What’s your memory maker?

- Hey everybody! Drew McLellan here from Agency Management Institute, coming to you from Orlando, Florida. What you see behind me is the monorail track, and what you just saw right behind me is the Monorail System. Here at Disney world, the monorail system connects three core hotels and the Magic Kingdom, and also what they call the Ticket and Transportation Center, which is where everyone who's not staying on Disney property parks to get into the Magic Kingdom. And you know, when they built the monorail system in 1971, it started the exact same time that the Magic Kingdom opened, it was a very practical tool for them to move people around. But what was a very practical tool has now become a nostalgic, very important, very special element of Disney World for many visitors and guests. So as I walk around Disney World, I see and I've seen this for many, many years, I see t-shirts that celebrate the monorail. You can buy a model monorail that can go around your Christmas tree, or you can buy a toy set for children where they can move little figurines on and off the monorail. So the monorail has become the sentimental favorite for longtime Disney guests. I honestly think that sometimes we miss the boat on making some of the things that we do that we start for very practical reasons becomes sort of a sentimental, nostalgic part of our business. So in my agency, our three logo colors are green, purple and orange. And many years ago, and I don't even remember how it started, many years ago, we started serving warm M&M cookies to any clients or vendors or anybody who came to our office. We had a full kitchen in our office and all of a sudden, one day we got the great idea that we could buy specialty M&Ms in our logo colors. And we, all of a sudden, made our own M&M cookie dough just using those special M&Ms. And so for years and years and years, our clients got used to getting A) warm M&M cookies, but B) brand specific M&M cookies when they would come to meetings. And in fact we would say to them, "Hey, do you want us to come to you, or do you want to come over to our place?" A lot of times they would say, "If I come there, will there be cookies?" And we would of course say yes. And so a lot of clients chose to come to our meeting, to our office rather to have a meeting simply because of the cookies. They became this nostalgic sentimental part of why they love being with us. And when we moved from that office to a different office where we didn't have a full kitchen, clients were disappointed. So what we would have to do is we'd have to bake the cookies the morning of and bring them to the office, so it wasn't quite the same. They weren't warm right out of the oven but they were still pretty awesome. So they became the signature thing that our clients associated with great fondness and emotion to our agency. And my guess is whether it's what you do for the holidays for your clients, or it is how you serve charities or it's some experience you create in your office, we also have a Pop-A-Shot machine in our office and a lot of clients came for a quick Pop-A-Shot game, I think you create more memories than you know. Disney recognized that they created this amazing memory with the monorail and they have figured out ways for their guests to take a bit of that memory home with them, again, with the t-shirts and the toy monorails and monorails that go around your Christmas tree. So, what do you do for clients that maybe they have an emotional or a sentimental attachment to and have you fully merchandised how they can sort of take that with them and keep a little bit of the love they have for you and your agency with them all the time? Think about it. I bet there's more there than you would've given yourself credit for. All right? I'll talk to you next week.