as an engineer for Motorola before leaving in 2002 to tour the world for a decade as a spoken word performer and writing workshop teacher. He's now released 3 books, 8 albums, 2 DVDs and endless smiles all over the world.

Book preview

Wiener Dog Marketing

Introduction ............................................................................ vii

1. A Wiener Dog Tail ................................................................ 1

     (The Story of Roy H. Williams and the Wiener Dog Races)

2. For the Love of Wiener Dogs  ............................................ 14

     (If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Badly)

3. Body of a Sausage ................................................................. 24

     (The Way Things Are vs The Way Things Ought To Be)

4. The Wiener Dog Question ................................................. 33

     (What Can You Count On Not Changing?)

5. Wiener Dog Focus ............................................................... 42

     (Helping the Customer vs Helping the Retailer)

6. Wieners on the Wrong Track ............................................ 54

     (Having the Qualities of Success Without Being a Success)

7. Embrace Your Wiener Dog ................................................ 69

     (Finding Your Identity, Purpose, and Adventure)

8. Making a Wiener Dog ......................................................... 82

     (What it takes to Become a Success)

9. Magical Wiener Dogs & Storytellers .................................. 91

     (Someone who Believes in You More than You)

10. Follow the Wiener Dog ................................................... 107

      (How Employees Become Wiener Dogs)

11. Once a Wiener… .............................................................. 118

      (Repurposing the Proven)

12. The Heart of a Wiener Dog ............................................  130

      (Character Diamonds)

13. Wiener Dogs Forever ...................................................... 146

      (The Power of Group Promotion)

14. Are You A Wiener Dog? .................................................. 156

      (A Final Look at Commitment)

Introduction

Money.  

Piles of money.  

Roy H. Williams hasn’t just been successful. He’s made dozens of other business owners piles and piles of money in more than 30 years as a marketing consultant. Justice Jewelers, Spence Diamonds, 1-800-Got-Junk and Morris Jenkins are just a few of the giants who were many times smaller when they hired Roy. You’ll see their names all over the academy they helped build in Austin, Texas.

Roy’s often noted that his superpower is his ability to spot the wiener dog, an intuitive sense that allows him to pick out a successful business before it becomes a success.  He can’t explain exactly how he knows. But he says he only works with businesses who will already succeed anyway. He just makes them more successful much faster than they could on their own. 

I can’t imagine any business owner who wouldn’t want to have that kind of magic in their corner. So I decided to go on a journey to see if I could understand his superpower, if I could uncover the magic behind the story of a silly little dog with tiny legs… and make it available to your business.

Warning:  This book uses the phrase wiener dog exactly 400 times. If you take issue with books that are entertaining, use metaphors and will challenge the way you think about marketing, you should stop reading right now and go read a college textbook on marketing. If you love the thought of knowing what will actually work, please read on. It’s gonna be fun.

Here’s Wiener Dog Marketing (cue sound of a dachsund howling in the distance)…

Image Courtesy of the Buda Lions Club

1

A Wiener Dog Tale

The Story of Roy H. Williams and the Buda Lions Club Wiener Dog Races

Peter:  I want to know the original story of the Buda Lions Club Wiener Dog Races. There were two other contenders they had to choose from. How did you know to pick wiener dogs? How did you know it would become hugely successful before any of them had ever been tried? You recognized the big idea amongst two other losers… or let’s just say two other not as good choices.

Roy:  So here’s what happened. We’re living in Buda. It had about 1700 people living in the city limits at that time. It hadn’t gotten any subdivisions. It hadn’t expanded. And the Buda Lions club couldn’t have had, oh, I don’t know, it couldn’t have been more than 12, if it was that many. They had this idea that they were going to do this festival for this little town of 1700 people.

They came to Williams Marketing and knocked on the door. We had a pretty successful advertising business in the city limits. They said, You guys are a major employer. You have like, 8 employees. 

Peter:  Ha, ha, ha. You’re big time!

Roy:  Yep, you have eight employees. Would you be interested in participating? And

I said,  Well, what are you asking for?

They said, "We want you to sponsor… and you have your choice between

     1) The precision lawn chair drill team, so like synchronized swimming…"

Peter:  Now I know why I didn’t remember it.

Roy:  "You’re going to have your choice between that and…

     2) The riding lawn mower races - that are jet powered with an actual jet engine. 

It was enough years ago that, remember Tim the Tool Man Taylor was doing Tool Time? There was an episode where he had a jet powered riding lawn mower. Now the Buda Lions Club had gotten that actual jet powered riding lawnmower from Home Improvement. 

