Marketing is Education – Part 4

differentiation, differentiation, education, Marketing, Positioning, route to market

How many of you have heard of the perfume brand ….Fragonard

When we think of perfumes, the typical names which come to our mind are Nina Ricci, Channel, Givenchy, Boss etc. Fragonard…never heard of it, or at least I had never heard of it.

When we went to Paris, we had taken the Paris Pass. One of the coupons as part of the Pass was the visit to a perfume museum where they would show you how perfumes are made.

So we decided to take the tour because we had never seen perfume being made. They had various language guides and the moment they had a large enough crowd they would start the tour. Our guide was tremendous. Inspite of the fact that she was French, she spoke very clear English and explained the complete history of how the initial perfumes got made, then how the various flavours and fragrances are created etc.

After the history and the processes she spoke about how perfumes evaporate, how they should be kept, what kind of containers should be used, and the concentration levels if the perfume has to last long on your body.

All this information you need to understand was biased towards what they were offering. This is not to say they were giving wrong data. They were however showcasing data that got you oriented towards their offering.They also took up the issue of not doing mass advertising to create a brand awareness, head-on, and eliminating it as a objection, as part of the education process. This differentiation of using education rather than showing models has kept them in good stead. They have been in business for more than 100 years I think.

All the queries were so masterfully handled by the guide, it was as if she was an amazing teacher.

At the end of the tour then she came up with the offer, since we had spent time visiting them, only at that time (limited time / scaricity )from her (reciprocity)- because she had given all this education free of cost to us, quite a few of us ended up buying a lot of perfumes.

My family and I had not gone with any agenda to buy, we still ended up buying more than Euro250 worth of perfumes. And the bigger fact is that we didn’t have a buyer’s remorse, that we had been tricked. We were actually feeling so happy that we got such good perfumes.

As a sidebar – the perfumes are really good, they do last much longer than the other brands even in the hot weather of India because the concentrate level is much higher than others. Also since they are packed in metal containers , unlike most other brands which are packed in glass, these last much longer in the bottle also.

You see the benefit of the education they gave me, I have given you the exact things they taught me about what should be seen while buying a perfume. They have made a permanent client. Whenever I go to Paris, Fragonard….will be on my list of places to visit to buy perfumes.

Can you see how you can utilise education to create a strong image in the mind of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The good people in Paris

Great People, Karma, travel

Yesterday I wrote about how in my opinion Good Karma has helped me in far off places like South Korea.

This time I will narrate one of the many situations which I encountered in Paris.

My family and I were visiting Paris in 2018. In Paris the best way to travel around town is using the Metro. However one of the challenges of using the metro you need to understand the inter-change because all of them are marked in French. I had been to Paris multiple times earlier when I was a very small kid along with my parents and elder brother. Since then I had the intention to take my family to Paris since I find it very beautiful.

We were staying at a relative’s house which was in a suburb of Paris.

On this day, when this incident took place, we had taken the cruise on the river Seine and after a late evening walk to Trocedero to have a look at the Eiffel Tower we were totally exhausted.

So we walked over to the metro station and identified the station where we had to do the interchange to take the metro to our stop. Once we reached the station where we had to do changeover to the other line of the metro we could not find the exit from which we would get into the station for our metro line.

It was quite late in the night, we were exhausted and there were no one to help us identify the location and we kept going round in circles. Even though Paris is relatively safe for tourists, when you are with your family in an unknown place and its kind of late in the night, you tend to get a little anxious.

The other challenge is that Google Maps at that time would get confused in identifying French locations because we were using the English interface.

While the three of us were moving around, un-noticed to us, on the station there was a person who was cleaning the platform. He saw us walking around 4-5 times around the same point with map in hand.

He came to us on his own. He didn’t know English. We didn’t know French. But he sensed our anxiety and worry.

In his own sign language the person asked our issue. We showed him the location we had to go to and metro line we had to take. He simply asked us to follow him in his sign language.

Leaving his broom in a closet, he led us through a flight of stairs and then about 5-7 minutes of walking to the point where the escalators to the other platform were located. That’s when we heaved a sigh of relief.

This gentleman pointed to the escalator. We thanked him profusely and tried to tell him in English how grateful we were, but he only understood the “Merci” , waved as if he had done nothing spectacular and walked back to go to his location to clean up the platform.

People do try to help a lot in Paris especially when they realise you are coming from India to see their country and don’t know their language.

Like I have said earlier, inspite of all the negativities the politicians and the news may make you believe the world is a pretty decent place and you will find good people in all places.

Till next time -stay positive stay enerrgised.

Carpe Diem!!!