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On Friday Coldplay filled Montreal’s Bell Centre for the second show in as many nights on their Mylo Xyloto Tour, and I’ve never seen a crowd so engaged as I did there. From the floor to the highest reaches of the 400’s, every able-bodied person in the cavernous arena was on their feet dancing, clapping, chanting and singing along.

I can’t help wonder how brands and marketers might drive this kind of engagement from their own legions of fans…

Setting the Stage

Coldplay sure know how to put on a show. One of the more impressive parts of the night was how in connecting with the audience and putting themselves out there, they managed to remove as many barriers as possible for people to enjoy it.

The stage and catwalk were open enough in concept that most seats in the house had a solid view of the action. Even the obstructed seats behind the stage had a large enough opening to see through, and the stage design included a raised ramp around the back that was used frequently enough to give some love to the folks seated back there.

Mammoth circular screens set up around the arena - not just bookending the stage as in many other arena rock shows, but hanging from rafters facing various angles - made sure the odds were in your favour that you’d be able to see what you came for.

The audience invested time and money to be there; similarly, your audience is investing their time and attention to be “there” for you - what are you doing to remove barriers and be as visible as possible for them?

Intimacy on a Massive Scale

For the encore, the house lights came up and the band set themselves up at a small makeshift stage at one of the back corners of the audience, just above the floor. (at the front of our section, a half-dozen rows directly below us, no less!)

Gone were the light show, canned videos, confetti explosions and fancy stage setup. Just the band and their instruments remained, in the middle of the crowd performing and extra song or two.

The change in setup forced everyone in the audience to affix their gaze somewhere other than where they had for the majority of the night, and somewhere they wouldn’t expect to be looking in a concert environment. The changing of perspectives solidified the feeling of the more intimate vibe, leaving us feeling all the more connected to what was being presented to us.

Where you can you take your conversation with your audience to create a more intimate vibe to foster building relationships?

Gimmickry

As every ticket holder entered the arena, they were greeted with a pair of wristbands of various colours emblazoned with a twitter logo and the hashtag #coldplayfilm to affix to each arm. With little explanation as to what purpose they served, it ratcheted up the curiosity and level of anticipation for the show, and how these new accessories may fit in.

When the house lights dimmed and Coldplay started their set, the wristbands all lit up turning the audience into a glowing, blinking sea of neon light. It was an incredible moment to be in, seeing the amazement in the faces of my neighbours, and adding another layer to the elation of the kick-off of the show.

During and after the show, attendees took to twitter to share thoughts, photos, reactions and thanks with the #coldplayfilm hashtag. The wristband gimmick not only worked to put a new spin on the concert experience, but helped introduce more fans to the social discussion on twitter, and provided fans a place to congregate and share feedback.

Not every gimmick is going to work this swimmingly, but what creative twists can you add to your user/fan experience to help enhance their involvement?

Crafting A Chorus

For seemingly every chorus the crowd was crushingly loud. Even more overpoweringly loud were each of the support vocal sing-along parts (the Ohhh and Oooooh bits cleverly worked into tunes), where even casual fans who may not have known all the words could still jump into the fray and sing along.

The sing-song elements are like a dramatic over-simplification of parts of the songs, distilled down to just a hook or melody - letting that purest, most emotional part of the music grab the audience. Like a hashtag or slogan, you hope it’ll help spread beyond your core audience to fringe fans, and have them supporting your message, pulling them into your world.

How can you distill your message to the simplest, most engaging, most sharable pieces?

Don’t Forget Your Roadies

Every band needs roadies. These are people toiling behind the scenes to make your show a success, doing it not for fame or riches, but more often than not out of love of your work.

After the show, one of Coldplay’s roadies took to their blog to share thoughts on the Montreal show, noting;

“Given that I’ve seen them do this show coming on for a hundred times now, the idea that I’m actually entertaining the idea of spending time watching a film of it is pretty remarkable.” ~ Roadie #42

Brands need roadies too. You may already have them. Take a peek at your social mentions, retweets, likes and shares - you’ll likely find a dedicated and active group of fans that are standing by ever-faithful to help your cause.

