Tis the season to be scouring the shops in desperation for that Christmas Present that shows you truly care, one that shows how well you know and love that special person and most importantly the one that only you can think of or find – the one that doesn’t exist.
In all honesty, getting something they actually asked for would be far more straightforward, acceptable, and all round easier but if your wife is anything like mine, you are never going to be told what that is. But on just one occasion, I absolutely nailed it….
The occasion was one of my wife’s more significant birthdays; she was my girlfriend at the time and some form of divine intervention/apparition had provided me with the knock-out idea – tickets for Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. Heaven knows how I worked this one out, but as the perfect present – it was gathering weight like an avalanche. The only problem was I couldn’t get any tickets.
The usual calls to the usual places turned up nothing, practically sold out everywhere. I started to venture further afield from the box office, ticket shops, eBay and approached a few, shall we say, ‘unusual resellers’. One in particular called me back to explain that he would buy them from an existing ticket holder for a price, only I had to name that price. It became apparent that a £50 ticket was only going to be obtained for closer to £2,000. A couple of weeks after agreeing such an extraordinary sum, he called me back to say that at that price nobody was going to sell.
It was at this point I began to realise the enormity of the problem: Tickets for the Royal Opera House on that night (her birthday) were particularly in demand because the ROH had been closed for refurbishment for over two years, it was the opening night. To add, the opening performance was Swan Lake, apparently one of the favoured performances of the Royal Ballet, and as if to stick the knife in and give it a good twist, staring Darcey Bussell (principal ballerina of the Royal Ballet).
Now, as with Christmas shopping, the amount of time, effort and desperate offers of cash was leading to despair. I had excluded all other ideas of a suitable present, because this was becoming the one and only perfect birthday gift – Opening Night, Swan Lake, Darcey Bussell – it was the mother of all birthday presents!! If I could have thought of something else, it was never going to compare and I didn’t believe I was ever going to keep this one a secret.
As luck would have it, I was explaining all of this to a colleague who just happened to have an American Express Black Card. I think you know where this is going!!!
After he explained what the Amex Black card was, I went away considering how broke I was going to be if he managed to secure them. Five days later he said he had left them on my desk. What!! Just like that, and besides who leaves such valuable tickets just lying around on my desk? I think I broke the land-speed record getting back to my desk to find them perched upright in my keyboard – still there. In my view he might as well have left a bunch of fifty pound notes on the keyboard and a couple of spotlights to draw your attention in case you missed them, but no, they were still there. Did nobody know just how valuable these things were? I am of course well aware of how trustworthy and honest my former colleagues were, but all the same I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they had somehow ‘disappeared’!!
Turns out, all he wanted was the face value of the tickets, £50 each – bargain, absolute steal if you ask me. But then to me, these things were like diamond encrusted, gold plated kryptonite, to everyone else just a couple of tickets to the Ballet.
And the reason for this story: Well when it comes to friends and colleagues, some very simple gestures of goodwill on their part can provide such unbelievably important, life changing effects that I will never be able to repay the debt (although in his opinion I paid him the money so there is no debt). His name will probably be mentioned in thanks on my gravestone. However this story has more to do with that American Express Card.
At the time, there was a lot of Amex advertising going on, so much so that when I tell the story most of my friends will re-enact that Pamela Stephenson sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News. There were things Amex said they could do, and believe me they could. Those two tickets weren’t just tickets to the show. They were centre, front row of the Royal Circle, literally 10 metres from the front of the stage (probably not but it felt it).
This isn’t the first time I’ve ever told this story, and it definitely won’t be the last. Every time I tell it, I seem to embellish just how amazing that American Express company can be, and just what remarkable things that Black Card can do. Which is ironic since I don’t have an Amex Card of my own, I used to have one when I worked at EMC, but to be honest it wasn’t the most useful piece of plastic in my pocket. Despite that, I still consider them to be remarkable. I’m not just a fan, I’ve become a disciple.
In many ways, my team within ONI is trying to create customer disciples of our Data Centre Solutions by building out a uniquely different ‘State of the Art’ Data Centre with Enterprise Class Cloud Services that leverages all of our unique skills and strengths within the Cisco portfolio. Unfortunately, like my story, it not something we can easily do ourselves, it requires us to develop an image uniquely associated with that brand, a universally accepted notion that this is what our Brand does, an image that can even survive association with Pamela Stephenson’s breasts, (you will have to look it up), maybe. And then, perhaps most importantly, it requires a simple unassuming gesture of goodwill from a third party to offer that Brand to someone who truly, absolutely wants it. Because for one particular customer, that product represents the Golden Hind or the Lost Ark, to everyone else it’s just a product. That third party becomes a hero, but in the process when the ONI DC team delivers, then that customer becomes a disciple.
Now, do any of my friends know where I can find a pair of size 5, Belcloud UGG boots?
