Kevin Harrington // marketing // blog

MAD Academy

We all know that word of mouth (WOM) is very powerful marketing. Therefore it was very pleasing to see the comment below on Surrey Mums about one of my wife’s businesses.

“I’ve recently started taking my little girl to MAD (music and Dance) academy, and it’s brilliant!

“The first group we attended consisted of the children dancing like penguins and horses, playing drums and tambourines, singing songs about cars and frogs and my daughter shouting “more, more, more!” and now we’re nearly half way through the term and it hasn’t lost its magic.

“It’s a fantastic activity for the very energetic to the very shy as they’re not pressured into doing anything they don’t want to do. I would highly recommend a MAD session to anyone who wants to put a smile on their little ones face.

“To find a class near you please visit www.madacademy.com“

View from the L'ortolan chef's table

Are Chef’s Table dinners the best word of mouth (WOM) marketing? You pay for the best then go off and tell everyone about it. Restaurant wins at both ends.

I raise this subject as a compliment having just had the most wonderful Chef’s Table dinner at L’ortolan, Shinfield, Reading, Berkshire. My daughters Jo, Sam and Katy conspired to book the night for me as a birthday present.

The evening was a magical 12 courses accompanied by 12 different wines. Interlaced were conversations and chats with Alan Murchison (the boss, executive chef and all round good chap), Elliot (the sous chef) and the rest of the team.

But the visual theatre of the team delivering plated perfection for the restaurant guests was most engaging part of the experience. A truly fantastic evening.

The result: here I am doing the PR and marketing for Alan and L’ortolan. And it is a pleasure to do so. If you are looking for a unique experience and enjoy excellent cuisine, try and book the Chef’s Table.

Should we complain about the cauliflower?

Well, it was a shock to Jo, one of my daughters. In one of her rare encounters with the kitchen she was dismayed at how small the head of the cauliflower was in comparison to the leaves surrounding it.

She was so horrified she got me to take a photo of it and weigh the evidence. The pound coin and the baked beans are for scale reference only.

The edible head of the cauli was 288g and the leaves alone weighed in at 548g. I’m not sure who she thinks we should complain to.

Through a very narrow association (supermarkets) this got me pondering on recent supermarket adverts. ASDA were claiming that they had over 2,000 items lower in price than Tesco. At the same time Tesco had just over 200 items cheaper than ASDA. On this basis ASDA were making themselves out to be the best.

This is a very interesting bit of positioning. You can see how the ASDA cauliflower got me here now.

The point firstly is do I want the 2,000 cheap ASDA items? Perhaps it is the 200 Tesco products at a better price that I want.

My second point is, are we after cheap or good value or a good experience. If the ASDA price claim is as powerful as they make out why are people going elsewhere? Why aren’t the queues always out the door?

Tesco were recently not advertising. This was to let word of mouth deliver their message virally. And here I am contributing to it! Good old Tesco.

Creating customer evangelists

The excellent book Naked Conversations quotes the book Creating Customer Evangelists and states that if you want your customers to be evangelists for your business you must:

1. Continuously gather customer feedback.
2. Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
3. Expertly build word of mouth networks.
4. Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
5. Devise smaller offerings to get customers to bite.
6. Focus on making the world, or your industry, a better place.