I’m Alan Jacobs and I’m Chief Marketing Architect with IC3, iCommunicate.

I’m working a project right now with a caterer that wants to be more than just a caterer. And he came to me, it was interesting, he came to me because he had talked to a couple ad agencies and the ad agencies all talked about pretty brochures and creatives and all. And when he talked to me, I talked about strategy.

And we started sitting down, and what I learned from him in the needs assessment part of it, is that what he wanted to do is he wanted to evolve and he wanted to become more than just another caterer in town. So what he wanted to do is, he wanted to create an experience.

And we started brainstorming and I’m involved, what’s really neat, is I’m involved at the very beginning, and he’s moving from where he’s at now into a new space. I’m a part of the planning of the new space, we’re putting in one area that’s going to be counter height and we’re going to have cooking classes in there. Another area, we’re going to do things like, instead of just picking up a meal to bring home, you can actually come in, learn how to prepare that meal, then take it home and cook it at home. So we have all these different experiences and all these different tastings and things that we’re putting on the drawing board.

And we’re going to use LinkedIn, of course, we’re going to have a Facebook page out there. We’ll Tweet about different things that are going on. And we’re using Groupon. And we’re using Groupon and a few others right now, and that’s going to get us the clientele, we’ll incentivize them to come in and build relationships that way.

But the secret is, once you’ve built that relationship, by bringing them in off of a coupon, you want to keep it going. And that’s, of course, where the other social medias come into play. So we’ll use direct mail, we’ll use Groupon, we’ll use the other social medias that are at our convenience.