Blogger A Day Call: Hello is Drew there?

I can’t really remember the first 5 or 10 minutes of our conversation, because Drew and I started with a lovely and quick-paced game of verbal volleyball. It started when I mentioned the Des Moines Blogger Mafia and went rolling quickly out of control from there. I remember laughing, replying, laughing, listening, and laughing some more. That’s my story. You’ll get no more details from me.

As we walked off the virtual verbal volleyball court, the conversation turned to the plight of the father of a 13-year-old daughter. I recalled the days of a son that age. We bemoaned parenthood together. Guess you could say it was bonding to share the “Don’t embarrass me” rule with another parent within the first 20 minutes of saying hello. We discussed how kids that age have the knack of reducing us to mere transportation. Yet despite that they still try to teach us the drop dead importance of fashion statements — complex math clearly beyond our comprehension. Life is rough for the parents of teenagers.

Knowing our limits, we moved on to branding and marketing. Einstein would have said that relatively we had gone from the nebulous to the far more predictable. This was a jungle we understood.

In no time at all we were off again. Drew was explaining career in marketing. A not so great boss who just by existing convinced him to go it alone. Now over a decade later, he’s got a thriving business teaching folks that a brand is more than a name and explaining that customers care about different things than companies do. We talked about how many companies find that information hard to hear — or even more surprising, how many find that news an epiphany.

Drew said that the moment when his clients “get some idea that they never got before” that’s what makes it all worth it. We spent some time talking about why some folks see things and some folks don’t. We both recognized that part of any management or consultant role is teaching. I think we both kind of gravitate to that part of it. We talked about how much we like helping people do things.

It was two bloggers talking about the elephant in the room again. Only this time we were discussing the idea that quality is a given, not a value any more — customers expected a certain level of quality and competitors already have it. Drew and I mentioned clients who want to build “quality,” that customers can’t see, don’t need, or don’t want to pay for. We were back at the Tony D. Clark discussion of letting go — this time from a slightly different perspective.

Drew and I kept talking around the idea of why it’s so hard to get some people to see the way other folks look at the world. . . . I was going to say “to walk in someone else’s shoes,” but I remembered Drew telling me how many pairs of shoes a 13-year-old daughter needs. That simple fact baffled both of us.

I guess there are some things that we can’t see too.

Hey, no one said bloggers are perfect people.

The one’s I’ve met are still remarkable.

B.A.D. Blogger Quote

If you have a vision or a plan for your company sharing it with your employees is a great idea. —Drew McLellan

Stop by Drew’s Blog, Drew’s Marketing Minute, and say hi!

Thanks, Drew, you B.A.D. Blogger!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Want to be a B.A.D. Blogger see the. . . a B.A.D. Blogger? page in the sidebar.