ireckon blog

It’s the cherry on top that makes the sundae.

Posted by: Emily on 4 Sep 2008 @ 5:24 pm Category: Marketing

I have a few odd-ball habits – and until recently wasn’t aware of how strange my habits were to others, or even myself – until they were discovered by a co-worker and raised a lot of questions. I started talking about them out loud and as I heard the words ‘I ironed my pillowcases’ come out of my mouth I almost simultaneously burst into the kind of laughter that makes it sound like someone’s hidden a guinea pig in my office.

I have since then, been assured that these ‘quirks’ as they are now called – are not a bad thing, and that in fact they are what makes me unique. I have a feeling this was said to make me feel better about my strange behaviour, but regardless – it raises the point of uniqueness, and about offering something different.

As people, we all have something unique, different, special, or even strange about us that sets us apart from others. It’s our idiosyncrasies that people notice and remember about us, not the things we have or do that are the same. Translate that to anything, animals, business, architecture, inanimate objects – anything. Forgettable is easy to do, just be generic.

Let’s change the word ‘quirks’ to ‘qualities’. When we find a quality in someone or something, we will remember it, and come back to it when we have a need for it. When my co-worker needs to know about ironing linen or organising crockery by size and colour I KNOW I will be the first person they turn to. My qualities are my points of difference; they are the things I am great at or indeed things that nobody else does at all.

People’s qualities are usually just behaviours or personality traits that stand out, we generally don’t set out to engineer them. For businesses though, determining a point of difference is essential. The café downstairs from the office is amazing. The coffee’s great, but when we understand the concept of offering something different we understand we don’t actually go there for the coffee, even though some of us buy 2 or 3 a day, we go there for the cherry on top.

All of the staff at Brown Dog know my name. They know what coffee I drink. In fact – when after a long week at work we all headed to the local pub for some relaxing drinks.. we ran into a few of the Brown Dog staff and they could confidently go around the table of ireckoners and list our coffee orders. We have several cafes within a very short stroll from the office, yet I won't get coffee anywhere else. It appears to be the same for many other businesses in the area and as a result Brown Dog is always brimming with people, and even though this means I might wait an extra 5 minutes for my coffee, I’m happy to do it.

Brown Dog boasts a phenomenal amount of regulars. As you wait the 5 minutes for your coffee to be made, whoever is taking the orders for the day greets at least another 5 or 10 patrons. The ‘order’ usually consists of some general chit chat, some laughter and a ‘just the usual today Brendan?’ (or whoever it may be) thrown in there too (I’ve even seen them just write my order down as ‘Emily’). I honestly have no idea how they connect all those names, faces and coffees, and still manage to remember to ask on a Monday morning how your BBQ went on Saturday - because they asked on Friday what your plans were for the weekend.

Brown Dog do great coffee and great food. But it’s the cherry on top that makes the sundae. It’s the ‘extra’ that they offer that their competitors don’t that makes their success. There might be a café down the road that sells coffee for half the price – that’s their cherry. As a result they will attract customers who value the price of their coffee more than the personal interaction they get from the staff there.

Some businesses have more than one cherry (either on purpose or accidentally), though having too many cherries is dangerous – confusing both the business itself and its customers. How can one business/product be unique and deliver on price point, service and quality? It can’t. You cannot offer something unique or specialised and please everybody at the same time!

It’s ok for Brown Dog to know that there’s that café down the road who charge less for their coffee. There’s no way they should try to compete with them on price. Why? Because in doing so they run the risk of having to sacrifice what they currently do so magnificently.

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