My co-worker and I were at the printer station when I noticed the Versace label on his jeans. He is one of those quiet, unobtrusive types that seem to make it their life's purpose to blend with the scenery. But with a label like that he had done his cause much disservice.
Atypically for me, I exclaimed "Great pair of jeans !" . He quipped about how he was having to downsize his life and put his cat up for adoption to pay for it. We had a good laugh at that one. What ever type of person it is that wears Versace to work on casual Friday, this man is not it.
Even with ever increasing emphasis on knowing your customer and targeted marketing, outliers like him would be hard if not impossible to reach out to. Odd personality quirks may not generate volume in sales but a series of unexplained spikes is good revenue all the same. Whereas when the customer is known, lost opportunity is measurable - in this case one can only guess at the numbers.
Here would be a prime example of the use of non obvious relationship awareness
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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