Delicious insight and opportunity converge when you least expect it . . . like, at the dining room table when passing the iPad became the main course.
What I learned provides insight for the furniture industry.
Last night, our dinner guests dined on a great meal prepared by my wife, Wendee, while I was cooking away during the day at stove of hot showrooms in High Point at the Market.
Sure, the special salmon (want the recipe?) was fantastic, but the most nutritious dish — real food for thought — was the tasty iPad. Get this: On Saturday, I won it in a drawing, attending the insightful Better Homes & Garden’s research presentation, inspiring its collection attracting attention at Universal Furniture (thank you, Jeff Scheffer and staff).
Back to dinner, please: Let me set the literal and figurative table for what I learned in passing the iPad last night. Our guests: Gale Steves, author of Right-Sizing Your Home (a book you need to seize the next wave of opportunity), plus Shelly and Tom Carl, family friends and sales representatives for Cresent, Key City, Shifman Mattress and others.
Naturally, the discussion focused on the furniture, merchandising and marketing. As topics came up, and we wanted more information, we slid the iPad to one another to get answers and show pictures, a flow of action that enhanced and embellished our digestible discussion.
What does this mean other than bragging about the joy of my new business toy? A lot. It means more convergence, but something simple and instructive the marketers call ethnographic research and desire for information.
Here’s the highfalutin definition of ethnographic research: Qualitative research method often used in the social sciences, particularly in anthropology and in sociology, employed for gathering empirical data on human societies/cultures. Or, as I like to say, watching and learning how people interact with living space, objects, situations and, amazingly enough, furniture.
In marketing, if you want to know something. Just ask or observe. That’s what I did last night, dining (mentally feasting) on how all of us used the iPad.
For furniture marketing, the same holds true. For example, in the Lee Industries' showroom yesterday, Bondi Coley walked Gale and I over to a captivating double chaise, which served as a comfy drop zone for snuggling and more. Bondi wanted to know more about “more,” asking us for insight.
We offered a few ideas, then I suggested to Bondi that she strategically placed the chaise into a situation or context where people can interact with it and, watch, watch, watch, and learn, learn, learn what they say and do with it.
So, please pass iPad for a good meal on finding new-old ways of approaching and creating opportunity. It’s just delicious marketing. Bon appetit.
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