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"What I did was simply expand my Sunday cooking to include preparations for a Monday-night meal for twelve. I would often make couscous or a lamb-based soup, which is used during Ramadan in Algeria to break the fast at sundown. It's called chorba, which means soup; in fact, it's called The Soup. It's very spicy and good enough to be an entire meal. Often I would just prepare a huge tureen of it along with hot bread and a big salad. Desserts were simply fruit and cheese.
"The response to my Monday-night For Women Only di
female di
"Our di
"We get a lot of feedback from each other and, because of our experience, can suggest various people to see, organizations to contact, or strategies to develop. Because they are so supportive, these di
Huston's weekly parties became an institution in the Washington, D.C., area where she lived. It brought like-minded women together who bonded and supported one another through the similar trials and tribulations each was going through. There's no reason you can't do the same thing. Creating a theme around a point of commonality—be it race, religion, gender, occupation, or anything else—can infuse your get-togethers with added purpose, and help you attract others.
2. Use invitations.
While I'm all for slapdash impromptu parties, the di
3. Don't be a kitchen slave.
There's no sense in a party being all work. If you can't hire a caterer, either cook all the food ahead of time or just use takeout. If the food is good and the presentation snazzy, your guests will be impressed.
These days, I usually opt for a caterer. But you can have a simlarly elegant party for much less if you're willing to get creative and spend some time preparing. The key to low-budget di
Well, maybe not ALL you need. My other expense is alcohol. I love—love!—great wine. I always go a little overboard with the vino. And really, could God have blessed us with a better social lubricant? It amounts to the finest party favor ever created. But again, everyone has their own predilections, and I'm sure you can pull off a perfectly fabulous di
4. Create atmosphere.
Make sure to spend an hour or two gussying up your place. Nothing expensive or out of the ordinary, mind you. Candles, flowers, dim lighting, and music set a good mood. Add a nice centerpiece to the di
5. Forget being formal.
Most di
6. Don't seat couples together.
The essence of a good di
7. Relax.
Guests take their cues from the host—if you're having fun, odds are that they will, too. The night of the party, your job is to enjoy all the fruits of your labor. That's an order.
IV. Trading Up and Giving Back
22. Be Interesting
I remember when being a marketer was simpler. Essentially, marketers were expected to create an ad, get it to the consumer through one of the few available media sources, and then sit back and wait.
Those days are good and gone. The way the world speaks and listens has changed radically. And the tools we use to communicate are changing at a similar pace. As access to consumers grows, so does consumer power. They can choose from hordes of entertainment venues, use software tools to filter out unwanted messages, and shoot down surviving messages with a heightened sense of cynicism. It's just not as easy to be heard. Brand loyalty is tougher to achieve. Conventional advertising and marketing just won't cut it—and neither will traditional thinking among those who want to get their message across. The CMO of today and tomorrow must be a strategist, a technologist, creative, and always focused on the sales and financial return on his marketing investments. Not a lot of individuals, consulting firms, or agencies combine all those traits. As a result, the life of the CMO is a lonely one, and the life of the CEO who expects all this is too often a frustrated one.
My growing sense of these changes, along with conversations with respected marketers, is the main reason I founded FerrazziGreenlight, to focus on marketing strategies and programs that push the marketing spend closer to actual sales. To count less on big broadcast advertising and more on building personalized loyalty between clients and their customers. That might mean creating a loyalty program for a retailer similar to what we operated at Starwood Hotels. Or designing an infomercial for a complex new product launch. Or facilitating an "ambassador's program" for a large engineering firm that targeted just 500 customers, prospects, and infiuencers in the United States.
I hope it's not a surprise that I see effective marketing as just building relationships with customers and prospective customers.
Let me translate this macro trend to a very personal scene that repeats itself over and over again when I give lectures at colleges. It will take place just before or after I've given my talk. A student will muster the nerve to approach me, and admiring as I am of such initiative, I'll be very receptive. Then, remarkably, nothing will be said beyond, "Hi, I'm so-and-so and your talk was great." Perhaps I'll ask what they got out of it or how they see what I talked about playing out around them in the world. Too often, my attempts are met with comments like "Oh, I don't know," or "I just think what you said was great. I'm not sure I could ever do all t h a t . . . "