Mark Kolier’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Living in the World Today’ Category

This is a longer post than normal – and could have been longer!

In addition to doing the touristy things and drinking what seemed to be a boatload of Heineken, my wife Michele and I enjoyed some very good dining while in Amsterdam over the weekend.    A sleek new restaurant called Envy Friday night, (which had a very nightclub-like feel but NO music – it was very strange and we asked the server about it and she rolled her eyes and said she thought the same thing – it was strange), and a Michelin one star restaurant called Vermeer, Saturday night (the 5 course vegetable inspired tasting menu was great paired with wine although there was a scallop in there along the way).    

But we went for something completely different (ode to Monty Python) Sunday night.   I had heard of but never experienced a ‘house’ dinner.   They apparently exist all over the world but I had little knowledge of how they worked (or why for that matter).    Through a friend of one of my wife’s friends we were told to go and have dinner at Angelo Agnello’s outside the city center.   His reputation as a chef was glowing from those that eaten there.   The Hotel Pulitzer where we stayed had not heard of him at all.   It sounded interesting if not a bit daring.   It was much more than that. 

We took a fifteen minute taxi ride to get there.    A nondescript apartment building in a non-descript Amsterdam suburban neighborhood.     Up three flights of narrow, twisting stairs and we met Angelo.   And he offered a memorable dinner and show.   Just the two of us.  No menu.   He did ask Michele on the phone if we liked curry.  Hmmm.  No pricing (he told us to leave whatever we thought we wanted to pay – the Priceline model of eating dinner).  

Starting with caviar and crème fraiche, prawns in a mild garlic and olive oil reduction, salad with tomatoes and homemade feta cheese, a spicy chicken curry, a wonderful lemon tart with meringue, and the offer of cheese (which we simply could not eat).  Two bottles of wine (a Greek red and French Red) as well as a glass of port which he got from friends in Portugal.  

But what was more interesting was the conversation.   Angelo claimed to have lived in 16 countries, spoke 7 languages (he grew up in Mozambique and is of Indian descent), played professional soccer (injuring himself which ended his career) and has cooked in London, France and a host of other places.    He has cooked for dignitaries and people from all over the world.    He had just catered (all by himself) a dinner for 150 people.    Angelo told us that he normally does not sit down with people but we had asked him to join us and he felt comfortable enough to do so.   Music played in the background (he regularly asked if we liked the music).    Dinner was a 4 ½ hour deal. 

We left what we felt was a fair price for the dinner.   He seemed quite pleased.  In addition to making the feta and cooking the whole meal, Angelo gave us a bottle of the Porto, a host of the Dutch wafer cookies (that he made himself), a bottle of the French red and tried to send us off with a bunch of other parting gifts which we politely declined.    

The experience of not knowing what to pay and putting down what we felt was a fair value was truly interesting.    My wife and I both felt there was a fair amount of embellishment by Angelo of his exploits.  And yet that did not take away from the charm of the evening – it added to it.   In fact in one conversation Angelo offered to show us around Amsterdam Saturday night (we declined) and was ready to walk us back to our hotel (we declined that too) after showing us the park that Anne Frank played in near her actual home which was far from where she was hiding in 1942-1944.  

I feel that those people that have dinner at Angelo’s miss out on an unusual yet deeply memorable experience.   I hope we get the chance to meet Angelo again.   And I wonder if there is a model there for name your own price dining?  Would you be willing to offer customers the opportunity to pay what they think is fair for your service?    Would I?   I can’t say I am completely comfortable with the notion but it is interesting to consider. 

If ever you get the chance to dine at a local’s house when traveling I suggest you say yes.  It will be weird at times but an experience you will never forget.  

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thursday November 19^th – Whenever I get to travel someplace I’ve never been I always try to capture my impressions of the place BEFORE I get there.   So as I headed to Amsterdam I thought about what I know about Amsterdam and the Netherlands (or sometimes Holland and that’s odd in and of itself as I cannot think of too many countries that have two names besides Burma/Myanmar). 

