Ideas for a Smarter, Faster World

This past weekend, a few of the kids in my neighborhood came over to our house to play with my daughter. The group, ranging in ages from 5 to 9, went off to the family room for a while, and for about within 15 minutes things were pretty quiet.

“Dad, you have to come eat at our restaurant,” called my daughter.

When I walked into the family room the scene was abuzz with activity. Kids were rushing around everywhere with toy food, plates, utensils and cookware. Each was wearing a few articles of dress-up clothes and busily handling different jobs in what appeared to be a pretend restaurant.

The Brand Concept

“Welcome to Fasty’s, where our specialty is super fast service!” said the eight-year-old as I was lead to a small table set for dinner. I sat down and within seconds had toy bread, cookies and a drink cup set in front of me. “Can I take your order?”

These kids didn’t just imagine a pretend restaurant, but they named it, branded it and gave it a very specific niche: super fast service. They were wearing uniforms to show that they were part of a team and from the amount of running back and forth that we going on they were certainly being true to the brand image that they had created.

The Brand Experience

I was impressed, so I gave them my order. The two kids rushed around gathering up the toy food that I had requested and delivered it at almost a sprint to my table. Meanwhile a third brought over a new drinking cup “in case I wanted something else to drink”, and a fourth brought over some wooden cupcakes which were “on the house”. I was told that it was to make sure that I had a wonderful time here at Fasty’s.

So these elementary school aged kids had not only created a differentiated brand, but everything that they were doing was contributing to that brand experience. And they threw in a few premiums to ensure that my experience with that brand was a positive one. Good thinking.

Customer Relationships, Two-Way Dialogue and the Web

Finally, after I had pretended to eat all the food that had been placed in front of me, the 9-year-old came over to the table.

“Hi, I’m the manager,” she shook my hand. “We’re so glad that you came in to eat at Fasty’s. I hope that you had a wonderful time here. Please leave us some feedback on our website. It’s at www.fastys.com. We would really appreciate it.”

Wow. My first thought was ‘This kid eats out too much.’ But then it occurred to me that, not only did these kids understand the importance of developing great customer relationships with a personal touch and the need to create a two-way dialogue with customers, but they understood a bit about the web as a marketing tool. I was impressed. They probably don’t know that they understand these things, of course. To them, that’s just the way things are when you have a business.

A clearly differentiated brand with a strong concept behind it. A consistent experience that support that brand position. Great customer service and extra touches to ensure it. Two-way dialogue with the consumer. And digital taking an integral role. These are all essential elements for building most brands these days, but how often do we as marketers cut corners when it comes to these things, or ignore them altogether? Too often. Perhaps we can learn - or at least be reminded of - a thing or two about brand building from a bunch of kids playing restaurant.

So the next time that you take a look at your own brand, ask yourself: “what would a kid do?”