For Father’s Day, I requested a trip to one of my favorite restaurants called PF Changs. It’s kind of like a chain-type Asian food restaurant. I would describe it as high-quality, not-fast-food type Chinese food.
My past experiences with PF Changs (about 4 other times over the last 5 years) have all been great, therefore I equated the brand with high-quality. I reserved trips to this restaurant for special occasions.
However, this past trip I noticed a few things. First off, I noticed that they stopped using nice white table cloths, which to me give a restaurant a touch of elegance as opposed to wood “wiped down with a wet cloth” tables. The second thing I noticed was that the portions were smaller by about 25%, I figure.
I’m going to guess in pure speculation here that the changes were made to reduce costs. Less money needing to be spent on cleaning table cloths and a reduction of portions to trim a few percentage points off the bottom line of materials. Those are guesses. I have zero facts to back them up.
To me, they quality of the experience was severely damaged. The PF Changs brand in my head is no longer a “special occasion” type of experience. The reduction in quality now makes me think of it as a place that’s “ok, I guess”. But I’m not going out of my way to go there anymore.
I’ve seen this happen many times before, and not just in restaurants. And everytime it happens to me I do the same thing. I stop evangelizing and purchasing from the brand in question.
You cannot reduce quality and expect to keep your brand intact. You’re better off simply raising prices. Take a lead from companies like Jaguar. They don’t “cut back” on their quality. In fact, they continue to make improvements in quality.
Do you have any examples of brands that have suffered from a quality reduction?

At the American Cemetery at Colleville, I walked along the perfect rows of marble crosses (9,387 in all) which marked the graves of young, brave Americans who paid the ultimate price for my liberty. I then wandered out to the edge of the cemetery overlooking the Channel, and found myself drawn to Kansas native Jim Gablemann, as he aptly taught some war history to the small group of eager listeners who encircled him.
“Keeping troop morale high was a top concern,” Jim explained. “What lifted a weary soldier’s spirits? For starters, hot coffee and fresh bread. That’s why the U.S. Army shipped make-shift bakeries into the Normandy area as soon as possible,” he shared.

As I stood listening, Jim’s words immediately ignited this mental picture: a dog-tired, war-weary soldier, covered with grime, devouring some thick slices of fresh bread chased down by hot coffee. A soldier’s short, simple pleasure in an anything-but-simple time.
Loyalty lesson: Delivering an exceptional customer experience, day in and day out, requires staff fortitude. What simple pleasures help keep your frontline morale high? What’s something new you can do to show staff you care? The U.S. military shipped bakeries! What’s your plan?

