Positive Power of Principled Profit
Volume 3, Number 11—July, 2006

Positive Power Spotlight: Imagine That Furniture

Here's a company that really gets customer service: Taking the Seth Godin idea of the Idea Virus a step further, a furniture store called Imagine that has enlisted its customers as "Sneezers," who spread the "virus" of shopping at the store by distributing $25 giftcards, at no charge, on any purchase of $100 or more. Any tie a card is redeemed, the Sneezer who handed it out gets credited $25.

While this may seem a somewhat expensive way to buy customers--$50 going out for $100 coming in--it's not only a terrific way to build long-term loyalty, but also is a replacement for expensive advertising that couldn't establish anywhere near that kind of enthusiasm--and in an industry like furniture, where prices are three or four digits, probably worth it. Customers also earn Sneezer dollars at the rate of 5 percent on every $100 purchase--a loyalty program, nothing exceptional there.

But this program would only work if customers feel this company is worth promoting. Art, espresso, microbrew beer, pinball, and even massages are part of the experience--all at no extra cost.

I liked this company from the moment I saw the Experience page at http://www.imaginethatfurniture.com/#The%20Experience, with its unusual (yet very readable) slanted design and its customer-centric attitude.

My thanks to my distributor Jacqueline Church Simonds of Reno, NV (where the store is located), for sending the link.

Another Recommended Book: Underdog Advertising: Proven Principles to Compete and Win Against the Giants in Any Industry, by Paul W. Flowers

Using two overriding metaphors, the Biblical story of David and Goliath, and Karl von Clausewitz’s On War, this book lays out ten principles to develop and execute strategies to leverage relatively small investments in advertising, thoroughly integrate this strategic advertising approach with other marketing, and leapfrog overall corporate growth. Also, four types of buying decisions, five kinds of risks your customers take in considering you, three categories of benefits to the purchaser (something I’ve not come across elsewhere), five personality attributes that define most brands, and nine tests of a strong brand—tests that recognize that a brand is not only about a company’s deliberate messaging, but also about the customer’s direct experience.

To a solopreneur, like me, the dollar amounts involved are sometimes scary, as in the case of Gardenburger, which leveraged a single highly visible ad on the final episode of Seinfeld—what would normally be a very effective way to waste a whole lot of bucks in a big hurry—into 400 media hits and a widely expanded distribution network that directly fueled a 91 percent growth in the next year’s revenues. But many of the examples were executed for far less, and those techniques that apply outside of purchased advertising cost little or nothing.

Among the key lessons: choose and define a battlefield small enough to prevail, muster enough resources to dominate your chosen slice of category, and answer the question about why people should buy from you. Oh yes, and don’t be afraid to take risks and to be unconventional—not for its own sake but as part of a well-thought-out strategic plan.

Two of the strategies the book often suggests are to direct your messaging to influencers/dealers, rather than end-users, and to create marketing that itself offers high value. My favorite example is the telephone call center management software company that researched its market to discover that putting out bid requests was a major headache for its prospects—so the company created software to automate the process, and distributed it at no cost to any call center manager who requested it. This tool was designed, first of all, to suggest bid specs that favored the company’s solution, and second, to create a very warm prospect list.

I very much like the creativity this book brings—not for its own sake, but for the sake of achieving big results for relatively low costs. If advertising is a significant part of your strategy, you’ll want to study Underdog Advertising in conjunction with 33 Ruthless Rules of Local Advertising by Michael Calder, my own Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World, and at least a few of the classics by the likes of Claude Hopkins, David Ogilvy, and John Caples.

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