Friday, March 27, 2009
What's up with that?
I love observational stand-up comedy. Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen Degeneress are masters of finding tiny moments of life and turing them into belly laughs. What's interesting to me, is that those jokes are spun from really small slices of daily life. They must spend a lot more mental energy than most observing and analyzing life.Think about this in the context of branding for a moment. Branding is the sum of all the interactions your customers and vendors have with your company. What if you could take those little things, that everyone else takes for granted, and turn them into something wonderful. Spend a day looking at your company like you were Jerry or Ellen. What would they see and turn into an 8-minute hilarious story.
It's amazing how little sparks of awesomeness have a way of staying with customers for a long time. It's easier to win the game by consistently hitting a ton of singles and doubles than by hoping for a home run each time you're at bat.
CDBaby elevates the order confirmation e-mail to something brilliant. I ordered a CD seven or eight years ago, but I still remember getting the e-mail that it was shipping. Instead of saying "Your order has been shipped" they told me that they removed the CD from storage wearing white gloves and placed it on a velvet pillow to be carried to the shipping department accompanied by the cheers of the warehouse staff. It was four paragraphs of brilliant branding that I still smile about.Has anyone caught the latest viral YouTube video featuring a Southwest flight attendant rapping the standard spiel that everyone ignores? When was the last time your were on a flight where passengers gave the attendants a round of applause?
