Eliza's Daisy

Since no one took the bait and responded (hey, it's early days yet, I'll build a following. eventually), I'll tell you how she did.

After a few years of trundling around St. James and now Mayfair and some other respectable neighborhoods, Eliza's built a nice reputation for herself. She's reliable and consistent and unique. Her supplier has cultivated a few other perfect flowers and bred them in all of the popular colors of the day so they have become de rigueur for society weddings and debuts and the like.

Unfortunately things in the flower market have become difficult. Other vendors have tried to sabotage or copy her business. Once even her entire supply of flowers was destroyed by an irate seller who was frustrated that she was the exclusive supplier of these perfect flowers.

So, since she's saved enough money, she decides to open a store. A place where she and her sister can live above and where her customers can easily find her. The place she buys also has a workroom where new creations and arrangements can be made. Most important, she has a beautiful sign made - a sign in the shape of a daisy that says "Eliza's Flowers." She hangs it over her door.

She also has card made with the daisy and places announcements in ladies newsletters, also using the daisy.

Pretty soon she's doing a thriving business. People are as interested in the lovely sign as the flowers themselves so she is inspired to add flower themed gift items and flower holders to her offerings. And for her special arrangements she even offers packages - flowers plus attractive containers. These are especially popular with the rising middle merchant class who are unlikely to have heirloom silver or crystal but do have aspirations to the good life.

After a few years business is so good that she's hired an arranger, opened two other locations so that her best customers - housekeepers of the good houses - don't have to leave their neighborhoods to get their weekly supply of perfect flowers. Plus she's worked out an arrangement with her supplier to do special order deliveries to out of town locations where the hoi summer or winter.

Her daisy is instantly recognizable on the side of his deliver cart, on the boxes and wrappers she uses to delivery her flowers and in the weekly special's advertisement.

Rethinking Eliza Doolittle

You remember her - the flower girl from My Fair Lady. There she is, all waifish in the market trying to get a few pence to eat and find a place to sleep that night. Okay maybe she's more cheeky than waifish but she's a pretty young thing just begging to be rescued by her knight in shining armor and turned into a proper lady.

Forget that story. This is the alternate version of Eliza's story - the one where she makes it on her own. You've heard of Shakespeare's Seven Stages of Man? Well the parable of the flower seller is about the evolution of Eliza.

So picture her there, sitting in the busy London square offering her daisies. If she's lucky someone will buy a few. She's calling out to passersby from her corner, encouraging them to buy her flowers.

Because she's pretty and young and works hard and sings a lovely song, people buy from her. Plus she's got these unusual daisies. They stay bright and strong and beautiful for exactly one week and then they disintegrate. So people come back every week and she starts to build a regular customer base.

But there's lots of competition in the square because lets face it, it's easy to get and sell flowers, the square is busy with wealthy people, restauranteurs and funeral directors and so she's getting crowded. She needs to find an easier way with a more reliable revenue stream.

So she takes a look at her business and makes a few decisions. She:

• decides to go door to door - or kitchen door to kitchen door in St. James since a lot of her buyers have been the housekeepers of the wealthy

• decides to try to reach a standing agreement with the restauranteurs, funeral homes and churches for regularly weekly orders

• uses the money she's managed to save to rent a stall in the flower market and installs her pretty younger sister there so people always know where to go to find her daisies

How do you think she'll do?

Connecting Buyers & Sellers

For people who don't understand the value and purpose of marketing, I have a little story to tell. A bit of backstory first.

What is marketing? I got my last job because I said marketing exists to enable sales. But that's a bit of a circular definition isn't it? Let me try something more precise:

"Marketing is connecting buyers and sellers for the exchange of something of value."

So the same principle as marketing exists to enable sales but perhaps a bit more reflective of the act of marketing. Because yes marketing is a verb. It is the act of doing something. So to deconstruct my definition, let's take a look at what that action is...

Working backwards because the back half of the definition is pretty clear:

1. Something of value - a good or service that somebody wants or needs
2. Exchange - you give me money, I give you something of value and viola we've transacted
3. Buyers - tricky animals, buyers are; any body and every body could be a buyer, so long as they have need or interest and coin and you can find them
4. Sellers - do I really have to define this? that's you with the something of value to exchange
5. Connecting - that's the first act. or maybe the second because you have to find those pesky buyers before you connect with them.

Connecting buyers & sellers to exchange something of value implies reach, dialogue, conversation, communication. When you do find those pesky buyers you have to have something to say, preferably something that gets their attention so they get interested in buying - if they have need and coin - and buying from you, not the flower seller on the next block.