Why “45″?
January 6, 2010
To celebrate our son’s college graduation and the end of a busy year, we spent the holidays at our favorite place, Club Med, this one in Cancun. After a few rainy days at the beginning of the trip, the weather was basically perfect: around 80 degrees, sunny, and with a nice breeze blowing throughout the day.
When the wind was up, we went sailing; when it was flat, we went snorkeling. Oh yeah, and we learned to salsa dance, but that’s a story for another week.
There was one thing you couldn’t miss as you walked through the facility: the people wearing Club Med “45″ shirts. There’s nothing really special about these shirts – essentially they’re T-shirts that have the name of the Club Med village and a large number “45.”
The story of these shirts, however, is particularly relevant to how you create the products and services you market to your customers, members, and clients.
These shirts were originally created to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Club Med in 1995. When the 50th anniversary rolled around in 2000, they naturally made shirts with “50″ on them. Unfortunately, for some reason, these shirts didn’t sell very well in the Boutique shops in each village, and people kept asking for the “45″ shirts.
Now clearly, a 50th anniversary is a bigger deal than a 45th anniversary, but to their credit, Club Med did two things you should consider very carefully:
1. They didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time or effort trying to understand why people preferred the “45″ shirts or try to convince them that the “50″ shirts were better.
2. They recognized the demand for the original “45″ shirts and brought them back where they continue to be top sellers throughout Europe and North America.
What are your customers telling you about their preferences, and what are you doing to give them what they want, not what you think they should have?
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