Do you love Mary Poppins?

On this day 3 years ago, I wrote the following morning email - as part of my daily email series - to all staff in our Company...

From: Matthew Rolph

To: All Graf UK staff

Date: 28/01/2015

Subject: Today: What's our message?

Morning,

Regular communication with our customers is vital. We know who our market is and we know what they like, what they care about and what they want from us. 

Now what we need to do is craft more relevant, interesting messages to send to them to keep in contact more regularly.

And for this I need your help!

I'm writing lots of emails and putting together content for our case studies, Success Stories, newsletters, emails and blog posts, and I need ideas and interesting stuff that you can come up with to share with our contacts.

I'm not expecting a polished article or perfect PR, I'm just asking for a suggestion, something you think would be of interest to our customers, maybe something that we have not told them about in a while (if ever). Ideas, ideas, ideas.

As you go through your day today, please think of some things that we could be sharing with our customers.

Please email me any suggestions and ideas you have by the end of today. There are no bad ideas by the way. Any suggestions will be gratefully received!

Thanks,

Matt

It's no surprise that this email is just as relevant today as it was on the 28th January 2015. Nothing changes, only time. As I was reminded when I went to watch the new Mary Poppins film a few weeks ago, things don't really change - people still love now what people loved over 50 years ago - a fact proven by watching both the original Mary Poppins film with Julie Andrews back in 1964 and the new one with Emily Blunt in 2018. Yes, the graphics might be different between the two versions, but the film is the same! We still love the same story because we fundamentally haven't changed from how we were 55 years ago. 

So, how does this help us in business? I think it teaches us to stop trying to reinvent the wheel. We don't need new ideas. We don't need ground-breaking innovation. Of course, that all helps, but it's not a requirement for success. You just must do what people like. As I said in my email 3 years ago today; you need to share stories and things with your customers that will interest them. Sharing experiences with people, just like we all do in our closest relationships. Nothing more complicated than that! 

Today, I'm choosing to share with our customers my love of both the original and the new, Mary Poppins films! You'll either like them or not, both of which is fine. If you loved the original, you're bound to have enjoyed the most recent one too. If you didn't like the original, chances are you haven't even bothered to watch the new one. Either way, I loved it as a child and I still do today. Many people think it's difficult to come up with content to engage with their customers. Even reading my email back from three years ago, I used to search for things to say, send and share. I realise now that it needn't be that difficult, you just must be yourself. In the words of Mary Poppins; "Why complicate things that are really quite simple?"