Gorilla marketing
A California restaurateur bets on big attention grabbers - like dinosaurs.
(Fortune Small Business) -- They rise from the desert dust, 130 miles southwest of Las Vegas - a 12-foot-tall King Kong and five like-sized dinosaurs, beckoning motorists along Interstate 15 into Peggy Sue's 50's Diner.
Cheesy? Sure. Effective? That would be the way to bet it.
For the nearly 20 years that Champ Gabler and his wife, Peggy Sue, have owned the 250-seat diner, they have used outsized marketing campaigns as their recession buster. And each time their bottom line has been rewarded.
Their first experiment came in the early 1990s, when they decided to grow Peggy Sue's, which lies on a desolate stretch of highway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, beyond its 60 seats, nine stools, and $280,000 in annual revenue. The economy was down, but the Gablers invested $600,000 - a mix of personal savings and an SBA loan - into quadrupling the number of seats and adding a 3,000-square-foot gift shop. They placed billboard signs along the highway and took out radio spots announcing the new 1950s-era Hollywood memorabilia tourist destination. Two years later Peggy Sue's 50's Diner was pulling in nearly $1 million a year.
Since then, whenever Gabler senses a lull, he buys another radio spot or adds a billboard. This January, when he realized that 2007 sales were flat at $3 million, Gabler went even grander, renting a billboard just outside Sin City that costs him $1,600 more per month than his other locations.
"Big casinos pay top dollar to advertise in that area," says Gabler, 63. "And here is ours, saying nothing more than our name and HUNGRY? 90 MILES."
The result: In February, Peggy Sue's sales jumped 12% despite traffic along the Interstate lagging by 5% compared with February 2006.
Now Gabler is hoping that his monster marketing experiment will have a similarly lucrative impact, quickly recouping the nearly $40,000 he spent on the custom-sculpted creatures.
"There are about 40,000 cars a day passing the back of our property," Gabler says. "We're not sure how long it will take to get a return on our new monsters, but they have created another marketing strategy in trying times," says Gabler.
Up next: the King Kong burger. 
More Slump Busters:
Foreclosure bus' magical misery tour
Slump-busting strategies
Amid art boom, dealers brace for a bust
-
Detroit's churches are plowing millions into redeveloping local housing and businesses. More -
Winepod attracted a wait list of eager buyers and millions from investors. Then came the recession. More -
As other major banks withdrew, Wells Fargo stepped up its small business lending. More -
Designer Chuck Comeau set up his manufacturing in Plainville -- 240 miles away from a major airport. More -
As staffs shrink, business owners are taking on support duties they haven't had to handle in years. More
We've run a dinner theater for three decades. We've been operating at a loss for the last couple of years, and are unable to get a bank loan. We own the land and the theater building, and have put them up for sale with no success. We even closed the theater for two months this summer to save money. We don't know what to do. More
These 7 new homeowners stepped up their house-hunting to take advantage of the first-time buyer tax credit. More
Charlotte Street in New York City's South Bronx was once world famous for its blight. Now it's a slice of suburbia in the inner city - complete with Beemers and boats. More
Critics thought homeownership would never work in the South Bronx. They were wrong. Tour the one house currently for sale on Charlotte Street. More
More Small Business