Don’t take roadies for granted. As the ultimate measuring stick and the choir you’re preaching to, it takes a special kind of performance from you to really impress them.

Strive to impress the hell out of your roadies - if you do, you know the folks from general admission to the nosebleeds will have gone home happy.

The Electrical Storm of Engagement

“This kind of audience reaction sends the band into another level performance-wise and the crackle back and forth between band and crowd becomes its own electrical storm.” ~ Roadie #42

And crackle it did. Even after the couple hours it took to fight our way through the parking lot, traffic and road back to Ottawa, I was still riding the buzz from the show, ears still ringing, feverishly refreshing Tweetbot. Electrical storm, indeed.

So, what are you doing to foster that kind of positive experience and engagement to make an electrical storm between you and your audience?

Earlier today, two of my favourite companies - salesforce.com & HubSpot - teamed up on a webinar about growing your business with social & inbound marketing.  

The great irony being, that as the event was taking place today at noon EST, twitter itself was down.  Here we had a social media webinar without twitter and the standard “live tweeting” social engagement.

Doubling down on the irony, I would have missed today’s event altogether if not for another social network, Google+.  

Let’s Talk Social… Without Social

Featuring Jamie Grenney, VP of Social Media and Online Video at salesforce.com, and Mark Roberge, VP of Sales at HubSpot, the event aimed to educate attendees on how to use and measure inbound and social media for building deeper relationships with prospects, and growing your social database using remarkable content.  

As with all of HubSpot’s great online events, they planned ahead and had their hashtag ready to go.  The webcasting service was outfitted with both a question pane and a twitter tab alongside the presentation of slides so attendees would have quick access to read, participate, and amplify the social discussion taking place around the event and the #SocialContent hashtag.  

So, what to do without twitter?  The hosts noted the irony and valiantly pointed users to the question pane to encourage Q&A, referred folks to HubSpot’s LinkedIn group, and really stressed that the interactivity could still be had.  To that end, the question pane was pretty active throughout - more active than the majority of webinars I’ve sat in of late.  Also, mid-way through the presentation, HubSpot swooped in on Google+ to poke around for questions and feedback.  That G+ post was however met with the echoes of social media silence.  

Ahh, poor Google+.  It upsets me how empty it feels most of the time.  It has a ton of potential.  With that said, I gave up on it too until recently where I’m trying my best to give it a fair shake again.  

Google+’s recent revamps to the iPhone and iPad mobile apps have been outstanding.  It’s quick, responsive, and truly a beautiful app on either device.  The mobile apps have been enough to encourage me to log in more frequently and post & contribute more… which is about as good a compliment you can give a social network’s mobile app - that it actually manages to improve user adoption and engagement.  

But still, Google+ is a touch on the barren side.  However today, it was my personal saviour.  

Google+ To The Rescue

My registration confirmation email didn’t include a link or even a suggestion to add the event to my calendar.  Without the nudge to book my time, this morning it wasn’t on my schedule and I had completely forgotten it was to happen.  Add that twitter was down and I didn’t have the various tweets from HubSpot, Salesforce and their throngs of fans filling my stream to jog my memory, I was a no-show waiting to happen.  

However, a little while back, I got an invite to attend the event from HubSpot on Google+. At first I thought it was superfluous, or maybe even an example of mis-targetting (as I was already registered to attend).  But, figuring it would be a good event to share via Google+ to help spread the love for HubSpot and Salesforce, I marked myself as attending.  

To my surprise, at 12 noon after having completely forgot about the event and went about my day, my Google+ mobile apps and Google Calendar all screamed at me to tell me the event was starting.  