Let’s see – before I get on the plane – I recall that if one goes to Europe from the U.S. Amsterdam is a gateway to cheap airfares – but I don’t know why.   They have canals that freeze sometimes in the winter and people skate around to work and play.   Heineken and Amstel beer (I found out that the Amstel river is the primary river in Amsterdam – did not know that).  Van Gogh museum.    Anne Frank’s hideout house.   The red light district.  Coffee shops that are smoking lounges and cafés which serve food.    It’s cold and rainy a lot.   That would be about the sum total of my intimate knowledge of Amsterdam.   How provincially American am I?  

Tuesday November 24^th – While I had intended (ok maybe pondered is better) on posting from Amsterdam, it just didn’t happen.    We were having too good a time.   Yes we went to the Van Gogh (they pronounce it Van Huff) museum, the Rijksmuseum, did the canal cruise, the visit to the Heineken brewery (complete with 3 samples!), and Anne Frank’s hideout which was in her father’s office.    We also went to the red light district which was actually a bit pathetic.  We walked by large picture windows in the red light district each having a lingerie-clad working girl on display one looking more bored and morose than the next.     The coffee shops were not nearly as plentiful as I imagined but the scent emanating from them was unmistakable.   Oh and it was cold and it rained every day but one out of 3 ½ that we were there.    

Like most cities that I have recently visited in Europe the international flavor of the city comes through quite notably.   Many different languages were heard with visitors prominently from the U.K., France, Belgium and Germany.  Apparently many Europeans think Amsterdam is fun for a weekend.   And what a ‘biking’ city.  I have never seen so many beat up bicycles (even those get stolen I was told) with people from 6 to 76 riding them around at high speeds, riding in all kinds of weather, ringing their little bells just as they swerve to avoid unknowing pedestrians (like me).  

Amsterdam (also like most cities I have visited in Europe recently) is expensive.   Not only because of the U.S. dollar’s slide vs. the Euro.   We went into a grocery store and saw that basic staples are substantially more expensive than in the U.S. ..    Perhaps people get paid a bit more but I think they also live in much simpler quarters so that their income is spent more on consumables than rent or mortgage payments.    Things we forget about here in the land of plenty and cheap.

I got 7 ½ hours last night and almost always get from 7-8 hours of sleep nightly. I have been thinking about how people sleep today versus throughout human history. Full disclosure – one of our clients Tempur-Pedic is a highly successful manufacturer of mattresses but they know nothing (and are not the least bit concerned) of my blog posts.

What got me thinking about the history of sleep was something I read not long ago about Ben Franklin and sleeping during the time of the American Revolution. Apparently there was a ‘first sleep’ and ‘second sleep’. Such that people would get up after sleeping for several hours in the middle of the night and be awake for some period of time prior to going back to sleep after sleep halftime.

From Wikipedia – Segmented sleep, divided sleep, bimodal sleep pattern and interrupted sleep are modern Western terms for a polyphasic or biphasic sleep pattern found in medieval and early modern Europe and many non-industrialized societies today, where the night’s sleep is divided by one or more periods of wakefulness. This is particularly common in the winter. Maybe they were talking about NFL coaches who seemingly sleep in their offices in season.

Because members of modern industrialized societies, with late hours facilitated by electric lighting, no longer have this sleep pattern, they may misinterpret and mistranslate references to it in literature. Common interpretations of the term ‘first sleep’ are ‘beauty sleep’ and ‘early slumber’. A reference to first sleep in the Odyssey was translated as such in the 17th century, but universally mistranslated in the 20th.

Far be it for me to get into things like REM (Rapid Eye Movement), Circadian rhythms, and dreams (I will leave that to Aristotle and Freud), but it is interesting to me that in all of human history only over the last 200 years (gas lighting came into practice in 1807) or so have humans sleep habits dramatically changed. It seems to me that many people do not value sleep as much as they should. The health benefits of a good night’s sleep are fairly well documented. It also helps make people less cranky (maybe President Obama should mandate sleep for Congress as they seem particularly cranky although it might be due to them getting too much sleep in House and Senate sessions).

