Services Rendered Revisited

As I sit and post blogs this evening, I watched City of the Century: Chicago (Part 3) on the Discovery Channel. I recalled a moment when Andrew and I sat at the Butterfly Grill in Greenwich Village this evening enjoying dinner and noticed a cab waiting at a red light.

The top of this cab had an LED programmable sign affixed to the top with scrolling advertisement. One advertisment caught me by surprise:

McDonalds Delivers Happy Meals

Over 100 year ago, a woman's consortium marketed a service that provided working mothers food to take home to their families. Unfortunately, this service failed because of two reasons:

1. The mother's main focus was to provide dinner for the family
2. The menu contained dishes atypical to the Polish family sensibilities of kielbasa and spegetti.

I believe that the consortium was definitely on to something, but unfortunately, disregarded their demographic, specially as segregated as it was.

Tonight, looking at the advertisement on the cab, I was completely astonished by the very fact that McDonald's caters to kids AND their parents, or is it the other way 'round?

Design Thought Strategy Have you thought of ways you can service your clients with a happy toy -the answers may surprise you. Talking to your clients about their daily issues may just provide you with the happy mic nugget on which to capitalize.