This is long delayed but will post anyway because 1) the warm feeling still is with me more than two months later and 2) I haven’t had made the time time to post until now.
On Oct. 16, I attended a special event for Wall Street Journal subscribers at The Petersen automotive museum in Los Angeles titled “Visions of Glamour, Automotive Design and Style.” This three-hour “WSJ Plus” event was part of the Journal’s new “membership” rewards program and featured:
To top it off, the event occurred just a few days before the Petersen closed for an extensive 13-month renovation. All in all, a special package for subscribers. This was my first WSJ Plus event and I was thoroughly impressed at the quality of the event and the degree to which WSJ was taking its version of a member-rewards program.
Neil is just as personable in person as he is a print, and with Callum and Reed took the 50 or so attendees into a deep examination of how psychology and sociology impact car design, and vice versa.
The entire evening was a delightful reminder of the power of community. That WSJ took the effort to leverage a marquee columnist and connect like-minded individuals passionate about a niche topic bodes well for their efforts to increase customer loyalty (and particularly since this particular topic appeals especially to WSJ incomes).
I have no idea what it cost WSJ to host the event for what was a relatively small group but I can guarantee most, if not all, of the attendees went away satisfied, told their friends about their experience and are otherwise more loyal to the Journal.
As a side note, Google Plus surprised me the next day by sending me a link to this photo slideshow it created based on my Google Map I created to get me to the event and select photos I took at the museum. I don’t know how Google Plus chose those specific photos from the dozens I took, but it’s an interesting overview that I found to be a nice digital keepsake.