Posts RSS« Free State Social offers HAPPO community job search tips | Main | Hillman’s failure one we can all learn from »
My Mother’s Day story
By Justin Goldsborough | May 10th, 2010
I had a good Mother’s Day this year. Mom and I met for brunch at Grand St. Cafe. They do the whole shrimp cocktail, fruit and hummus buffet. The biscuits and gravy, fried ham and brisket buffet. And of course, the create your own omelet cards on the table. Mmm, mmm :). Food was great, but the conversation was what I found most intriguing.
At some point we started talking about work. I was explaining how I’m acclimating to agency life and one of the projects I’ve been working on lately — social media 101 meetings with executives. I told mom that execs are often skeptical of social media because it’s hard to measure and/or they don’t fully understand how it can be used to benefit their business. And they don’t want to admit that they don’t understand this…at least not in front of their employees.
It was a great mini focus group for me because while mom is on Facebook and starting to text more often, she doesn’t really use social media that much. Yet, as we discussed examples of companies that do it well, we found it was very easy for us to relate on the topic. Why? Because, as we both agreed, it’s really all about the people.
Mom doesn’t use Twitter. But she could see why BP needed to be paying attention to what people were tweeting about the oil spill. She’d never heard of Foursquare. But the idea of driving people into a retail location to get a certain badge (and spend money, of course) made perfect sense. And one of the best parts was when she brought up Chick-Fil-A.
It took me about five times, she said, but I noticed that they do things differently. They are so nice, and it’s everyone. Not just one person here or there. It’s got to be part of their training, she said. We both agreed it seemed to be a reflection of their company culture.
Lastly, when I mentioned how mobile is becoming a sandbox we are helping our clients learn to play in, she stopped me to tell a story. You see, mom was part of the charter class of employees at Sprint PCS — Sprint’s first foray into wireless. Back in 1997, she said, then-CEO Andy Sukawaty addressed the charter group right around when the PCS launch went public. She recalled his message clearly: “We’re going to change the way people communicate.”
Boy, Mr. Sukawaty’s vision was right on, huh? Definitely from a technology point of view. But mom and I also discussed how Chick-Fil-A COO Dan Cathy and Marriott CEO Bill Marriott (my sister works for Marriott in LA) are using these new technologies to develop the same type of relationships they’ve always hoped to have with consumers. Cathy still camps out with customers in the parking lot of new Chick-Fil-A that are about to open. And Marriott is 70-plus and doesn’t know how to use a computer. But he still blogs — he just records his message and a member of his team transcribes it for him and posts the text as well as the audio file.
I think mom understands my job a little better now. In some ways, I don’t think it’s too different from what she’s done and is still doing in her career…at least where people are concerned.
One last part of the story. If you visit this blog every now and then, you probably saw my post a few weeks back about getting to meet Dan Cathy in person. I recounted some of that story for mom and told her that when he spoke to us, his vision, like Andy Sukawaty’s, was rather simple. “We want to create as many raving brand fans as possible,” he said at the time.
He believes in what those fans can do for his company’s reputation and bottom line, I told her. He thinks treating customers the right way will make them passionate about his brand.
“He’s right,” she said. I nodded and smiled. The tools change but the people and relationships remain the same.
Comments are closed.