1. Here’s a picture of me learning to use a tile saw from Will at my local Home Depot’s equipment rental department.
Since I bought my first house in 2009, the awesome Home Depot folks have taught me how to clean gutters, wire light fixtures, replace toilets… They have made me more self-reliant, more American.
Jay Solomon of Sugar Hill Real Estate tells Bisnow that traditional retailers don’t offer instagrammable in-store experiences. That “there’s nothing interesting about walking into Home Depot and taking pictures.” Not true!
Home Depot is an amazing hot bed for social-media-ready stories. Perhaps what Jay means is, traditional retailers have not put enough emphasis on telling these stories.
2. The Dallas Stars is all about storytelling. I went to an MIT event where Matt Bowman, their VP Marketing, gave a quick presentation.
The Dallas Morning News, he said, used to have a sports writer dedicated to covering the Stars. But with the paper’s dwindling readership, the Stars received less attention from news articles. The solution? They offered the hockey reporter a job with the Stars. They committed to building a better distribution channel for his writing than the news media.
I was also impressed to learn that the Stars maintains 8 hockey rinks in DFW for the purpose of seeding interest among local youth. That they have made substantial investments in business intelligence software.
But the experience of attending a game was less inspiring. I skipped out of last night’s match against Minnesota Wild after the first period. They lost 3-1.