➜ ➜ ➜ For more on The End (UsEr), check out the video on our new iPad app
Lessons from (pizza) pie charts
All I really need to know about market- ing I learned on
summer vacation (aka, “A
Tale of Two Danilos”).
Lesson 6: Be a content creator. The best brands tap the power of storytelling to gather, engage, and delight audiences. Danilo B is more than happy to pull up a chair at your table to weave tales of the night Joe Torre came in for dinner or what he did that morning to cause Mama Netta to give him the evil eye.
Illustration by Gary Hovland
Lesson 5: Deliver on your
brand promise. Product quality
counts. It doesn’t matter how
much we loved Mama Netta; if
her pasta wasn’t to-die-for (and
it was), we wouldn’t write rave
reviews. Ditto Danilo A’s ability
to mix a proper Old-Fashioned.
voice and smile to set the tone
of the bar each evening. Danilo
B’s Aunt Netta wanders among
tables playing the role of Italian
grandmother, making sure you
have enough to eat and that you
appreciate her home cooking.
Lesson 2: Be transparent. Both
Danilos respect their customers enough to wink at them.
They know they’re marketing a
product to us, convincing us to
overpay for that “extra special”
bottle of wine from the hidden
corner of the cellar. And we
know it. But we play along willingly because it’s part of the fun.
“We put more
stock in the
opinions of our
peers than we
do in marketing
messages.”
matches. He then proved it each
time he saw us, making us feel at
home even 5,000 miles away.
Lesson 7: Reward loyalty.
Because we ate at Cumpa Cosimo twice in three days, Danilo
B showered our table with on-the-house, off-menu appetizers
and chilled limoncellos. Danilo
A made sure our favorite table
was open when we showed for a
sunset cocktail. Given their marketing prowess, you almost have
to wonder why the Two Danilos
aren’t working on Madison
Avenue. Then again, after seeing their workplaces, you may
wonder why we are. n
scott Donaton is CEO of Ensemble, the branded-entertain-ment arm of Interpublic’s Medi-abrands. The End (USER) is his
consumer’s-eye view of life.
Lesson 1: Create an unforgettable brand experience. Hotel
Caruso’s Danilo (Danilo A,
from here on) uses his booming
Lesson 3: Know your customer.
Within the first hour, Danilo
A had memorized our names,
hometowns, drink orders, and
level of interest in Euro Cup
Lesson 4: Word-of-mouth
works. As social marketing
experts know, we put more
stock in the opinions of our
peer group than we do in the
messages of marketers. Therefore, Danilo B didn’t tell us how
wonderful the stuffed peppers
were—he asked the couple at the
next table to do that.
Scan this QR
code to view
a video with
Donaton. If your
smartphone
does not have
a reader, down-
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neoreader.com.
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