A great application of Twitter to a local business model

I know where the waffle truck is.

For background, I believe the future of online is to build stronger local communities. As we grow larger networks online, it ironically empowers us to get closer to the people and businesses that operate offline by enabling more targeted communication within an increasingly wired world. Back in the very old days (you know, the eighties), the best your local pizza place could do was get a couple ads in the high school sports program or pennysaver, maybe spring for a radio spot if they were somehow flush with coin, and hope you showed up…. Now my local pizza guy can hit me with geotagged text ads, will soon be able to pop ads on my mobile browser via GPS location (say, when I'm doing a search on local pizza…), and so on.

I live in New York City and the density of the town allows for experimentation that can only happen in urban environments (increasing the urban is another back-to-the-future concept that I believe in). There are mobile food purveyors that have developed cult-like followings while selling food from old fashioned concession trucks like you see at a job site or a fair, just parked there on the street. I love that.

The waffle truck is often in my neighborhood, and I always know exactly where and when because of their daily Twitter update. They tend to go to Brooklyn on the weekend. sigh.

And, as a Twitter follower of the Waffletruck, I have the inside scoop on specials for the day via a secret code:

Except on international waffle day, where all were able to benefit, which seems right and just...

What are your favorite uses of Twitter for local businesses?

Emotional Brands, Functional Brands

I often think about brands along two fundamental axes: Emotional vs. Functional.

When I get asked "how do we get a better premium for our brand?" one of the first things I look at is the emotional connectedness the consumer has to the brand and ask what the brand is doing to foster the ongoing connection. I have found that functional advantage can garner a premium in the marketplace so long as the functional advantage is unique, well articulated, and (obviously, or not-so) valued by the consumer.

A number of years back I learned a great lesson on this when we tried to leverage a premium for the Honeywell brand of room humidifiers. We had had great success on Vicks-branded humidifiers and thermometers in pharmacies through a combination of answering consumer problems (check), consumer friendly design (check), concise and persuasive packaging (check), and, of course, the Vicks brand.

Applying the same checklist into the room humidifier category under Honeywell yielded very different results vs. Vicks – a much smaller premium. Why?

Nothing is more important than the health/recovery of your child – the key job of pharmacy-bought humidifiers (emotional and functional benefits), whereas a room humidifier has a specific role where only your degree of discomfort is at stake (very functional, much less emotional).

We pondered. Our CEO brought it to earth: "There's a big difference between Mom rubbing Vicks on your chest and Dad turning a thermostat on the wall" in terms of your connectedness to the brand.

How are you connecting with consumers? How are you relevant to the things that matter to them emotionally? It is only when you connect with consumers on an emotional level that you can win in a functional category, and it can work in all categories. Perhaps my favorite example of a functional offering that drives emotions is Zappos, the mail-order shoe company that many people just LOVE. Read up on it – my next blog posting will be about familiarity driving emotional attachment which drives brand loyalty.