Tis the season for holiday movie viewing at my house and 2 of my favourites are Miracle on 34th Street (the classic from 1974 with Edmund Gwenn and Maureen O’Hara. No offence to Mara Wilson, but I’ve never understood why lisps are cute?) and A Christmas Carol (Alistair Sim will always be the ONLY Scrooge in my mind!).
Being the marketing geek that I am, I find correlations between marketing and seemingly unrelated things all the time and these movies are no different.
While watching Miracle on 34th Street there’s a scene where Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle is “playing the part” of the Macy’s Store Santa who tells a little boy that he will in fact find that fire engine he’s been dreaming about under the tree much to his mother’s chagrin. The mother asks sonny to wait off to the side so that she can have a one-to-one with dear ol’ Santa. We discover that the mother has searched fruitlessly high and low for said fire engine and she’s quite peeved that Santa’s promised something that she’ll not be able to provide. Kris then assures her that she will find the toy at a store other than Macy’s. The mother is both shocked and pleased that a Macy’s employee would send a customer to a competitor and vows that although she’s not currently, she will now be a regular Macy’s customer.
Is this a simple case of Hollywood magic or could this be a rather insightful understanding of consumer logic?
We Don’t Sell Products or Services,
We Solve Problems
If we consider that we aren’t in the business of selling the products we have in stock or the services we currently provide, but rather, are in the business of solving our customer’s problems; could we create stronger relationships with them and therefore make them more loyal in the future?
Most folks have seen some rendition of the classic tale A Christmas Carol. Crotchety Scrooge is visited by 3 ghosts of Christmas who teach him the err of his ways. While most of us can accurately say that we’re not Scrooge-like, can we say that there is nothing that we can learn from this story?
As business owners and managers, we can often get wrapped up in the numbers and day to day operational concerns of our companies while overlooking that at its core, every business is a human business. We are people, who deal with suppliers and distributors who are people, customers who are people, and have employees who are people.
Every Business is in the People Business
Each holiday I watch Scrooge kneel at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come repeating again and again that he can change if only they give him the chance. I am reminded that the holidays are a time for giving and offering kindness towards my fellow man. Most people think of these themes during the holidays, but soon after the decorations have been taken down and the last of the turkey leftovers are devoured, we’re back to crunching numbers and worrying over quarterly results.
I think that while we watch these movies as annual tradition anyway, wouldn’t it be a great time to use them to reflect on how well we’ve done at keeping humanity in our business dealings? Like an annual review and refresher course where we can remind ourselves that keeping the customers happiness at the forefront of all we do and reminding ourselves of what the ghost of Jacob Marley said “Mankind should be our business, Ebenezer, but we seldom attend to it.”
Here’s to a happy holiday season and more fruitful business relationships with your customers in the new year!
Does Your Company Attend to it’s Business of Mankind?