I love to tell stories—they just keep working themselves into my brain. One story in particular is about an encounter I had at Café Caturra at Libbie and Grove. I go there for the restaurant’s atmosphere. If I have a morning meeting or need to have coffee with a client or business colleague, I love to meet there.
One morning early last winter, I needed to meet a colleague there and I was in the zone. I had gone to see Coldplay in DC the night before and was reliving it on my iPod as I entered the restaurant. Literally 100 miles away from the world at that moment.
I walked in, ordered my coffee, conducted my meeting, and was on my way out, when I was stopped at the back door. A young fellow sitting at a table with what looked like trainees stopped me to ask how my coffee was.
I answered, “Do you want the truth?”
“Yes, of course,” he replied.
I told him I was actually there for a meeting and the ambiance of the restaurant.
He then stated, “Can I ask what was playing on your iPod when you came in the back door?”
“I am a 42-year-old working mother of two. For $20, you should be able to tell me what is on my iPod.”
He stated, “Coldplay.”
I pulled out a $20, but he refused.
After actual introductions, I headed back to the office where I had to look him up online. Jeff Grant, a 20-something co-owner of a Café Caturra. I sent him an email, which has since become very long conversations about branding and understanding your customers.
Jeff explains it like this, “There is no closer to get to another human than feeding them your brand.”
Well said.
Which brings me here… Remember the five senses when considering your marketing strategy. Six if you count intuition. When is the last time you heard something, saw it, smelt it, felt it, and ate it—but understood it before you even experienced any of those previous senses?
In further reading about the senses in relation to marketing, I came across Martin Lindstrom’s 2002 article, Sensory Brand Management.
Enjoy!
Well, parenting is never easy and one hard thing to do is to nurture. Really. It doesn’t just mean being nice. When your child creates something, you can’t fix it to satisfy your own standards. You may as well be saying, “You are NOT good enough”. And you’d never say that. I know how you are. I say this so that I can explain why I have foam cat cutouts on the cats’ food dishes and lots of handwritten (and creatively spelled!) signs around my house. (Yes. They are taped. To the walls, doors, mirrors, windows…..) I prefer to think my child is developing her sense of style and contributing to the decor in our home. She is exploring the new written world and she has tools now, baby!
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I cannot say enough good things about writing your thank you notes! My children do, of course, grumble a bit about having to do it. But I believe I’ve achieved some goal when I overheard a conversation between two of my children. My oldest child advised the youngest, “You’re wasting time arguing. Mom always wins, so you may as well just get on with it.” That was a satisfying parental moment.