When opportunity knocks, blow the door open

I love hearing about stories like these – people faced in ordinary situations, and innovating and out-thinking to solve the problem, rather than throwing hurdles of money at it. Case in point: a Dutch coffee-shop was realizing that people came in to use their internet, rather than purchasing food and drinks – a problem that faces many coffee shops and Internet cafe’s around the world. What’d they do? They decided to change the wireless router every half hour, and named the network with a deal, special, or reminder to purchase food.
Examples – “HaveYouTriedTheCarrotCake?”, “BuyCoffeeForCuteGirlOverThere?“, “TodaysSpecialEspresso1,60Euro”

Not “Conventional” eMarketing, Brilliant Nonetheless

This solution may be overly creative to a lot of people, and I openly give credit where credit is due – this was genius – but it’s important to realize what caused it. It’s a simple case of problem = opportunity. They located the problem, isolated the problem, and found a way to draw conversion. It’s no different than Apple creating iTunes as a result of digital distribution, whether it be the legal or illegal variety. What’s the cost of adding a few routers? In the scheme of things, nothing really – half a dozen at about $100 a pop (since they’re using AirPort Express). It’s a flat fee, but considering they’re offering internet for the whole time they’re open, it’s probably a safe bet to have a few routers lying around anyway. What I’m trying to get at is that for the cost of nothing, they’re able to continuously engage with their customers well passed the initial point of transaction, and can creates another point of communication. If they get to talk to their customers twice, and everyone else talks once, well obviously that talking drives conversion. And if your’e driving up conversion, you’ve just found a competitive advantage.

UNDERSTANDING Customers

What these guys really did a good job of was understanding their customer. I’m not talking about understanding how the customer interacts: i.e. Customer A walks into store, orders, sits, connects online, and stays. They carefully broke each one of those steps down, especially related to the that last problem of the customer staying, and they carefully evaluated EVERY point of contact with the customer. This is way more effective than a cold, sterile sign that says “Customers allowed only 30 minutes of internet time” which gets the customer to leave, but doesn’t attempt to try and gain more value from the people who have already visited their store. You usually see this type of thing translating into very well-executed media plans, but I’m glad to see it applied in such a fresh way.

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