Sadly, I have not picked up an issue of Rolling Stone magazine in a very long time. It never spoke to me as a teen and it certainly does not speak to me now. In fact, my musical tastes have probably gone more extreme as I age. Probably some pathetic attempt to self-validate myself as my level of retreating-cool oozes away as the years drool by.
En route from the airport to the hotel, getting psyched for Search Engine Strategies Toronto and I notice that my cab driver has left a recent copy of Rolling Stone along with an issue of Vanity Fair in the seat pocket ahead of me. The ride went fast as I glazed over the pages of eye candy and jotted down some bands I had never heard of (maybe it can speak to me… sometimes).
The simple act of leaving a copy of Rolling Stone magazine in a cab is what distinguishes this one driver from the thousand of other blurred cab rides I’ve hopped in my lifetime.
We may think that we’re getting to some level of one-to-one marketing sophistication with all this technology, but all it took was a magazine to make one person stand out, be memorable and create a better experience for one consumer with something so simple. And something worth mentioning.
Any cab driver can drop a copy of today’s newspaper on a seat. It takes a certain character to choose Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. At least I think so.