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A Wegmans Guy
I have an unbelievable marketing statistic to share. But first, over the weekend, my sister visited us in New York and so she, my wife, and I ate here 👇
Russ & Daughters is a decidedly UX-hostile deli in Manhattan's lower East side where you take a ticket and spend forty-five minutes apologizing to strangers as they push through the mass of humans packed into its shotgun-shaped interior.
Russ & Daughters has been frustrating people for a century. It's a New York icon.
During our sardine-can waltz, my wife got to comparing favorite places in the city with a cheerful stranger. He said, "Oh me? I'm a Wegmans guy."
That struck me as funny. I didn't know Wegmans, and that was all the permission he needed to breathlessly extoll its miraculous fruits and inexhaustible river of rare vegetables. It's been called the Disneyland of supermarkets. It's won awards. Many awards. He found out my sister was visiting from California and told us a story of how he once lived in Sacramento. The punchline, I kid you not, was how disappointing its grocery stores were and how thrilled he was to be reunited here, on the East Coast, with Wegmans.
The deli master cut his rapshody short -- the stranger got his food and said goodbye.
We talked on. But my mind was stuck. "We should go to Wegmans," I said.
"I've told you about Wegmans before, you know" said my wife.
"Well," I said, "I don't remember you saying it like that."
And so, for the remainder of our time in Russ & Daughters, I thought about Wegmans.
Now, the marketing statistic I promised:
Word of mouth recommendations -- like strangers talking to strangers at a deli -- are 10x more effective than any other type of marketing.
They're responsible for 20-50 percent of all buying decisions, and 85-90 percent of them occur offline.
They're also free.
That's all from my favorite marketing book, Contagious, by Wharton professor Jonah Berger. These are all things I already knew. But I, and probably many B2B marketers, become so enamored with our technology and processes that we forget the immeasurable value of thrilling people to such a pique that the best way they can think to describe themselves is to use your brand's name -- A Wegmans Guy.
How many B2B companies do you know whose customers do that? How many Oracle Gals and Salesforce Guys do you know?
Sometimes it takes a jaunt into the consumer world to remember that this sort of advocacy is even possible. Because, it is.
So how can you write to earn more love from Wegmans Guys this week?
Freelancers, why not ask if they'd consider part-time? 🤙
Editor's Quote Of The Week
Shots fired.
What's Next?
The story of an actress-turned writer, an interview with the legendary Stephanie Tilton, and there would be more, but I'm actually in the car driving to Wegmans.
