The Lesson of Chick-fil-a

I’m a late adopter when it comes to technology. I got an iPod about a year ago, and I just discovered podcasts in December. It took a friend telling me about how she listens to This American Life on her iPod for the light bulb to go on. You mean I can listen to these shows on my schedule? Anywhere I want?

I started listening to podcasts while running on the boardwalk, with my mind drifting between the surf and Ira Glass. Since I have so many to catch up on, I just listened to a pre-Christmas show set entirely in a mall in suburban Tennessee. Among the stories of businesses going under and scrappy salespeople fighting for the consumer dollar, one woman stood out. She was the owner of the local Chick-fil-a franchise.

Her business was doing just fine. Not because she came up with some new marketing ploy. Not because she had spend a bunch of money on advertising. She was doing well because she recognized that her true customers were not the mall patrons but the mall employees. The people who worked in the mall. She had appointed herself as the unofficial mayor of the mall, and spent a good part of every day visiting the stores to check in and find out how they were doing. She targeted her promotions to the stores, and cultivated relationships with everyone around her.

I started thinking about this as I was writing a direct mail piece — who are my mall employees? Who is the overlooked but built-in audience? Instead of casting a wider net, now more than ever it’s important to look around, use our networks, and focus on the customers close to home.