When people hear the word “brand”, many different things come to mind. I define a “brand” as “a product or an offering that is distinctive from others and it represents the sum of the relationship we have with it, whether it is good or bad.” This month, I want to focus on our “brand” known as The Italian Club of Dallas.
Building a successful brand is about a lot more than a nice logo or clever advertising. Successful brands, those brands that we can’t live without, are the ones that reach our hearts as well as our minds. Truly great brands are the ones that touch us in the totality of our interaction with them.
At the Club, the core of our brand is in our name – “Italian” – and the purpose of our brand is carried out in our mission statement – “… to explore, preserve and promote Italian culture, language, history and traditions…” But how do we successfully bring those words to life and make our brand one that touches hearts as well as minds? I’ll give you a personal example.
I have both a Central Market and a Market Street within 5 minutes of where I live but I would rather drive 30 minutes to go to Jimmy’s Food Store for my purchases. In addition to great quality and selection of Italian products at Jimmy’s, I get a total experience when I interact with them. They communicate with me through their weekly emails offering seasonal specialties. When I visit, I can sample wines and cheeses, I can talk to Paul and Mike DiCarlo and the folks behind the counters who make good recommendations about products, and I can be in an environment that “feels” like the Italian market my Nana used to take me to when I was growing up in upstate New York. With Jimmy’s, I get the totality of the Italian experience, and it touches both my heart and my mind.
So again the question – how do “we” successfully make “our” brand one that touches hearts as well as minds? The answer comes in EVERY interaction our Members and our guests have with our brand and that is my challenge to our Board and staff moving forward… to analyze and improve each and every touch- point of our brand.
At the Club, we are many things. We are a restaurant and we HAVE to provide a first class dining experience to our guests. We have to make it easy for them to get information and reservations, and we have to serve them a quality dining experience in a clean and inviting environment ~ all at a fair price. As importantly, we are a cultural organization and we have to provide our Members and guests with quality programming in the form of lectures, classes, events and performances that promote our Italian heritage. And lastly we are a business with financial responsibilities to our Members. As a business we also need to promote ourselves and our offerings to the public and make it easy for them to be touched by our Italian heritage in a way that is not only different but superior to any other form they might have (short of family) of experiencing the Italian culture here in Dallas.
EVERY single interaction anyone has with the Club… be it online, through our communications channels, in the Club itself or at one of our public presentations… are opportunities for us to grow our brand not only in the minds but in the hearts of our customers.
So how do we do that?
Working with our committees and our staff, we are continuing to analyze every detail of ourselves. We are currently reviewing our event offerings to find a good balance of offerings that in the near future will include events such as renewed cooking classes and joint presentations such as we’ve recently done with the Dallas Symphony and others. We have designed a new, comprehensive web site which, while being much easier to navigate, will offer a much more robust amount of education and information about our Italian heritage and our Club. We're also populating our Facebook page almost daily with relevant and timely information for our members and guests. And we are reviewing our operational procedures such as expedited check-out to make it easier for Members to come into the Clubhouse and have a pleasant experience while visiting.
There are a lot of exciting changes, positive changes, in store for the Club in 2011, but as I mentioned in my letter in last months newsletter, it all begins with you. I encourage you to send me your thoughts, your feedback, your criticism and your compliments. Our focus for 2011 will be on you, the customer, and the only way we can improve your experience is to hear from you!
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
Michael Trovalli
President
No comments:
Post a Comment