And I said, No, what else ya got?

They said, "Well, we’ve got… 

     3) The wiener dog races, but they’re already being sponsored by Truck City, a new car dealer, maybe a Ford dealer. I can’t remember. They’ve already got the wiener dog races."

But I said, "Here’s the thing. I think these riding lawnmower races make more sense for Truck City. I think they need to support the riding lawnmower thing. Cause I get the wiener dogs, or I don’t want to play.

They said, Well that’s not very civic minded. I said, I never pretended to be civic minded. 

Peter: (hearty laughter). 

Roy:  They said, Well don’t you care about the community? I said, No.

Peter: (more hearty laughter).

Roy:  I don’t live here. And I don’t care about the community. You knocked on my door. You wanted to know if I wanted to support the lawn chair thing or the lawnmower thing, and I said No.

Peter:  …to jet power.

Roy:  Now listen, the lawnmower races were actually exciting. They had bails of hay, and these lawnmowers were flippin’ through the air.

Peter:  That is kind of cool.

Roy:  It was…

Peter:  Bigger noise…

Roy:  It was like NASCAR…

Peter:  Bigger excitement… 

Roy:  Indy 500

Peter:  …seemingly than a wiener dog. 

Roy:  They said, Well aren’t you willing to, don’t you wanna be a partici…? And I said, No. It’s a lot of money. I’m happy to give you that money, but I get the wiener dogs. Go tell Truck City if they’re so civic minded, they can support the riding lawnmower thing. So they went and convinced Truck City to support the riding lawnmower thing. And that was very…

Peter:  Truck City doesn’t look as smart as they originally seemed to be. 

Roy:  Well, that was very small of me. If I had been a better person, I would have done the right thing and just supported whatever they asked me to support.

Peter:  Right.

Roy:  But, Peter, I said, wiener dogs are guaranteed to capture the imagination of the public. 

Peter: Right.

Roy:  Listen, wiener dogs are hysterical. The very idea of racing wiener dogs, the idea is funny. You don’t have to see the race for it to be funny.

Peter:  It’s not cool, it’s funny.

Roy:  It’s hysterical. It’s like the word duck. 

Peter:  Right.  Right, right Right. 

Roy:  Every comedian knows there’s nothing funnier than a duck. Ducks, they waddle.  They’re a weird shape.  Ducks are funny. 

Peter:  Ok.

Roy:  It’s the funniest animal. 

Peter:  Yep, yeah, yeah.

Roy:  And so I said, you know what, a wiener dog is like a duck.  It’s a funny animal. 

Peter:  Yeah.

Roy:  And I said, "wiener dogs are winners. Wiener dogs, wiener dog races, just the idea of wiener dog races.

Peter:  Did you say wiener dogs are wieners?

Roy:  No, I didn’t.

Peter:  Good.

Roy: And I said, no, wiener dog racing is just fundamentally funny. Just the very idea of wiener dog races is funny. And I said people will be attracted to the wiener dog races. So I said, I get the wiener dogs. So guess what, it was like they did the riding lawnmower and the precision lawn chair thing for exactly one year…

Peter:  So they did those things?

Roy:  They did.

Peter:  Even though you knew…

Roy:  No, no, They had sponsors. I sponsored the wiener dogs. 

Peter:  Ok, alright.

Roy:  I sponsored the wiener dogs, and they got other sponsors for these other two things. And as I expected, nobody was interested in the other two things. The wiener dogs grew to be a national phenomenon.

Peter:  How many applicants would they have?

Roy:  I don’t know. You can check into that. Now, listen, the Buda Lions club a number of years ago gave me the Melvin Jones award. 

Peter:  Ok.

Roy:  Did you know that nobody’s ever been given the Melvin Jones Award in the history of the (Buda) Lions Club? 

Peter:  I don’t even know who Melvin…

Roy:  He was the founder of the Lions Club.

Peter:  Oh, wow, so this is a big deal.

Roy:  No, listen, you talk to anybody in the Lions Club. 

Peter:  You are MJ. You are number 23. 

Roy:  Listen, whenever they say Melvin Jones award, people take a deep breath. It’s like a Nobel Prize. It’s like they’ve never met anybody that won the Melvin Jones award. You have to be the most dedicated, most amazing, most miracle working… you have to be like a saint.

Peter:  That’s not you.

Roy: No. I’ve never been a member of the Lions Club. I’ve never, ever done anything good. And here’s what happened. They got the board of directors to change the