Singing Pigs and Mimes

I believe in making the shopping process more experiential, more educational, and more entertaining. There are a lot of companies that do a great job making the shopping process fun and entertaining. Costco this past Sunday was not one of them. There’s an old saying that goes: “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It’s a waste of your time and only irritates the pig.”

What about the people who must endure the singing pigs? I ask this question because I was shopping at a Costco last Sunday one of the vendors was having live demonstrations of his product…Your Home Karaoke System.

I am a big fan of product demonstrations, but this one was missing an essential component – someone who could sing. Some of the worst experiences in life involve bad singers; Happy Birthday songs at the local restaurant, outtakes from American Idol, and Karaoke. At least with the Happy Birthday songs, they are over in less than a minute. With American Idol you can hit the “Mute” button. For some reason Karaoke singers believe volume overcomes lack of talent and that is where the problem begins.

You have to look at the roots of Karaoke to really understand the phenomenon. It began in Japan during the late 1980’s as a way for emotionally repressed “company men” who were culturally obligated to spend their evenings after hours bonding with their bosses while drinking copious amounts of alcohol, to vent their feelings of frustration.

Having attended a few of those sessions, it always appeared to me the singers were bad on purpose as a way of torturing their superiors in a socially acceptable way for forcing them to go drinking instead of going home after work. I have never heard of a music star in Japan who got their start at the local Karaoke bar.

There are companies out there who do a great job at making the shopping process more experiential, more educational, and more entertaining. The first one that comes to mind for me was Harry’s Farmers Market in Atlanta Georgia. When I first moved to Atlanta, Just about everyone I met, upon learning I was new to the area asked me if I’d been to Harry’s Farmers Market yet, and went on to tell me wonderful stories about their shopping experiences. I went and learned how much fun grocery shopping can be. The experience defies documentation in a format such as this.

Then there was a music store that sold records, instruments and sheet music in Honolulu called Da Music Place (long since closed and evicted to make way for yet another high rise condo) that featured local musicians playing on a small stage in the store three days a week from 6pm to closing. On weekends the instructors would offer free lessons on guitar and ukulele. It was a fun way to spend a few hours learning about music while shopping for music.

One of my favorites was a bar and grill on the beach on north coast of Brazil. When you ordered food at the bar, the waiter would bring it out on a plate raw and lead you outside to this huge donut shaped grill out on the beach that had a couple of chefs in the middle. A chef would quiz you about your knowledge of cooking, of spices and your tastes and make recommendations. Then they would coach you through the process of cooking your dinner.

It was there I learned a style of spicing and grilling fish that has caused me to receive high praise for my cooking skill from family and friends for twenty years.

Barnes and Nobles and Borders bookstores have learned that making the shopping process more experiential, more educational, and more entertaining is a good way to protect their business against Internet predators such as Amazon.com.

There is enough aggravation in our daily existence that we don’t need more of it while shopping. They only thing I can say good about shopping at Costco last Sunday was they didn’t have mimes manning the tasting booths.