To be clearer, the minute you buy those good wines and move them to another city (we are talking about few hundred kilometers) the taste of the wine drastically changes! The same applies to spices like the basilico, or the prezzemolo, lemon, oranges, cheese and all sorts of other food. This is due to changes in atmosphere pressure, altitude, climate and similar other factors.

Thinking about it, makes a lot of sense. The same rule is applicable to many local businesses. Not all businesses can go global, or when they do, they simply loose a lot of their flavor in the process. Sometimes the business has to change completely in order to be localized, and many businesses fail for not being able to adjust their model to the local needs. This is why Starbucks never tried entering Italy, or Subway didn’t succeed in Turkey. You can’t find a good Paella anywhere but in Spain, and the taste of Coke is simply different in every Country.

It is also applicable to experiences: there are a lot of coffee shops to go but the Starbucks experience is different, there are lots of hamburgers, but the Big Mac is the Big Mac. You have thousands of web sites where to shop, but Amazon is somewhat special…

Some experiences can simply not be duplicated.

If you can find that ingredient that gives you that special taste, the flavour that can be found only where you are, even if its just a small hint on the tip of your tongue, you’ll have that edge on everybody else, that unmistakable uniqueness, that’s hard to explain, but you know its there.

Sadok Kohen

This is directly related to how education is perceived and executed and who are our first teachers.

When we are children we are very busy growing up. It’s no easy task, we have to live up to society standards and that’s why we are very selective in our choices. Which toys we like, which friends we like, which sports we like, which people we like, its all about new data processed at very high speed and most importantly “without prejudice”. A friend can become an enemy and then become a brother. A toy is inseparable one day, we hate it the other, you get the picture.

One day this kind of open minded social network is forced to stay put in a room with an old guy as the “guardian” for a HUGE amount of time…

You have a very well targeted audience with huge buying potential, LOCKED in a room with you for an almost unlimited and mostly UNINTERRUPTED time frame! (Seth Godin rejoice!)

Does that mean you can sell anything at any price, no questions asked ? Well that must be very well what we are thinking or we are really not that interested in selling, because if you look at how we try to teach our children during their most perceptive years its obvious we are doing a horrible job. But can we really afford to ?

Boring classes lead to attention deficit which lead to boredom associated with learning and boring class after class this information is written in stone. If learning is boring, so is working which directly relates to creativity and production loss of generation after generation. This is a direct economical, sociopolitical and humanitarian loss.

Whereas interesting classes, passionate teachers, awareness of what really is at stake would lead to convert those little minds in lifelong extremely loyal customers of knowledge! Creativity, productivity, health, awareness, everything would rise as a result of this with a huge direct impact on the worlds quality of life.

I remember for example being thought about how a battery works in terms of chemistry. Lots of formulas, lots of big words and history and names. It got a little interesting when a frog was involved but it was immediately replaced with big and boring charts. I think about it now, and how interesting it is actually to “know” with the real sense of the word how energy is created and preserved. What does energy mean. How it gives life to a toy. How it can be used in other areas of my life and the power that such knowledge yields. Its the concept of “energy” that needs to be sold first, and what a product it is to sell! But no, we don’t need that. All we want to do is use “energy” to put in a formula to derive some other constant in an “equation”. Splendid pitch right ?

Today’s marketers have amazing tools at their disposal. They track everything, from attention spans to eye balls. Crowd analysis, statistical charts. Behavioral analysis, direct marketing, personalized messages and many many more. All directly applicable to the subject.

I am sure if the best marketers in the world would have the chemistry book as a client, they would restructure every lesson into a great pitch. Use high tone voices full of passion while selling it and literally pour knowledge into your soul. They would recognize the combination of a great product, value the perfect audience and do everything to make the kill !

You probably think the kids don’t have the money to pay for such good marketers time. If you calculate the potential outcome of such an investment and the ROI you’ll see they are the richest and easiest client there is…

We have the tools, we have the means, we have the knowledge, we have the power and we have the time to do it. Why don’t we ?

Pick any topic out of a school book and turn it into a marketing pitch, complete of media planning, creative, script and all, share it with me if you like. You’ll realize that if you put the same passion you put into selling, lets say, hamburgers, you are holding in your hands the next Big Mac!

Sadok Kohen

This friend of mine used to go to the same restaurant to eat almost every day of the week, at the same hour. This restaurant was across his school so it was pretty convenient for him and he was welcomed almost as family. He knew everybody by name and so did everybody that worked there.

His lunch hours were different then most people as his classes ended a little late. One day he happened to be around school on a busy weekend and went in to eat. After waiting for more then half an hour and after several reminders he finally got angry and asked one of the waiters that he knew quite well, what was going on. The waiter replied: “You are right, but man, you just came on customer time!!”

(The term “Customer Time” may strike as strange, the event didn’t happen in an English spoken country but the literal translation is correct).

I started wondering, when does a loyal customer become so loyal that he becomes family ?

Because with family comes the feeling of being accustomed to a certain presence and taking that presence for granted is what leads to broken hearts or loneliness, which we try to erase by replacing with new experiences.

New customer acquisition has its own weight in the growth of a business. But it is our loyal customer base (our family) that supports us and allows us to chase new customers in the first place. Taking their loyalty for granted will only make it easier for them to go away on the first opportunity.

“In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted” ~Bertrand Russel

Sadok Kohen