But the notion of a true ‘first sleep’ with an ‘awake’ period in between and a ‘second sleep’ is foreign to me and, I would imagine, most people. I wonder how Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan ‘slept’. Did they get their 8 hours? Rampaging and pillages is very tiring after all. Maybe it is that since there was so much less to do at night before the advent of electricity, sleep was valued more as a pastime? After all, until recently people did not have Facebook to keep them up at night.

How about you – do you have a nightly targeted sleep amount? And are you cranky when you don’t get it?

Noticed the traffic in your postal mailbox (isn’t it ironic it needs to be designated that way now?) lately? Or better, the lack of traffic? It’s no secret that mailers have cut back dramatically on promotional mailings.
According to Mintel in the first quarter of 2009, credit-card issuers cut solicitations in half, reducing mail volume 49% vs. Q408. The research company estimates that US card issuers sent fewer than 500 million offers in Q109, the lowest quarterly total recorded since 2000.

Though credit is being cut back, the data shows that the number of debit card mail offers nearly doubled from Q408 to Q109, while checking account solicitations grew by 29%.

But that’s merely on part of the story. The days of doing the heavy lifting of holiday catalogs in your home also appear to be over. Even though I watch and keep close tabs on the industry I still am shocked at how few catalogs we receive at home. And we (ok maybe my wife and daughter) have a history of buying via catalogs.

Marketing strategists interested in reducing expenditures have seemingly won out here, convincing many traditional catalogers to not mail at all or substantially reduce the volume and page counts of their catalog mailings. While this can make the bottom line look better in the short term in the long term this tactic will likely backfire and in a big way. Catalogs drive online sales. And retail sales. As much progress as has been made in tracking the ability to track online and retail sales driven from the receipt of a catalog or mailing still leaves a lot to be desired.

And what of the relationship (companies love to think they have relationships with their customers) with customers? Sure customers and prospects can be sent emails (provided they have given their permission) but the customer ‘experience’ is vastly different to that of receiving a physical catalog.

Customers will forget about companies that do not mail any more. Out of sight, out of mind has not changed even in a wobbly economy. Better tracking or catalog recipients will aid in offering an understanding of exactly how the customer wants to engage with a brand. If cross channel data cannot be tied together, then it’s possible, even likely, the wrong conclusion can be reached.

I’m not advocating wantonly sending catalogs the way it was done five or even ten years ago. But the drastic reduction in this channel offers great opportunity for a smart marketer to gain share of voice and more importantly increased sales, better relationships with customers and conduits to new customers.
I enjoy receiving and flipping through a nice catalog that contains things in which I am interested. Don’t you?

In my small town we have two food/multi-purpose markets in the town center. One is a nationally recognized chain owned by a large public company. The other is a local grocery called the Village market that has been in existence for more than 70 years. Both offer different value propositions and I shop at both for different reasons.

When it comes to pricing the big box supermarket cannot be beaten. So for basic staples the big box is where I do my shopping. The clerks are quite pleasant, the store is clean and bright and there are many choices. But for things like fresh produce, a butcher that grinds meat on the premises, (unlike the supermarket), and overall higher quality ingredients, we go to the local grocery. The people there are even more pleasant and they go out of their way to pack your bags and even help take them to the car if that’s what you need. They have a better salad bar, better fresh soups and their selection of fish is also better than the supermarket.

And to no one’s surprise the local grocery is of course more expensive than the supermarket, at times substantially so. It is bothersome since to get the best deal and the best quality products, you actually need to go to two markets that are well within walking distance of one another (almost nobody ever actually does this however). The parking lot is much easier to navigate at the local grocery although it does tend to get quite full (it is solely dedicated to the grocery), whereas the supermarket has a vast parking lot that is seemingly never full since it shares space with a number of stores.

The owner of the grocery is quite visible in town, donating food to many causes and helping out residents in a number of ways. And while I am certain that the grocery is quite a profitable enterprise I don’t begrudge its success since it continually delivers on the promise of ‘being large enough to have what you want – small enough to get to know you.’

I don’t know what would be the ‘promise’ of the large supermarket, other than we have a lot of stuff and we are low-priced and we have cool scanning so you can check yourself out.

But what I am most happy about is that we actually have a choice and they are so dramatically different. I like having choices don’t you? – Especially when the choices are so easy to contrast and compare.