What I say about you is more important than what YOU say about you
I just finished reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s latest book, The Thank You Economy. I’d had an opportunity to see and hear Gary speak live about his new book via several online resources, and while there is no denying Gary is passionate speaker, he can tear off on a tangent unrelated to the topic at-hand and will distract and amuse himself by asking the audience to tweet something immediately or trying to fool people by saying he’s offended and leaving the video chat but really only covers the camera with his thumb (seriously, dude — does that fool anybody?) If any of you were using those events on which to base you decision to buy this book — don’t be distracted from the value of the book by some lack of focus in the promotion.
The Thank You Economy is excellent follow-up to the author’s first book (Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion) and specifically deals with using every tool available to a business in order to show that they love and appreciate their customers. Businesses think they’ve got this covered “we say ‘hello and have a nice day’ everytime a customer buys from us” and they couldn’t be more wrong.
Saying “thank you” with style, panache, personality, and (most importantly) a personal touch is the way companies like Zappos, CD Baby, and (sadly) only a very few others (some of whom are profiled in the book) are standing out in a business environment where what a person’s friends say about your business is waaay more important that what a brochure or advertising campaign says about a business.
How do the companies you do business
with say Thank You to you?
How do YOU say Thank You to your customers?
As a person who works with traditional media, I especially like the fact that Vaynerchuk didn’t completely write-off the legacy media tools like Print, TV, Radio, and Outdoor as outdated — but he rightly points out that the old way of using them is. Traditional media needs to own the fact that their audiences don’t use them in the same way they did in the past, and devise more effective strategies for using them in conjunction with new media. That goal is one of the reasons I choose to work in the realm of traditional media — to help the industry (and the clients who use them) to integrate their messages. It’s why I like hanging around brilliant companies like Remerge Media and Big Research, because they’re doing things at the next level. At that’s why you should buy and study and put into practice The Thank You Economy — so you don’t get left behind.
