Storytelling. A Day in New York and an Insight about Marketing.

März 16th, 2010 • Ideas

If you are a regular reader of my blog or if you follow me on twitter you might know that I spend this week in New York City. I am not working or attending a conference. I am just here on vacations, meeting friends and having a good time. While I spent the day exploring Manhattan (once again) I was run over by the same impressions that most foreigners are faced with when they return to the Big Apple for the first time in a while – it’s an inspirational overkill.

Of course, you cannot compare NYC to, let’s say, my hometown Frankfurt. But on the other hand – why not? Let’s just focus on something you can compare, even though both cities vary in size, culture and history drastically. Let’s just compare products and how they are presented. And when I thought about how NYC markets its goods I instantly found out what’s missing in Germany – heart and soul in selling products. That’s the result of 5 hours of just walking south from Greenwich to Chinatown.

Kiosk – 95 Spring Street, Soho

Kiosk is a highly unusual but very, very cool mixture of a folk museum and a cross-cultural retail-venture of everyday-items. Encounter helpful stuff in use in Portugese kitchens, Chinese kindergardens or German Scout Camps. Every item is presented with a short heritage about its sense, function and why it’s so special.
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Upper Playground – 437th East 9th Street
Actually Upper Playground is a shirt store. This time a shirt store inside the shirt store popped up. Zero Friends, a creative collective teamed up with Upper Playground and presented a couple of really nice shirts.

But beyond cool designs one thing was new – there was a story written on the inside of every shirt. The shirt designer simply made up a weird but funny story why he came up with a certain design and wrote it down…as part of the shirt. I don’t have to mention that each of the shirt’s stories was lustfully recited by a funny guy who worked there. Great entertainment. Got two new shirts.

Buying candies – Somewhere around W 12th Street

I did not mention at least five other great little stories with very genuine products and a clear, new idea on how to sell them. But as my girlfriend and me entered this supermarket to buy some food, we encountered this – mixed nuts with a rehab background.

For god’s sake. It’s a plastic bowl filled with nuts. But it’s called Flashback Friday. During a five hour walk through the southern part of Manhattan I encountered zillions of products and shops. But there was one big difference to what I know – storytelling. In full contradiction to how people market stuff in my homecountry, tees were sold with their own unique stories with a shop assistant reciting it. And yes, many shops over here are extremely unique.

Take Evolution for example. The store sells skeletons and skulls, fossils and dead animals of all kind – like it or not, Evolution has found its niche. What surprises me is e.g. Germany’s lack in creativity when it comes to innovative little shop concepts. Unique product ideas and new ways to make things look yummy. Enter one of the many NYC bookstores and you will see hundreds of book layout concepts, each of them presenting a book in an inspiring and appealing way. Enter a German bookstore and you will find 8 standard ways of presenting books.

I wonder why this is the case. As you cannot compare NYC and, let’s say, Frankfurt, I took a quick look on how vendors market stuff. Just a short walk through Manhattan made me perceive a completely new, story-driven way to present goods and store concepts. My personal insight for the day – Germans make machines, Americans produce good stories.

What do you think? Did I just do what every tourist does? To fall in love with NYC? Or is there a typical difference between Germans and Americans on how we market every day items to our customers? Leave a comment, please.

Tags: Creativity, Funny, Germany, Ideas, NYC, Underway, USA, World

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