My wife an I celebrated our 10th anniversary on Nov 30. I’ve been secretly looking forward to this because I’ve been wanting to go to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse – a place where we would not normally go with 3 little ones tagging along. Anyway, with a babysitter in the equation we were prepped and ready for a night out.
What I found what a great example of an effective combination of digital marketing and customer service.
I remember sitting in a small room at a conference in San Francisco, somewhere around 1998 or ’99. The topic of this conference (if I remember correctly) was ‘Building Community Online’. About 15-20 people attended this breakout session. At the time I had just started Jivaldi and wanted to soak up as much info as I could. Anyway, the guy kept talking about how hard it was to get people to interact with his website and that for a long time, he was the one that constantly had to manufacture the interaction – urging people to dicuss and connect. That guy was Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist. Read on…
An extensive report by the Wall Street Journal takes a look behind the scenes of a 117 billion dollar success story – that represents 15% of Apple’s total revenue. The WSJ reveals that a pretty looking store and a good product isn’t enough for Apple. True to their modus operandi, Apple takes their stores, sales and their training very seriously. At Jivaldi, we consistently use Apple as a great reference on why design (both product, media, UX..ect) is extremely important in marketing a product, but we were pleasantly surprised that this attention to detail extends all the way down to the the employees on the floor of Apple stores…
My gramps had an interesting story. Growing up during the depression, he had to drop out of high school to help his family get by. He worked 3 jobs (one as a janitor) and had one pair of pants. Anything to help the family.
Frank Ivaldi eventually came out on top and became a successful Bay Area businessman – eventually owning his own construction company, golf course and owning a minority share in both the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders (and he even bought the janitorial company that he labored for). But his is another story.
This story is about a lesson as practical today as it was 30 years ago: ‘Just get it done and stop whining!’
Went in for a routine Starbucks purchase today and something occurred to me. When paying for something at Starbucks the process is made simple.
This struck me as interesting and got me to thinking.
