Ten Good Service Examples

1. Occasionally, the head chef at a restaurant I frequent, mostly for after-hours libations, will plunk down a free appetizer plate for me and my tablemates to enjoy. The value of that gesture is ten times the value of the food.

2. Every time a reporter does a telephone interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” he or she says “thank you” to the interviewee. Small things speak volumes about your civility and brand values.

3. Danny Meyer, owner of the Gramercy Tavern in NYC, will never deny a diner a place in his restaurant even if it’s obvious the reservation was not made to begin with. His contention and assumption? Your reservation was botched... by us.

4. Target originated the no hassle-return policy. Though interrupted for a period, it is still the best thing going in retail.

5. Those few businesses in which you are greeted with a welcoming gesture that implies they’re absolutely thrilled to see you, even when they don’t know who you are. Why is it so hard for businesses to do that? Worse, why do some find it so easy to do the exact opposite?!!

6. Airline e-tickets. Perhaps some of you don’t recall a time when these weren’t around. I can tell you, it was a pain in the ass.

7. Most car rental pick-up and drop-off programs. Again, you may not recall the time when it was really difficult and time-consuming. I can tell you, it was.

8. Credit card gas pumps. Fantastic innovation. Anxious for RFID technology to offer the same convenience in grocery stores.

9. Online shopping. What a concept. Amazon and iTunes do it best. Thank you!

10. Hand-written notes. Hand addressed envelopes. Nothing relays your honesty and sincerity more than a hand-written note. Nothing will get someone to open an envelope faster than hand addressing.

More to come.

---

Say again??

Looking Good Louis.

A recent article in WSJ suggested that a CEO’s knowledge of wine demonstrates depth of character and thus provides leverage with clients.

I’m hard of hearing, so I said, “huh?”

Certainly when dealing with clients, there are more nuances at play than you’ll find at the high school prom, and the smart operator needs the “sight” to navigate the choppy waters of client relationships. But knowing the difference between foie gras and Mardi Gras? Being well-travelled, dropping who’s who names and talking blue chip insider trash? Knowing an elegant pinot noir from Guy Noir?

It’s true, a lot can be said for the benefits of the schmooze and, with attribution to Peggy Noonan, it’s hard to argue that mastering the artifice of one’s profession doesn’t provide an occasional leg up. It’s why vendors take their clients to dinner, play rounds of golf, make nice, and try to find common social ground. These aren’t bad things, but they are secondary, and in today’s business climate, nearing meaningless.

I find the younger the client the less BS they want to put up with. Young managers are more direct and more likely to judge vendors by outcome rather than old school approaches like who knows whom or whether one’s choice of the 2001 Brunello Montalcino impressed the sommelier.

At the end of the day the services we offer and the expertise we provide determine whether the client’s cash register rings. The only thing we need to be really good at is – what we’re paid to do.

Ultimately that - and only that - wins the day.

---

What they don’t show you is what happened after the lion licked all the A-1 Steak Sauce off the guy’s face:

Lion reunited with former owners.

Wack Words

Two newspaper editor friends forwarded the list from the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational, a competition to combine words, creating new hybrids.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before:

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, lasting only until one realizes it was your money to begin with.

Cashtration: The act of buying a home, rendering one financially impotent.

Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.

Sarchasm: The gap between the purveyor of a sarcastic wit and the guy who doesn’t get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously.

Glibido: All talk, no action.

Arachnoleptic: The frantic dance just after you’ve walked face-first into a spider web.

Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at night and cannot be cast out.

Another spin on the competition includes alternate meanings of words…

Coffee: The person upon whom one coughs.

Abdicate: To give up all hope of having a flat stomach.

Negligent: Absentmindedly answering the door in a negligee.

Lymph: Walk with a lisp.

Testicle: A humorous question on an exam.

Balderdash: A rapidly receding hairline.

Next week we’ll return to being really serious.

Product Placement Paranoia

The best magazine you’ve never heard of, Mental Floss, recently did a feature story on “Five Triumphs in Product Placement.” Personally, I put product placement right in there with subliminal sex messages in the ice cubes of magazine liquor ads. It concerns me that amongst the messages we receive that are supposedly content, where the playing field is hypothetically level between the purveyor of the message and its receiver, there are “placed” messages intended to sway or deceive the unsuspecting (that would be you and me).

When I see Simon Cowell drinking from a big red Coca Cola cup, I can see this is product placement, at its most obvious and crass. Harmless. I could care less if Simon drinks Coke, nor do I care if Randy and Paula do. My bet is that what’s in Paula’s supersized cup ain’t Coke anyway.

But when I discover that Reese’s Pieces paid big dough for the rights to have cuddly, trustworthy E.T. chomping down its product in E.T.: Extraterrestrial, or that Jerry Seinfeld sold rights to the Junior Mint company for use in the famous Kramer-Junior Mints surgery scene, I get all choked up. I’m annoyed and concerned that I’ve been hoodwinked, tricked into assigning value to a product because I was otherwise enjoying what I thought was an innocent bit of entertainment.

Mental Floss: Five Product Placement Triumphs:

1. White Castle - was not the original pick for the Harold and Kumar movie. It was supposed to be Krispy Kreme.

2. Junior Mints – you already know the story.

3. Reese’s Pieces - not the original pick for E.T. M&M’s had a shot but turned it down.

4. Ray Ban – prior to Tom Cruise wearing them in Risky Business, their Wayfarer brand was going down the tubes. For a $50,000 product placement fee, sales went through the roof.

5. Fed-Ex – this one was not paid for, yet the benefits derived from Cast Away were priceless.

Yes, it’s a free country and capitalism knows few boundaries, but all I can say is, with the profusion of product placement now that TIVO has for all intents and purposes totally degraded television advertising...

Buyer Beware!!

---

Product placement at its funkiest and best:

Radiohead: House of Cards

Channeling Telemachus

I hope you can come up with a list of people who have positively influenced your business life. I’ve had many, but reserve the title “mentor” for only a few, due both to the extent of their influence and its duration.

Mostly, they did not offer advice. They taught by example. I simply watched.

Jerry Parden

Sales was my first adult job. An English major, the whole thing was anathema to me. But supporting a small and growing family makes one do crazy things. I jumped in. Jerry, my boss for five formative years, showed me how to turn the cocoon to chrysalis.

Jerry’s Lessons:

1. Be bold, be corny, schlep hard.

2. It’s mostly chess: observe moves and counter.

3. Look over the place, find an idea, and draw up an ad right before their eyes.

4. Clients respect persistence. One hundred no's later, pick up the phone and dial.

5. Selling is a conversation, but ask for the business.

Burt Cohen

I’ve worked with Burt for 30 years. He founded MSP, and his high powered credentials include running one of the world’s largest medical publishing companies and working as VP with the New York Times Media Co. MSP is currently owned by another of my major influencers: lawyer, entrepreneur, expert debater, political activist, hockey dad, and data repository, Vance Opperman.

Burt’s Lessons:

1. Be decent to every person you encounter

2. Ideation is an intellectual process: consider all alternatives, dumb or not.

3. Everyone resonates with humor, surprise, and positivity.

4. Trust your colleagues; let them prove what they can do.

5. Make yourself small: it’s disarming and generous.

Who are your mentors, and what did they teach you?

---

Clever Ads

Schweppes: Burst