All fired up...

Yesterday I spent 6 hours with four firefighters, delivering a marketing awareness workshop. They are on secondment to Washington Hall International Fire Training Centre from their stations, and find themselves having to "sell" and market" its training services to the Commercial sector.

I was struck by how engaged they were with the content of the day, from heavyweight strategic concepts like McKinsey Matrix and Buyer Paradigms through to practical exercises like designing the customer experience. Clearly they are passionate about the Washington Hall brand and are eager to learn new techniques to ensure its continued success. This passion more than compensated for their lack of a marketing background.

It would seem that if you are genuinely "on a mission" you will embrace new concepts readily, and step out of your comfort zone. I take my hat of to you guys - your desire to learn and succeed was an inspiration.

No substitute for "the extra mile"

Last Tuesday lunchtime a brand new client informed us that their exhibition stand, which should have arrived from China, had been "lost at sea". Furthermore the exhibition opened the following Sunday (that's three working days later). Was there anything we could do?

We sprang into action - pulling favours, designing through the night, meeting vans from Peterborough full of stand plinths and graphics in the early hours of Sunday morning in dark laybys on the A59...

Anyway, the exhibition opened on the Sunday morning, and the stand was not just "there", but looked great. The client had a great show and they're back in today to brief us on a major brand awareness campaign culminating in exhibitions in Hanover and Las Vegas in January.

There really is no substitute for service excellence when it comes to account development.