Apparently just announced a little while ago at Google I/O, Google+ Events are seamlessly integrated with Google Calendar, and provide a way to share and promote events and also provide a social space to discuss and engage with attendees in Google+.  I feel guilty for not having my finger on the pulse with this earlier.  This is as compelling as any reason to give Google+ another whirl… especially if you’re a marketer promoting events. 

Google+ Events was news to me, but more importantly welcome news.  With it, I was able to join the event in progress, and absorb some great information on tactics for growing subscribers, creating content calendars, common challenges to B2B lead generation in social media, and just soak up the general awesomeness of Salesforce and HubSpot.   

AdWeek has a stellar feature on Apple’s iPhone TV advertisements, spanning the multiple years and devices since the first ad for the original iPhone launched during the 2007 Oscars. If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out for a fun walk down memory lane. I completely lost myself this morning in watching each of the 84 spots created by TBWA/Media Arts Lab - the same group responsible for the “Get a Mac” ads starring Justin Long (Mac) and John Hodgman (PC).  It was great to revisit some of my favourite ads that I remember having an impact on me at the time. Most notably for me;

• the Shazam spot was the first iPhone ad that I can remember that actually connected with me and my loathing of that feeling of needing to know what a song is and not being able to place it.  I think that was the first ad that started to pull me gently away from the Blackberry Clan.
• the “Meet Her” FaceTime ad with the grandfather seeing his granddaughter for the first time via smartphone still chokes me up, as I remember it had when it first aired back in 2010 when my little guy was on the verge of starting school.  The crack in grandad’s voice when asking son how it feels to be a father pulled me back to my hospital hallway phone calls - then, and again now.

Looking beyond nostalgia, the walk through the iPhone chronology via advertising floored me in seeing the evolution of the technology over time, as well as the evolution of the messaging taking viewers through the awareness/consideration/preference journey very subtly over time.

The Buyer’s Journey

In the first year’s ads a lot of the focus was showcasing how the iPhone worked, and trying to create some contextual links linking it to the iPod and its popularity, but always closing on the ringing phone to help create that awareness for that iPod-esque internet-enabled phone.  Later ads moved into testimonials and use cases to help people visualize how the iPhone was different, and to consider how its capabilities might apply to them.

With the release of the iPhone 3G, the 2008 ads seemed focused more on use cases (specifically a few related to business use of the device, presumably to shed some of the “toy”/iPod sentiment and position the device as something for business too). Oh, and Apps.  Lots of Apps.

With the app-focus, we see the ads starting to try to nudge folks further into the realm of consideration and preference as “can’t live without” type apps drive interest in Apple’s ecosystem. And from there on, content of the iPhone TV ads has largely been feature-specific;  seldom, if ever, touching on the hardware or its specs.  

Across the board the ads showcase specific uses and scenarios to help people compare it to what they’re using now, and ultimately to imagine themselves in those scenarios.

High Fidelity

And yet, despite the subtle evolution in the message, there’s a really remarkable fidelity to simplicity and elegance, and the Apple brand. The lion’s share of the iPhone ads are incredibly simple in concept, content, and execution.

From the solid backdrop with phone and finger, the very few words, the deliberate pace and ample pausing in the delivery - there’s a lot of white space created - both visual and aural - to draw in and focus on the experience. The content speaks about the benefits of ownership and what it might be like, or how your world might be improved.  The content is highly personal and the distinct style over the years is warm and inviting, and mirrors the simplicity Apple projects in just about everything they put their name on.

No iFud

Even more remarkable to me, is that through 5 long years of television advertising, you don’t find much at all in the way of overt competitive positioning when you watch them all in retrospect. Even in the “If you don’t have an iPhone” series of ads where the horn-blowing seems its highest, the spots zero-in on Apple proprietary features like FaceTime, the AppStore, and iTunes to differentiate.  

Never slamming other devices; always focused on propping themselves up. The absence of FUD-slinging impresses me, especially in light of Samsung’s recent “Samsunged” campaign where they lightheartedly jab at the trendy, creative, urban-camping iSheep, and their disappointment in a phone that “looks like last year’s” and spending time in detention-like lines awaiting the next big thing.

