Melanie Durantaye uses a "talking" mannequin to sell Australian oilskin coats. Nancy and Barry Gibson have set up a mechanical bubble-blowing bear dressed in a pink tutu to make their shop stand out.
For Main Street merchants in Historic Ellicott City, nothing much DTC is too much if it helps bring customers into the store.
"You need to make yourself shine in any way possible," said Leslie Meilman, president of the Ellicott City Business Association and owner of Rugs To Riches, a furniture and accessory store. "If you don't have a concept in your store, you're going to die."
At the Forget-Me-Not Factory, the Gibsons use bubbles, wizard costumes and bears to lure customers into their whimsical gift shop. From atop the store roof stands "Bubblelina," a 3-foot toy bear, blowing bubbles that waft toward the B&O; Railroad Museum.
"People know our store as the store with the bubble bear," Ms. Gibson said. "People see bubbles all the way up the street."
Now her husband, Barry Gibson, is part of the act. Every weekend since May, Mr. Gibson has donned a blue and purple sequined wizard costume. Holding a 24-inch wand, Mr. Gibson has added his own bubbles to the air and managed to help sell about 1,000 of the $7.50 wands during the past six months.
Ms. Gibson said her marketing technique works.
At the Sunflower Trading Co., an Australian outerwear store, Ms. Durantaye uses an animated mannequin named "Bert" to sell her merchandise.
Thanks to a film projector that casts an image of a man's face onto the mannequin's own plaster one, Bert appears to talk.
"It's really eerie," said customer Phyllis Brobander as she gazed raptly at Bert, who describes the history of an Australian oilskin coat. "It's fascinating. It's wonderful."
Bert's face dances with emotion as he "talks" about a coat originally designed by 19th century sailors.
"He's definitely an original approach," said Ms. Durantaye who has used Bert to sell clothing for the past month.
Ms. Durantaye and her husband, Franc, first saw Bert at a 1991 trade show in King of Prussia, Pa. Ms. Durantaye said her husband immediately fell in love with the life-size mannequin. "My husband was intrigued for years."
For three years, the pair asked Driza-Bone, the Australian oilskin manufacturer who owns Bert, if they could borrow the talking dummy. The company finally relented, Ms. Durantaye said. The pair eagerly set up the $7,000 equipment and waited for a reaction from customers.
They didn't have to wait long.
On Halloween night, Bert proved such a hit that customers packed the tiny store. "I couldn't get them out," Ms. Durantaye said.
Despite Bert's lifelike qualities, customers still see through the illusion. The mannequin's ghostly white skin pallor "doesn't look natural," Ms. Brobander said. "If it was really more of a man's natural [coloring], it would be amazing."
Uniqueness, timing and tradition are all part of a good marketing campaign, Ms. Meilman said.
One of the merchants' biggest promotions, Midnight Madness, draws up to 3,000 people in December when stores and restaurants stay open until midnight for one day and carolers roam Main Street singing holiday songs.
"There's just a frenzy," Ms. Meilman said, explaining the event's popularity. "It's the right season to do it and we've had 17 years doing it."