Pens, glorious pens
Pauline loves pens. So does Anil.
(Picture from here, the League of Gentlemen’s
Many moons ago, I was on the PR team that won the account for a well-known law firm. During one of our first meetings with its marketing managers, I idly picked up one of the branded pens sitting on the table.
It was love at first sight. They felt perfect in the hand, smooth and solid, wrote superbly and were generally magnificent. To this day they’re the best ballpoints I’ve ever encountered. And unsurprisingly, word soon got out: we ended up going to account meetings and grabbing handfuls of these pens while no-one was looking, just to feed the insatiable demand back at our office.
And then, a couple of years later, disaster: the firm changed suppliers and started using new, cheaper, crappier ballpoints. It was a genuinely soul-destroying moment. It was also no great surprise that we soon found out that at the firm there was a thriving underground black market in the old-style pens.
So what does this tell us? (aside from the fact that like Pauline from The League of Gentlemen, I’m worryingly obsessed with pens). It tells me that a brand is made of all the big things, certainly, but also of all the little things that you might think don’t matter. It also tells me that cutting some costs can affect the perception of your business. So the next time you want to introduce cheaper soap in the bathroom, or less pricey biscuits at meetings, just make sure you’re not shooting yourself in the foot. People – and this can include clients – will notice.
And yes, I still have three of the old law firm pens. I save them for special occasions.