Let’s forget for the moment about the Masters of the Universe who buy Falcon Jets the way you or I consider buying snow tires. Let’s focus on those times when you or I buy the kind of thing that “the rich” buy — for whatever reason, at that particular moment of complete abandon and irresponsibility.
Here’s my story. It had a happy ending, just so you know. But it’s very instructive. I walked into an Oriental carpet store in Detroit with my beautiful wife Christine about 10 years ago. I’ve always had a thing for Oriental carpets, which share the spotlight of irrational desire with watches and pens, for some reason.
We looked at each other in the parking lot, put on our game faces, and said with steely eyed resolve, “our price ceiling is a firm, un-negotiable two-thousand dollars, period.” And we went in. And got completely turned around in about 10 minutes.
The salesman was right out of Central Casting. Urbane, vaguely Middle Eastern, and highly solicitous, I told him straight off how hard it would be to work over a guy with two thousand dollars of immovable will power. He closed his eyes and nodded, almost approvingly, at my strength and showed me a beautiful carpet that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.
I had to agree, it was gorgeous, but I was un-moved. After all, we’re not spending ten grand, even if it is a terrific looking carpet. Remember, we had a firm price ceiling of four thousand dollars. As we agreed in the parking lot.
Since we clearly understood quality when we saw it, he had to show us a particular carpet …. from northern Iran, hand-knotted (“Look! Look at the knots! They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”), very rare, of course …. and worth roughly fifteen thousand dollars.
I stared at it for a few minutes. This was a beautiful carpet. This was a show piece. Something you’d invite friends over …. just the important ones, of course …. to whom you would show it off, and they would think more of you solely because you owned that carpet. However, I knew I couldn’t buy it. After all, it fell somewhere above of my price ceiling, from which I was unwavering, of seven-thousand dollars. So no, thank you. Beautiful carpet, though.
This did not throw my host. He shrugged his understanding and then showed me a very nice carpet that cost $7,800. I really liked it. And frankly, as it was pretty close to my firm price ceiling of seven thousand dollars, I was sorely tempted to buy it. What’s the difference? Nothing really. A pittance. This carpet was going to look good in my living room, I thought. Then, regaining my wits, I ran from the store with my wallet, sanity and fortunes intact.
We are all slaves to our passions, aren’t we? It isn’t the thing itself so much, but what we expected as a result of owning the thing. Is it the experience of owning something unique or the perceived self-confidence that owning a unique object of desire will bring? I don’t know and frankly couldn’t care less. Owning a great watch doesn’t necessarily make me feel more self-confident; I’m just deeply attracted to wearing a piece of man-made mechanical artistry. People who buy antique Porsches or collect Renoirs must feel this way about what they do, too.
I’m curious to understand this. I think there are a few things going on when we obsess about something that costs enough to make us pause: the pure love of the art form for its own sake, the experience of ownership, and the need to share the joy.
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Key Takeaways (or at least pre-conceptions):
The Love: Do you love cars? Watches? How about hand knotted Afghan War Rugs? Do you think about them when you’re at work or pull over when you’re driving around on the weekend to stop at a small shop that sells them? Do you really love them? If you’re in the business of marketing these kinds of things, how do you foster that kind of desire? How do you create that exclusivity while retaining that promise of inclusion, if you’d just come behind the curtain?
The Experience: Is holding it, driving it, or watching it truly a unique experience? Is there something about it that is tangibly different than owning the common? Watching a Jaeger LeCoultre Atmos clock operate …. and knowing that it will never stop, ever, because it runs on air …. is a unique ownership experience. It’s also extremely beautiful, of course. Having a Kaleidescape System in your family room is a unique experience …. you fall in love with your movies all over again in a way that you can’t understand unless you have one. Is the experience unique? And does owning that experience put you in an exclusive club just because you own one? How do you scale the experience so that self-selectors are gathered as quickly and efficiently as possible?
The Sharing: Do you have a burning need to bring others behind the curtain? Are you a raving evangelist for your obsession? How do you share your passion? Is it something you can transfer to others? Do they have to experience it for themselves or can they become infected just by proximity to it? How do you promote the spread of this virus?
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Creating unique experience is what marketers do, whether creating peace of mind in the hearts of the purchasing managers who buy your ball bearings or outright lust in the hearts of your luxury product owners. If you aren’t focused on creating this unique experience, think along these lines and see where it takes you. It’s not just a different way to stretch your marketing muscles. It might take you into a completely new place.
What do you think?

While that might seem impressive, data far more important than that emerged as a result of the company’s study. Apparently, it was divulged that “all marketers–not just those who transact business on the Internet–need to have an online presence regardless of how much (or how little) product they sell in cyberspace.”
Thirty countries were included in the survey, which concluded that 50% or more of the people in those countries regularly used the Internet. In the U.S., almost 65% of the population is online.
Bottom line: consumers want and expect brands to have an online presence, whether or not they choose to buy items that are seldom purchased on the Internet. The study cites that “the channel (referring to the Internet) has become a key part of the purchase funnel and therefore a process to be managed.”
Not only that: consumers cited that they wanted and expected the Internet marketing of companies to offer them engaging experiences. GroupM: “that experience lies at the heart of consumer engagement.”
GroupM referred to customer experience as one of four pillars: the others being reach, reputation and transaction. The Internet affords consumers with easy access to information, and interaction with companies, whether they purchase from a web site or not. Internet use continues to grow in popularity, thus, the study concluded marketers ignore having a cyber presence at their own peril.
Interestingly, the study did not bring up any points about effective marketing on the Internet, and we all know that some marketers have used the Web effectively, while others have had less than stellar results with it.
I guess I would add this: having a cyber presence is important today. Very important. Yet, how engaging the sites are to the customer is just as important, as the article briefly alluded to. Throwing a site together just to promote products and services without giving any thought as to how to engage the consumer is not a good idea.
If the intent is to develop strong relationships with the customer, and I believe it should be, then a conversational, congenial environment must be created. Hard-sell tactics shouldn’t be the primary objective; building long-term relationships with targeted customers, ought to be. Engaging the customers in conversation, and being responsive to them when they do make contact, is vitally important. This is what brings the brand alive to the consumer. Without that, a web site is not interactive as it was meant to be at all; it’s a dead or inert object.