What my Turkish Barbers taught me about Marketing
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes (sorry – I got keen)
Ok, so I love getting my hair cut. There is a Turkish barber near me. And it is the closest thing I experience to a regular spa break.
They have a few ABSOLUTE GEMS of marketing genius. Then ONE thing which I think is really letting them down from a marketing perspective.
I will explain below.
The Gems of Genius
A lot of Turkish barbers in London all seem to have adopted a few practices in recent years, which are just awesome.
First – they ask if you want a coffee or (if its past noon…) a beer.
Second – towards the end of the haircut, they set a piece of soaked cotton on fire and singe your ear hair. Google describes this as the ‘manliest way to remove your ear hair’ (I don’t know about other less manly ways to remove your ear hair, but I am going to call this the “Ear Hair Fire Thing”).
Third – if you’re lucky, they will give you a little arm and shoulder massage. Then they will grab each finger and gently pull, so that it makes a popping sound. It doesn’t seem to do anything. But I like it anyway (I am going to call that the “Finger Pop Thing”).
My haircut costs £15.
The beers are not some elaborate, Belgian beers they have to import especially.
(Interesting point, I never go for the coffee, as I think I am going to drink a mouthful of hair. They could easily fix this by saying ‘we have a coffee machine in our kitchen at the back’ (i.e. out of the danger zone of falling hair). See, psychology and marketing make all the difference…)
I do not know the economics of the Ear Hair Fire Thing. But I do not think that it would cost more than a few pennies to do per customer.
The Finger Pop Thing is then free. Bargain.
Chucking in a beer, the Ear Hair Fire Thing and the Finger Pop Thing costs possibly £1 in total.
But it makes me feel amazing. As though I, as I mention, am going to a spa. A man spa. Without the lavender. And football on the radio instead of the sound of a waterfall (man stuff!).
This reminds me of a concept from Rory Sutherland. He says, ‘one thing I would always advise you to do is never miss any opportunity to make the consumer feel important… we inherently just love that sh*t.’
He gives the example of how when you pay for a credit card at Selfridges, they say ‘thank you, Mr so-and-so’. (I am not personally familiar with this concept – I don’t shop at Selfridges. I am more of Tesco own-brand clothing man myself. I am salt of the earth, you see.)
These are examples of the Popsicle Hotline Principle (see this article for more deets):
Made in Canva by me. Email me if you want some consultancy on how I get my KAPOW signs to really pop.
How does this apply to law?
Now I am not saying that you should start bringing clients to Turkish barbers if you want to go for a drink.
‘Damian, I know this wonderful little place near my office to grab a beer. It does involve getting a haircut, if you don’t mind?’
I am not saying that.
‘Michael, it has been lovely to have been in negotiations with you for the past eight hours. To show that I go the extra mile, do you mind if I set fire to your ear hair?’
I am not saying that either.
But…
Law provides us with sh*tloads of opportunities to make people feel important. Again, Rory Sutherland says (sorry, I am obsessed), ‘I think there are generally 10 missed opportunities in almost every interaction or exchange [to make the person you’re engaging with feel special]’.
Brainstorm that as a law firm.
When clients sign into our client meeting rooms, greet them by Mr/Ms and then their surname. That is an easy way to make them feel important.
Escort them personally to the room they are in.
If they have a full day of meetings, ask if they need a hand with any tasks in the area. Just an idea – but literally ask if they need to pick up milk on the way home.
Make their life easier. Even if you don’t have to.
City law firms generally have a bit of a competition on cookies (the snack, not the stuff on websites). If clients want to take freshly baked cookies home for their family, offer a ‘warm cookie’ service.
Don’t just apply it to clients. Apply it to employees as well. What are the ‘gratuitous’ ways you can make them feel important?
Could you have ‘birthday ninjas’ who will deliver (before they get to work) a helium balloon and card to your employees’ desk when it’s their birthday?
These sorts of things have a profound psychological impact.
What is the thing I am not so keen on?
Well… this seems to be pretty universal with all barbers. But they are cash only.
That’s fine. But it is a pain in the butt. Scratch that – it is a stressful experience.
I haven’t used cash since 2007. I barely know what it looks like. Yet every time I use the barbers, I have to venture out to find an ATM.
When I do find one, I am shocked when I realise I have actually been inserting my card into a pay & display ticket machine at a car park. ‘WHY ME??!?!’, I shout. As a flurry of parking tickets spit out of the machine.
If that does not happen, then I am at least thinking, ‘what sort of business uses cash?’ I’ve watched Ozark. Am I contributing to some global money laundering scheme? Do I need to make a Proceeds of Crime disclosure because I paid £15 for a trim? (Us lawyers are inherently paranoid.)
Ignoring why barbers use cash. The marketing point is that it is an unnecessary item of friction, which should be considered.
How does this apply to law?
Friction is everywhere. And we f*cking hate it.
Any moment of friction we experience… (the Wi-Fi being overly complicated to use…. Doors not opening when they should…) …drives us up the wall.
But we shouldn’t underestimate the deep psychological effect these small details can have in terms of how our clients perceive us.
Again, to paraphrase Rory Sutherland, a flight passenger judges the quality of their flight by how good their food is. Or the movie selection. They ignore the fact that they are sitting in tens of millions of pounds worth of the most advanced engineering humanity has ever produced. Have crap food. Or don’t have Oppenheimer on your movie selection. And Matilda who was ‘popping over to New York to see Papa for a few days’, will be saying how the ‘flight was just awful. Ungodly. I mean you really felt like cattle going to the slaughter…’
(Another example of friction is having a minimum charge on card in an off-licence. I have gone into an off-licence SO MANY times to buy a £1 bottle of water and then come out with 5 packs of Wrigley’s chewing gum, because of this minimum charge on card rule. Fair play, I gave a shop owner a bit of extra revenue. And I had extremely fresh breath by the end of the day. But I did judge the off-licence owner’s marketing very harshly.)
So look at the service you provide and ask ‘where are there ‘moments of friction’ in our business?’
Are there any pain points that annoy our customers and can we fix these?
That’s it!
Where did I learn this?
· I went for a haircut.
· Rory Sutherland talked about ‘making consumers feel important’ and Airline food in his MAD Masters and I think in one of the live seminars we ended up discussing Turkish.
· Then a lot of the ideas spring from the Popsicle Hotline Principle article – have a read!
Kindest regards,
Mr Donoghue
