’

« Steve Jobs on graduating from college | Main | Reggie Jackson on China »

Goethe on personality

"Personality is everything in art and poetry."

And now that we've officially transitioned to the "feelings economy" (at least in the U.S.), personality is everything in business as well. Check out this post from AdPulp:

Spike Jones at Brains On Fire likes to order music from CD Baby, the independent musician's friend in distribution. Any site that sells discs by Garaj Mahal is okay by me. But what Spike points to is the extraordinary customer service touches, evident even in their packing letter.

Spike,

Thanks for your order!

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Monday, August 9th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait for you to come back to CDBABY.COM!!

Thank you once again,

Derek Sivers, president, CD Baby
the little CD store with the best new independent music

Once again, it's not what you do. It's how you do it that counts today.

Posted June 21, 2005
Email this post

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d8341c684b53ef00d83483e1f969e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Goethe on personality:

Comments

Hi Tim,

When I read this post of yours, I felt like I'd read it before. Did a little searching... and found that the "Thank You" letter copy is not original.

Doc. Nielsen of http://www.docnielsenstuff.com uses almost the same words too...

"Your order for Dr. Nielsen's marketing material has been gently taken from our office shelves with sterilized contamination-free gloves and placed onto a “sky blue” satin pillow.

Our team of 5 employees inspected your order and polished it to make sure it was in the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Bulgaria lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as she put your material into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down Main Street to the post office where the entire town of Waterford waved 'Bon Voyage!' to your package, on its way to you, in our private jet on this day, Friday, March 5th, 2005.

We hope you had a wonderful time ordering from us. We sure did. Your picture (which we borrowed from your web site) is on our wall as 'Customer of the Year'. We're all exhausted but can't wait to hear your feedback!

Thank you once again,

Dr. Nielsen's Elves (Stefi, Marie, Pat, Erica, and Tresha)"

I'm not sure who copied from whom. The idea is good. But the execution in this case is not so good.

Posted by: Ankesh Kothari | June 22, 2005 at 08:02 AM

my bad about the error... mistyped and called you Tim instead of Tom.

Sorry Tom.

Posted by: Ankesh Kothari | June 22, 2005 at 08:05 AM

I've been ordering CD's from CD Baby for years now and, from talking to people over there many times over those years, think they have more integrity than a self-proclaimed marketing chiropractor.

I'll forward this post on to CD Baby and see what they have to say.

Thanks for calling attention to it. (You gotta love the power of blogs.)

Posted by: Spike | June 22, 2005 at 12:24 PM

Googling my own form-letter to show it to a friend, I found this page.

Just for the record (FWIW) - yes I wrote that CD Baby packing letter myself back in 1998.

A few times, businesses have asked if they could use something similar and I always say yes - of course! So I guess Dr. Nielsen did - but that's totally OK with me.

It's just a silly packing letter. :-)

Posted by: Derek Sivers at CD Baby | January 10, 2006 at 03:57 PM

Thanks for the update Derek. And keep up the good work! ;-)

Posted by: Tom Asacker | January 10, 2006 at 04:05 PM

Post a comment