For what it’s worth, I think Samsung did a great job in that campaign and didn’t go offside in that they poked fun at the Apple elitists in a way that most people could look at and say “yeah, Apple fans are kinda like that”.  They were careful not to attack product or features or capabilities, but prodded a stereotype that people would recognize and associate with Apple.  So for that, kudos to Samsung.

But with that said, it’s still a clear shot over the bow.  Shockingly Apple hasn’t felt the need to do that. Granted with the sheer volume of new devices coming out from the various Android handset makers, how could Apple even identify a particular device or competitor to single out in an attack ad.  It’s iPhone vs. everything else, so attacking would be rather futile.

Now we may see a different song and dance with iPad ads over time with the Galaxy Tab and Kindle Fire (and maybe even BlackBerry PlayBook if the new OS is as big an improvement as I’ve heard) positioning themselves as solid 1:1 competitors.  Time will tell.  That’d be another fun retrospective to sink a morning into.

As the proud owner parent of a LEGO-obsessed 6-year old, I couldn’t help but get excited about what LEGO has been doing with the LEGO CUUSOO community.   LEGO CUUSOO is a site where you can share set concepts you’d like the whole world to enjoy and aim for their eventual release as real products. And if the idea of being able to offer feedback and suggest ideas to form new products or features isn’t sweet enough on its own, how about a 1% royalty on all product sold, should your idea come to life? Easy as 1-2-3:

1. Have an Idea? - Create a project, share your idea and see what other people think.
2. Get 10,000 Supporters - With 10,000 supporters, your idea will be reviewed by LEGO for a chance to become an official LEGO product.
3. Receive Royalty - If the project passes the review, it will be produced and you as the idea owner will receive 1% of the total net sales of the product.

What a great way for LEGO to engage with the builders of all ages that make up their customer base.  I’ve always been a fan of LEGO as an outlet for creativity, making ridiculous monstrosities as a child, and now, helping my little guy take his carefully built, 3rd party branded Star Wars, Batman, Dinosaur sets… and making monstrosities of his own.  T-rex head on Batman’s body?  Sure!  No, I see no reason why the Luke Skywalker and the Joker shouldn’t cruise around in a firetruck, attacking Jack Sparrow riding a raptor. Sure, it incites a bit of the old nerdrage in me the way that famous Gandalf pic does… but it’s all an outlet for creativity. With the CUUSOO community, LEGO is able to encourage and harness some of that creativity, and turn it around into new product.  And for a new product to surface from the community, it has a fanbase of at least 10,000 strong community members, who may have a significant propensity to buy. Yesterday, LEGO CUUSOO released a preview of the first project to reach the 10,000 supporter mark and pass their review - The Minecraft Project.  

According to comments from the LEGO CUUSOO team, it took just 48 hours for Mojang’s Minecraft project to get 10,000 supports worldwide.

Okay, we get it.  You have a passionate community who wants to see Minecraft themed LEGO sets.  It just took three server outages to prove it to us, but yeah, we’re listening.

Having passed review, the new 480-piece Minecraft LEGO set is scheduled to ship Summer 2012, and is already open to pre-orders at gamer/geek clothing retailer Jinx. There’s something to be said for the power of communities, and crowdsourcing in new product introduction.  

The Power of  Customer Communities

Once upon a time, sinking piles of dollars into market research, surveys, focus groups and the like was just the way it was.  And even then, there was no guarantee you’d have a winner on your hands.  Not that such guarantees even exist… But through crowdsourcing ideas and feedback, or even crowdfunding, producers of product are able to get closer to those guarantees by gauging audience interest and commitment. As an example, since early 2008, myStarbucksIdea has been a place for customers to share, vote on, and discuss ideas on improving their Starbucks experience.

