A Great Idea for both Team Building and Client Marketing

Your brand is who you are. You'll see ours on everything we put out in front of the public. I'll be doing quite a few more posts on branding, but this post is related to something our team is working on right now.

Whenever we see an opportunity to support our local community, get our brand in front of people, and provide something we think people will hang onto, we'll do it. I've never been crazy about cheap giveaways like frisbees and plastic trinkets for kids. They might be fun, but they disappear the next day and are never seen again. How is that going to help us?

Instead, we spend more money for more expensive, but classier gifts. Here's a good example. We decided to come up with our own company candle scent and contacted a local candle making store.

We had a nice lunch delivered to a candle making store in our area then separated into four two person teams. Each team came up with their own unique scent by combining the many different fragrances. Then made their own candle.

We picked up all the candles the next day after the wax had hardened. Next Tuesday, in our weekly meeting, we'll keep the candles in the bags to hide which agents formulated the scents, then pass them all around.

We'll vote on the scent we like best and come up with a creative name for it. That will be our official Grisak Group candle "scent".

The total cost of the event was $400. That included the $250 minimum store charge, two hours of fun, one candle for every agent, plus the lunch we provided to the agents beforehand.

Here's what we accomplished ...

• Our agents got to know each other a little better and it was fun,

• we created our own, official company candle "scent" and we'll have some fun with that,

• we'll be able to use these candles for client gifts,

• we can use them in our open houses (and might even lay something next to the candle explaining it's our own company scent)

• we're supporting our local community because this shop is located in our area of expertise,

• and it gives me another opportunity for another post later

I'm always looking for things to blog about, and what better opportunity is there than something like this? This is thinking out of the box and allows in a small and unique way to separate ourselves from the pack. Here's the video ...