I can’t remember how I came across this from Remarkable Communication but the story about the story is incredible. OK – enough of the meta data. It’s about two guys who sell hot dogs in Denver, Colorado. One’s called Biker Jim, the other is a Russian guy. Biker Jim has a blog, pimped out cart, sells elk dogs and has a cream cheese caulking gun for those that fancy cream cheese on their dogs. He’s appeared in Law Week and not as a defendant.
The Russian Guy doesn’t have any of these things.
Sonia – who writes Remarkable Communication has this to say:
Me, I actually always go to the little Russian guy. I don’t want grilled onions, and I’ve got to be honest–an elk dog and a reindeer dog and a German veal dog are all still . . . hot dogs. Plus I never want a hot dog badly enough to wait in line 15 minutes for one, and I like talking to the Russian guy about Moscow. He’s polite enough to listen to my halting attempts at Russian, and his dogs cost what I think dogs should cost.
The Russian guy gets enough business to scrape along. He could start telling a story at any time–a story about where he came from, a story about interesting things to put on hot dogs, a story about his product being worth more than a dollar or two. But he doesn’t. It’s too bad. He seems like a nice man, I wish he would.
If you’re a professional are you seeing any parallels here? Fact is that everyone’s got stories to tell. I mean everyone. No exceptions. What’s yours?
Side note: Biker Jim’s cart is a real life example of what Hugh MacLeod means when he talks about social objects. Avanish Khaushik has a great story about meeting Hugh. So do I. And there’s a really cool video from Scoble:
Technorati Tags: gapingvoid, marketing, social object
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I'll have to go with Russian guy, actually.
I stumbled across that story too, I think via Seth Godin. It's such a great example of how to tell a strong story that I used it in a meeting with the rest of the company where I was explaining our new 'marketing strategy' (I hate that phrase!) I wanted to get everyone onboard with how we can tell a better story and therefore create the best conditions for customer evangelists and everybody really loved it.
(BTW, haven't commented for a while but loving the new site layout and style, really user friendly)