The community, powered by Salesforce.com, is home to over 28,000 coffee & espresso drink suggestions alone, and thousands of other ideas in categories like Social Responsibility, Atmosphere & Locations, and New Technology.  MyStarbucksIdea provides Starbucks an opportunity to engage with their customers and fans, but also to have the community be a part of shaping products and services delivered by their favorite coffee house.  In a recent post, MyStarbucksIdea announced a record 2011 where 70 ideas from customers and partners were launched, including things like Starbucks K-Cups packs (for Keurig single serve brewers) and eGifting.

Eat your heart out focus groups.

More recently, it’s hard not to go a day without seeing a Kickstarter project making headlines at TechCrunch, on Twitter, or even in traditional media.  Kickstarter is a funding platform for creative projects, where every week tens of thousands of people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, and other creative fields.  Entrepreneurs, creatives, and other project creators submit their ideas and set funding goals to support developing their project. If projects reach their funding goal, off to the races building, creating, with a pool of funding… and in many cases, extra hype and buzz already created to support accelerated growth. None of that “if you build it, they will come” nonsense.  If they come, and commit, build it.  

Whether it’s in toys, coffee, business applications, or a pictorial of a century of history’s most notable dogs, it’s great to see community-sourced ideas come to life, and companies leveraging communities and social channels to test and validate assumptions and ideas. I for one am excited to see communities in action… if it wasn’t for these communities, Luke and ol’ Bats wouldn’t be getting that new creeper friend to play with.  

I love to see marketing automation used well.  Even when I’m the unsuspecting victim.

This morning I was treated to an invitation to partake in a survey via the fine folks at Box. If you’re not familiar with Box (until recently, known as Box.net), they’re an “online file sharing and cloud content management service for enterprise companies” (Wikipedia).  

On a personal level, I love Box’s approach to their own branding and personality.  So much simplicity in design, good use of white space, color and imagery evoke “cloud” throughout.  Aaron Levie, their co-Founder and CEO, while still being young guy, talks about making enterprise software sexy.  

As a guy who in my early 20’s, while working the phones in a B2B call center, fell in love with companies like OpenText and Cognos, it’s hard for me not to relate to Levie and get genuinely excited about what is happening at Box.  From a product perspective, I love the idea.  I think it has insane potential in the enterprise space, but still find that I need to force myself to leverage it more.  [the old habit of emailing myself stuff is turning out to be a hard habit to break.]

With that said, I’m a Box user.  I have my personal account with my apps installed on my mobile and desk-bound devices.  And alas, my seldom-used account still only has single-digit % utilization thus far.

Despite my fledgling usage, this morning I was surprised to be greeted with a short, engaging invite to a survey in my inbox.  The email was personable, with extra emphasis on how short the survey would be.  While I enjoyed my morning coffee, it seemed a reasonable use of two minutes of my time.   The survey was brief, as promised.  Kudos to the fine marketing folks for being true to their word - that was a pleasant surprise in itself… and not the only one.  

After survey completion, I was directed to a shared document - a Forrester study on the ROI of Cloud Apps.  There was no mention or indication of a reward - of any kind - upon completion of the survey, so seeing this valuable content offered as a thank you, rather unexpectedly, was a genuine treat.

All-around, the survey was an enjoyable experience.  From invitation to completion to thank you, it was all very well executed. Even better than I realized.  

Qualification In Disguise

The survey itself was simple.  Name, company, role.  If using Box for business, is it just me, my department, or org-wide.  What if any other content management technologies did I use or would be considering.   Pretty basic classification stuff.  But important classification stuff.

Then the rest of the meat of the survey was around my thoughts on Box features I’d be interested in.  The UI was clean and noticeably easy to interact with on a mobile device, just sliding from Not Interested to Interested or Very Interested. The meaty questions presented themselves as what features I’d be interested in, leaving me initially with the impression that these may be future features, and the feedback may in some way help guide a product roadmap.  Then, as I read the individual features, I recognized them as existing Box Business and Enterprise features, that as a Personal user I don’t have access to.  Some of them jumped out at me, as I had remembered looking at the product comparison pages yesterday when I was on their website… And then 2 and 2 became 4.

