Make Busking Historic.
The Dualers are buskers. They're not famous as far as I'm aware, but their professional set-up in terms of microphones and amplification had drawn a crowd. So far so normal. They also sold CDs. Less common but not out of the ordinary.
But what was unusual was the way they vociferously offered to sign the CDs. And it worked. To some people, they had made a run of the mill busking CD seem special. Now that's what I call marketing.
posted by john dodds @ 7:03 AM
9 Comments:
That's personalisation.
My Mum wrote a book, right, and I asked her to sign it - and she wrote 'To Tom, Love from Mum'.
Funnily enough, that ISN'T really personalisation, is it ?
Absolutely Tom, that's what amazed me. They had obviouly discovered that for some wholly incomprehensible resaon, offering the signature made it feel personal to the buyers.
You know your mother loves you, so that's not really persoanlisation; they didn't know the buskers cared about them but the signature socialised the transaction?
Well, what I mean is, YOU could have signed that in her book and I could claim it was the author's signature.
Signatures are the tip of the iceberg. Personalisation is one thing - what consumers want of course is something PERSONAL from the side of the supplier, too. Whe I was working in T - Shirts we used to take photos of the people printing and packing the shirts and send them in with the boxes to the customer.
I like it when Smile the bank speak to me in a sort - of conversational - type manner. It's like they're not trying TOO HARD to be my friend. Like they're trying to cover up the fact that they don't really care at all.
Er, I mean ...like they're NOT trying too hard to be my friend. You get the picture. I like Smile.
Yes I agree with you again - what these guys did was not personal in any real sense except that they clearly knew their audience and that this would seem personal to them. I was more bemused than anything else.
I tell you what's interesting too - if you have a relationship with a customer, and you have that customer for a long time - shouldn't this relationship change over that period ? I mean My Mum is still my Mum (and this is a bad example - partly because my Mum is actually dead), but over time we've grown up, fallen out, got more circumspect about things, etc etc.
Should a supplier be aware that over a lifecycle of a relationship the tone of communication needs to change as does the status of the relations between you ?
Is there any teaching, practical or otherwise which addresses this ?
I'm sure there are all sorts of charlatans out there willing to sell you snake-oil on this one, but I would argue that your primary communication especially over the longer term occurs via the service/product you provide.
If that consistently or increasingly meets their needs and there are no nasty surprises along the way, I suspect that we as customers consider ourselves increasingly invested in/loyal to/appreciated by that supplier.
As for actual verbal/written communication the cynic in me suggests that long term customers at the intermediary level already receive changing tone of communication via deals/lunches etc. To replicate that for the individual customer is harder and my fallback/arguably naive position would be that the goal should be to treat all prospects/customers as if they are long term customers (as per the post I recently did about management consultants and their dubious prescriptions for customer differentiation).
P.S. To whom do I send the invoice?
Hmmm - I think we need to look at a bit more detail before we start looking at invoices - and at that point we need to look at who's invoicing who.
For now I'd carry on sending your payment to Blogspot or whoever provides your service and they'll allow you to use the software for its purpose.
I'll buy you another pint 'though.
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