Your Marketing Concierge
During our travels, we’ve always been fascinated by the concept of the concierge at high-end hotels like the Waldorf Astoria or the Ritz-Carlton. If you’re unfamiliar, a concierge has one job and one job only: to please the guests of the hotel by catering to their wants and needs. If you’ve ever needed last-minute reservations at the fanciest restaurant in town, recommendations to keep small children happy during an extended stay, or locate that seemingly impossible book you promised to bring your daughter when you return home, the concierge is there to solve complex – even supposedly insurmountable – problems.
That brief job description of catering to the wants and needs of hotel guests is very similar to that of a branded merchandise company. Much like a skilled concierge, the number one job of an agency is to help its clients get what they want with as little friction as possible. As such, the same traits that make a good concierge great are the same ones that separate the exceptional companies from mediocre ones:
- Anticipation – A great concierge and a great promotional products agency know what their clients want even when they don’t know themselves. Any company can be responsive to the simple request: 144 ceramic mugs with a one-color decoration, in one location, and shipping to one site. However, marketing organizations that help their clients succeed will predict the use of specific merchandise, in distinctive packaging, with targeted delivery that will move the recipients to action.
- Details – An excellent concierge pays attention to every detail, no matter how seemingly insignificant. In other words, they hear what their guest says both verbally and nonverbally. The same trait applies to branded merchandise companies in that the details distinguish the great from the average: understanding what the client has done before, who the target audience is, and what emotion needs to be elicited when the branded merchandise is received. The genuinely exceptional agency inspects every element of the order to ensure that the final result will be filled with surprise and delight.
- Creativity – The best concierges possess a great deal of creativity; specifically, the innovation necessary to look at a problem and find a unique or resourceful way to solve it. Similarly, the remarkable promotional products company will find a way to resolve marketing challenges in ways that are best suited to the needs of each specific customer. Knowing that the solution for one client may not work for another is critical to ensuring that each customer’s expectations are exceeded instead of simply being met.
The extraordinary concierge and exceptional branded merchandise agency share another purpose: to enhance the customer’s experience in every way possible. Therefore, at every conceivable opportunity, both will do everything in their power to not only solve the initial problem but will also be so memorable that the client will happily pay for that same experience again and again.
One final thought: there is an old saying used by world-class hotels concerning how they expect their concierges to act with guests, and it’s something we’ve adopted here at Payden & Company: “The difficult can be done immediately; the impossible will take a few minutes.” By adopting this mindset, we have embraced the purpose of our existence which is to help our clients get what they need as easily as possible.