The invitation to the survey must have been tied to my recent activity online.  When I was logged into my Box account yesterday, I had clicked over on the Upgrade button to poke around to see what features and storage limits came with the paid editions of the product. I looked back at the survey invitation and saw the unsubscribe link pointed to a “app.en25.com” address.  A quick a-Googling of that url and a Ghostery-assisted view their website later, I see they’re currently leveraging Eloqua - ”a marketing automation SaaS company which develops automated marketing and demand generation software and services for business-to-business marketers.” (Wikipedia) And it all makes sense.  

Something about my engagement with the website must have triggered this (very timely) survey request. The feedback gathered from me in the survey was rather cursory, it seems.  It appears this to be more of a qualification exercise.  I’m not sure if they’re trying to score my level or areas of interest pursuant to my activity on the “upgrade” button, or if in a more general sense measuring feature interests based on demographics or other classifications.  Or both.  Or any number of things that could be tracked, measured and optimized this way.

Whatever the measure, it is genius. The messaging was playful and engaging.  The message was timely, sent at a perfect time of day for the playful message to hit home, and for me to be willing to spend a few minutes.  The message was recent enough, but not-too-recent in relation to my website inquiry. The execution of the survey was honest and clear, and they even went the extra mile with a modest thank you. Even having acknowledged that the survey had little at all to do with my feedback and everything to do with sizing me up as a potential paying subscriber… somehow it still doesn’t at all feel invasive.  

I find it admirable. In an age when so much email marketing and content marketing flies about, and our inboxes fill with spam, it’s great to see a company like Box doing it right.  As a fan of lead generation and nurturing, I for one would love to see a snapshot of which of my activities pushed me over the edge in this case to trigger the survey request, how the timing of the survey request was determined, and what the next steps in their nurturing efforts would be for having now completed the survey.  

I’m actually excited to see what communications follow, or if I’ve managed to disqualify myself from their pool of qualified leads. Now, back to warming up that Box account.

Dearest Mill Street Brewery Marketers,

Tonight I discovered Wit.  The following is meant to be as much a thank you as it is congratulatory… as you’ve garnered yourselves what is most likely a lifetime customer.

It was almost happenstance.  There happened to be an Air Miles promotion at the LCBO for a variety of lesser-known breweries.  Being an avid Air Miles member, it seemed a perfect opportunity to try something different.

Sure, the promotion pushed me over the edge, but it’s not like I put a blindfold and pointed at what to pull off the shelf.  There was a conscious choice, and there an important piece of recognition that needs to go to the various marketers responsible for pushing me through awareness all the way to purchase and beyond to what I’m projecting to be repeat customer.

Branding

In reflection, I’m finding it wasn’t any one thing that drove me into the loving arms of Mill Street, but a series of effective marketing decisions.  Brand decisions.

Not to forget, of course, that once here in your arms, you followed through with quality product that exceeded expectations.  The end result?  Not just a satisfied customer, but an unorthodoxly elated one.

My first exposure to Mill Street that I can recall has be through the local burger chain, The Works.  I recall seeing Mill St. available, folded postcards on tables reminding us of its availability.  It’s been a while since I’ve been, so I’m not sure if that’s still that case, but that’s beside the point.  I remember being recommended a Tankhouse and thinking it sounded like an epic name for a brew.   In the end though, I don’t think I’d ever purchased while I was at The Works, more often than not opting for something familiar to go with my meal, or one of their epic shakes.

So, that didn’t get you my business…

But… I’ve since as a result associated Mill St. with other unique brands that I trust - namely the venue, The Works.  I think of The Works, I think quality.  Quality product, quality experience.  From the hip decor that reminds me of a Fallout video game, to the plethora of creative toppings, the same creativity applied to their sides, or the quality of the burgers themselves, or what are quite possibly the best onion rings in the history of onions and/or rings.  It’s never let me down in the few times I’ve frequented their restaurant.  Though I may not have converted there, just having your product available there created the association with the same qualities.

