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Issue 5 > Getting to 'we'.

Getting to 'we'.

Chris Haddad on building bonds.

Norwegian people are weird. And so are Swedes. And the movies they make? Even weirder.

For instance, last week I curled up on my couch one night and watched a Norwegian/Swedish flick called 'Kitchen Stories.' According to IMDB the plot is: 'A scientific observer's job of observing an old cantakerous single man's kitchen habits is complicated by his growing friendship with him.'

In other words, a middle-aged Swedish guy is assigned to sit in a really high chair and watch what an old Norwegian guy does in his kitchen. And under no circumstances are the middle aged Swedish guy and the old Norwegian guy to, you know, actually talk to each other.

For a foreign film, it's got the fewest subtitles I've ever seen. Vast stretches are just filled with old white men waggling their eyebrows at each other or sharing long, uncomfortable silences

And, of course, the two of them do talk and do become friends and do have long conversations about which side of the road it's proper to drive on.

And of course I learned a whole bunch about marketing just by watching a couple of old Europeans make eyes at each other.

Oh, come on Chris, this one sounds like a stretch even for you. Oh, I'm not so sure about that. Here's the deal:

Theoretically you and customers have a pretty formal relationship. You sit in your high chair, they sit at their kitchen table and the interactions between you are formalized and few. You might send out a marketing piece, they might come buy something, but it's a shallow relationship, a marriage of convenience and an unemotional one at that. In other words, you really don't talk.

But to be successful in the marketing ecosphere of today, you've got to come down off your high chair, get away from that 'us, them' formal mentality. To be successful today, you've got to create a relationship and a community around your company. To be successful today you've got to get to we.

Do me a favor: Close your eyes and dig through your brain for those companies that you feel warm and fuzzy about. Got it? Ok.

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