Chapter Two | Some Crazy Times | Chapter 2 of 6
Business in the 90’s had many highlights. My biggest client, Mitel was surrounded by other great companies in Kanata. Making them happy was like shooting fish in a barrel. Brougham knew its stuff and we had access to the best supplier partners in our industry. Brougham still has many of these partners today. Our investing in relations with the companies we represented made us experts. Wanting what’s best for the client made us practical and customers saw that.
Brougham’s motto not only for business but for everything we do, was and still is that we care about others’ wellbeing. By finding out what will help our customers do their job, we find out what we need to do and for that our work is well done and appreciated. Perhaps our real skill is understanding clients’ needs by being able to effectively communicate and perceive their situation. Once we’ve done that, our job is not to make a mistake. It takes skill and we’ve had a fall or two to learn, but for that our job is consistently satisfyingly done well,
Boy, those early years flew by. With customers, we were naturally on our best behavior, however those partner tradeshows were classic. Now the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s were the end of an era where I heard the crazy stories of my father’s times and brushed up against a couple of crazy times myself.
Pam in 1992
One story that must be preserved was from Canadian Promotional Products Hall of Fame member Fred Oesen. This was from when he worked with Parker Pen Canada. At that time their service and decorating were, well, terrible and the organization was run by people who did not know what they were doing. The one thing they had was a great product. I loved their made-in-England pens and so did a lot of other people, so their strategy at tradeshows was not to talk about service, decorating with logos (our business), or operations. You could talk about the quality of the product but, the thing that was most important was inviting people to the hospitality suite after the show. Staff at the trade show could talk about the party the night before, demonstrate fortitude by being able to stand and meet with clients all day, and gear up for the party that evening. Now that was marketing excellence! They sold a ton because everyone wanted to be friends with Fred. Oh, and it was fun. Picture the hospitality suite party: because the room was so packed, people were spilling out into the hallway, standing on the beds for space, and everyone had drinks in their hands. Oh, and people smoked then too -just crazy, but it worked! Those were different times.