I want to tell you the tale of two companies both trying to reach part of the community they serve and how one failed and the other nailed it. Why this is important is because it ties closely to the way customers choose to spend their money these days. They want companies who understand their world, and they want to feel like they’re with a company that cares about what they like.
This isn’t really a story about Fortnite, but it is
If you have a kid between 8 years old and 50, you might have already heard about Fortnite. The video game which launched in 2017 has already raced to 200 million active users (75 million in just the last six months). They passed a billion dollars in revenue last July, and will quite likely make a big year end revenue goal announcement.
For this story, the game’s not important. What’s important is that it’s the hottest game in the world right now. And as such, companies are trying to relate. Now, I want to show you two examples in these graphics:
This is Walmart on Twitter. Whoever’s representing the brand on the keyboard at this moment has clearly heard of the game, but knows nothing at all about it. Summarily, they come off looking like out of touch doofuses. It’s not a good look.
By contrast, look at this:
Without knowing anything about the game, it’s clear that Wendy’s not only knows Fortnite but talks like they play it five hours a day every day. This garners a lot of social interactions, lots of more positive touchpoints and reactions, and ultimately, revenue.
Understand The Customer’s World
The way Wendy’s treated an interaction online around Fortnite showed that the company (and remember, technically it’s just a person or team representing the company) knew what was current, knew the lingo, and could interact well. You don’t have to know everything but it might be helpful to know a lot about the world of the person you want to serve.
No matter what you sell, there’s a buyer who has their own world outside of that product. The more you can talk to that, know about that, and can align with that, the better your chances to deliver value will be.
The easiest takeaway: stay current. It takes 10-20 minutes a day to read what’s hot in the marketplace. Need extra eyes on all this? Follow me on Twitter. I love sharing trends and interesting business stories.
Avoid looking like the fuddy duddy and figure out where your customer is dropping. It’ll help immensely!
