Lost and Found & marketing Bakery Cafe :)

In some ways I think I am helping create a lot of electronic WOM (word of mouth) for the Jawlakhel Bakery Café. As it happens to be close to my school, and as it happens that me and Annie (my best friend) are avid coffee lovers, we have been frequenting this café. So I was there last week, Annie and me too engrossed in our girl talk waiting for someone to take our order. I was over the moon talking of my new found love (I will post a blog about my trip to Calcutta and what treasure I have finally found there).

The waiter came, and he asked us to move to some other table since a bigger group was coming in few minutes, we obliged. We looked around and then walked downstairs, made ourselves comfortable and ordered. My regular tall Cappuccino arrived , while Annie had her shot of Espresso. Espresso tasted terrible that day. We talked to the Floor Incharge and he replaced the coffee.

So in an hour, the twittering girls left, and left behind a new blue water bottle. I have been hooked to this water bottle since I am back from Cal. For one whole day I looked for the missing bottle. Looked everywhere at home, asked the attendants at college to check if there was any bottle, wailing to get home… finally it dawned on me, Bakery!

Day after, we walked in Bakery again, this time to discuss about our MIS project. I immediately cornered the first waiter I saw and elaborated about my 1Litre, blue capped, transparent bottle with Spirit written on the body. The guy shuffled few drawers and gave me a blank look. I asked him to go down and check, since I had shifted downstairs last time and had coffee there. This guy in turn asked me to do myself the favor and go down and check. So, I said, ‘ I am going to be upstairs and get some coffee, and I would like to get my bottle back when you get the check’. He got the message. I got the bottle.

Hmm… two important things…. the coffee replacement, and the bottle I found back. Makes me feel good about Bakery. However, why aren’t the staff a little more polite, concerned and at your service????? Restaurants are frequented not just because the food there is good, or the coffee is awesome… the whole point is the experience.. Here in Nepal I think we are missing in selling experience while we keep serving the creamy Cappuccinos in not very tall mugs!

Brand new!

Philip Kotler says, ‘a brand is an offering from a known source’. We generally trust things of which we know something about. Like, when I went to the FSA (Festival South Asia, film fest), I chose to watch films that were about Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Srilanka etc, because I know these countries. My high school geography lessons make it easier for me to a point on the map and tell , there is Srilanka. No wonder, we humans tend to relate to things, people or places that we have heard of or known much easily than of things we do not know about.

But is it essential that we just believe if we know ! Well, people believe in branded products, because the product as a brand has made a promise and strives to keep it.
Is it this promise that makes us go brand crazy? I wonder what my four year old cousin means when we pesters his parents to get him a ‘Hot wheels’ car or a ‘Kurkure’ or ‘Junior Horlicks’!

While on my small shopping trip, I noticed bill boards, Romanson, Rado, Christian Dior, I wondered what was so appealing, the way the names were written, their logos or how the name sounded. My father would probably swear by Titan, my uncle would be all for Rado and my mother would covet her Rolex. All these watches have been giving them the right time so far. As I wonder the satisfaction beyond quality that a brand actually gives comes from where, I take a call from my Nokia cell, look at my Longines wrist watch and drive back home in my Maruti 800, still wondering what charm brands hold!