Marketing

What is your P.O.D.-Point of Difference?

by Peter Langlois

Marketers will recognize P.O.D. as that characteristic about your brand that separates it from others in a positive way to build your image: Point of Difference. An associate, Chris Tripoli, president of Houston-based Ala Carte Consulting, related a few rather amusing P.O.D.s to a class of my marketing students. His examples proved how sometimes friends and customers help us discover the little edge that becomes the buzz and creates business for us. His stories, two of which follow, led me to think about marketing in a familiar light.

The original Carrabba’s in Houston was positioned as a mid-range casual, which eventually set the concept into national prominence some years later. The food has always been great, but what really wowed first-time customers were the bathrooms, oftentimes a point of consternation in restaurants. It seems that the family matriarch, Grandma Mandola, thought it might be fun to pipe Italian Lessons into the restrooms, rather than typical music. Critics absolutely grabbed this as a P.O.D. and Houston reviewers chatted up the lessons first, and then mentioned the wonderful creations of Johnny and Damian.

Then there’s Truluck’s. Owners and Managers at their Westheimer location here in Houston were determined to increase their dessert sales, thus increasing check average and profitability. They developed some terrific desserts and had training sessions with servers, hostesses and so on. Not much changed. Then, someone had a brilliant idea: Mouthwash in the ladies room! The reasoning was that many ladies excused themselves after the entrée to powder their noses, so why not give them an opportunity to cleanse their palate by offering free mouthwash during their freshening up? With their palate cleansed, they would be most receptive to suggestive selling of desserts. Well, that didn’t work to sell desserts, however it did so much for business! Ladies were simply ecstatic about this added feature and talked it up at their tables and with their friends. Rather than increase desserts, Truluck’s ended up increasing customer frequency. Not bad!

The point of all this isn’t to suggest that we shouldn’t pour ourselves into developing great food and drinks, terrific atmosphere and “All That Jazz!” We absolutely must also cross every “t” and dot every “i.” Yet we can never forget in marketing and operating that the customer determines which idea is a winner and which is a loser. We make a big mistake when we believe we’ve got it all figured out in advance. Besides, does it matter if a guest finds that sizzle on a platter or in a restroom, as long as she or he finds it somewhere in your operation? So what if Italian Lessons were a throw in to satisfy Grandma’s whim, and mouthwash was “designed” to promote dessert sales? It simply proves once again that the smartest people in the building are not the owners or managers, but rather the customers. If you think you’re the second smartest you’re wrong again: Employees get that spot!