In addition to the quality thing, there’s also the whole squishier sentiment of being off-the-beaten path.   As illogical as it is now since The Works was sold/acquired and is pursuing their own successes via expansion, I still have that lingering feeling that there, I’m enjoying something that isn’t mainstream.   It’s not broadcast on major TV networks, radio, etc.  I don’t get plastered with their ads on TSN.ca.  It’s my little secret.  But more than that, it’s not those mainstream vendors.  The Works isn’t McDonalds.  The Works isn’t Subway.  It’s not commodity food, herding masses, leveraging buying power to push margin-per-sandwich.  By association, you became not Blue, Not Canadian.  Something different, and quite possibly better.  And I hadn’t even tried it yet.

Not an Everyday Commodity

Now the whole notion of not being a commodity hurts and helps, and I’m sure it’s something to wrestle with.  I know for those times when you’re rubbing quarters together hoping they’ll reproduce AND you happen to be afflicted by a ravenous flesh eating disease curable only by hamburger, The Works isn’t necessarily your first choice.  People need to be pragmatic.  As such, the non-commodity sticker shock can turn people away.  That’s where your use of very smart, strategic branding makes so much sense.

You get what you pay for…

Positioning around quality makes the cost wholly justifiable in a lot of cases.  Like my folks always told me, “wash behind you ears”…. and also, “you get what you pay for”.

But sometimes reality doesn’t let you do that.

I’ve fallen in love with my share of single malts where an ounce every day or two would cost me more than the electricity to keep my lights, television, and beer-chilling-machine fridge running.  As such, like many folks, I try to find a happy place where acceptable quality and agreeable price intersect.  But of course, the value equation changes as external factors like promotions, mood, sentiment and loyalty come in to play, making me more willing to make agreeable what might be less agreeable prices.

On the external factors, you’ve also done great things that have impacted my buying decision today.

Local Influence

From my perspective, there’s a geographic focus at play.  I don’t know if it’s intentional, if it’s widespread, or if it’s just my impression since I live where I live and am only subjected to the current events and marketing that surround me.

In any case, the acquisition of the Old Mill restaurant and the projected plans for housing a brewery/restaurant there made news headlines at the time, and helped to create the impression of a company wanting to carve a niche out in our area code, and creating what should be a very nice venue in itself.

And on the local note, how can you miss BluesFest…

A brewery at a music festival; you have a very smartly targeted audience.  While they might not be a captive audience with all the other activities on hand, you can be sure that you’ll get a fair bit of mention in social media and traditional media outlets by association.  Sponsorship and exclusivity at the Ottawa Bluesfest certainly helped most recently as the brand resurfaced a number of times on Twitter and Facebook as concert-goers shared their experiences online.  In more than a few tweets, posts and pages, I’ve seen the Mill Street name dropped, so by mere coincidence, it’s helped to affirm awareness, and in my guilt and shame of not having been to any of the opening few days’ events, maybe even pushed me along the buyer’s journey.  Then more holistically, when you look at Ottawa and the BluesFest demographically, you’ve got a pretty good group of folks who may have propensity to have the tastes and disposable income to swing the value equation in your favor should they enjoy it at the venue and become repeat customers.

Repeat customers like me.

Looking at it all, it isn’t rocket science.  It’s all 4 P’s stuff… but not quite.  At only one point, the point of purchase, did all 4 intersect.  But without all the earlier impressions, it never would have happened.

I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of attribution, as that can be a journey unto itself.  At this stage, I’d just like to acknowledge that all the little marketing touches, no matter how insignificant or unsuccessful at the time, in the end mattered in my own minute case.  Not everyone can measure it though…

That’s why I’m here to say thanks and give you a pat on the back, ‘cause between you and me… it worked.