Marketing DK Sushi

Some Austinites know about DK Sushi; others don't. The Korean/Japanese restaurant opened more than 11 years ago, and it has almost a cult following of loyal customers. The restaurant is very successful despite the fact that not all of the Austin masses are even aware of its existence.

How has the restaurant achieved this success? Not through advertising. I've lived in Austin for 32 years, but I didn't even know about the restaurant until a year ago. The restaurant has no sign indicating its name and is located in a small shopping strip. The restaurant's marketing success has stemmed from the word of mouth generated from its good food and the personality of its owner.

The owner, D.K., dons a seventies outfit every Monday night and leads the restaurant in karaoke, interspersing the amateur musical performances with his own verbal raunch and sexual innuendo. On these special nights, he (or his alter ego, "Sushi Pimp") will spare no woman lewd or demeaning comments as they enter the restaurant. After D.K. gongs a karaoke performer, he downs a sake bomb with them.

His personality and performance on Monday nights distinguishes his restaurant from any other restaurant in town, and it's controversial enough to generate word of mouth. That word of mouth is all the marketing D.K. has needed to make his restaurant a success.

Comments

What Product Managers Can Learn from the Apple iPod

The Story When Apple unveiled its iPod digital music player back in October 2001, I dismissed it as a parity product . I already owned the Cowon iAUDIO CW100 MP3 player, loaded with my favorite tunes. There was Apple, generating great hype over the iPod as if it were a breakthrough product. The idea of a portable digital music player was nothing new. The first mass-produced MP3 players came out in 1998. In late 2001, the concept may have been new to a lot of Apple customers, but it wasn't new to me. I proudly showed my MP3 player to friends when they gushed about the iPod. Thus Apple's iPod was not an innovative product in and of itself. Years later, however, I realized the significance of ecosystem of which the iPod was a part. Apple had released iTunes (with technology purchased from SoundJam MP ) and created the iTunes Store for finding and downloading music. Unlike Napster , it was a safe and legal way of distributing and acquiring music. The prior way of playing

Why Spreadsheets Suck for Prioritizing

The Goal As a company executive, you want confidence that your product team (which includes all the people, from all departments, responsible for product success) has a sound basis for deciding which items are on the product roadmap. You also want confidence the team is prioritizing the items in a smart way. What Should We Prioritize? The items the team prioritizes could be features, user stories, epics, market problems, themes, or experiments. Melissa Perri makes an excellent case for a " problem roadmap ", and, in general, I recommend focusing on the latter types of items. However, the topic of what types of items you should prioritize - and in what situations - is interesting and important but beyond the scope of this blog entry. A Sad but Familiar Story If there is significant controversy about priorities, then almost inevitably, a product manager or other member of the team decides to put together The Spreadsheet. I've done it. Some of the mos

Interaction Design: the Neglected Skill

Your product development organization has a big, gaping hole in it. (Be prepared to feel defensive as you continue reading.) One of the most important roles in product development is the role of interaction designer. An interaction designer designs how the users will interact with the product and conceptualize the tasks they perform. He decides whether, for example, the user interface will be command driven, object oriented (clicking on objects then specifying what to do with them), or wizard based. The interaction designer decides the individual steps in the use cases. Every company has one or more people that play the interaction designer role. Usually, those people have little or no expertise in interaction design. Sadly, they typically don't even realize how unqualified they are. Let's see who typically plays the role at companies. Engineer . An engineer is an expert on building what is designed. Yes, an engineer may know how to design the internal structure of the hardware

Cauvin

Search This Blog