From the Far Eastern Shore of Maryland
Hey ,
You see it circulate on social media every Thanksgiving — the infamous “turkey drop” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.
In “Turkey’s Away,” which first aired in 1978, the radio station is advertising a special turkey giveaway in the spirit of the holiday. What’s not known is that bumbling station manager Arthur Carlson is planning to give them away by throwing live turkeys out of a helicopter.
This leads to the legendary Hindenburg-eque live-on-air play-by-play from increasingly more horrified Les Nessman as the disaster most people would expect from such an idea unfolds.
In the post-mortem, Carlson reveals the fatal flaw in his thinking. “As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.”
Taco’s Can’t Fly Either… Or Can They?
A few years ago, a prankster got the people of Bethel, Alaska (pop. 6,200, closest fast food fix: 400 miles) all atwitter with the mouth-wateringly real news that Taco Bell was opening a restaurant in the tiny town.
When word of the hoax and the ensuing broken hearts got to Taco Bell, a whole army of Taco Bell corporate schmucks mobilized. The end result:
Taco Bell airlifted a taco truck into Bethel with enough fixings–
- 950 pounds of beef,
- 300 pounds of lettuce,
- 150 pounds of cheddar cheese,
- 500 pounds of sour cream, and
- 300 pounds of tomatoes
–for 10,000 (free) tacos.
“The more we learned about (the hoax) the more we wanted to do something for them” (Taco Bell Senior Manager)
Beyond the social media and communications teams, Taco Bell brought in people from other departments in the company as the Bethel response grew in scope. “We started to talk about, can we, operationally, bring them tacos. And the idea got bigger. We learned how isolated the community was and we were looking for ways to deliver them.”
What do flying taco trucks have to do with your business?
Having a culture of being customer focused, whether you have a business of one or 1000, is necessary to succeed in this economy. A few lessons from the flying taco’s:
- Structure your business so that departments are communicating and information is shared. If a company the size of Taco Bell can do it, so can you.
- Respond quickly and authentically. There is nothing worse than problems going unresolved.
- Never be a follower in your industry. Be the leader. This is a great example of “look at what your competitors are doing, and do the opposite“. The majority is often wrong.
Your customer XPerience must be solid, different and most importantly, FOCUSED on the customer to compete and be profitable.
In August’s XPerience Intensive, for Inner Circle Coaching Members, I breakdown over 20 customer interactions with businesses from around the spectrum and show you how to adapt them to your business.
But the opportunity to get this XP intensive ends tonight at midnight. Then, only Inner Circle Coaching Members will have access.
Will that be you?
Remember, you won’t profit unless you implement,
Vance “Despite the great marketing I still won’t eat Taco Bell or Turkey” Morris
P.S. For those not familiar with the episode, here is the WKRP clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGFtV6-ALoQ
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