Imagine running a business based on fun. That’s what I decided to try when I left a very serious corporate career in marketing to set up RedBalloon in 2001. I wanted to test if a business could be successful by simply listening to its people and its customers, and focusing on what would get people talking: the giving and receiving of experiential gifts that create memories. Well, the ‘test’ worked. RedBalloon.com.au has now been listed in the BRW fast lists for six years, an accolade I only dreamed about when walking the city streets, with red balloons tied to my briefcase to promote my fledgling business.
What were the challenges at the start?
Don’t be fooled into thinking RedBalloon was an overnight success. It was three months after the site launched in 2001 before our first sale!
One of the biggest difficulties in running an online company is trying to connect with a customer without a face-to-face relationship. We combat this by ensuring that every opportunity we have to engage with a customer, ends in a great memory.
How do you cultivate the company’s values among employees?
Our values are such an integral part of life at RedBalloon and have been for nine of our 10 years. The business development manager at the time and I attended a business growth seminar about vision, values and alignment. We talked about what it was to be a true RedBallooner.
- Do what you say you’re going to do. We did not want to be just another organisation that ‘tried’ to fulfil on what it promised. Simply we were going to put our word to it… and do it.
- Generosity of our time and knowledge. Obviously we are in the gifting business so it would make sense that ‘generosity’ is one of our values.
- Leadership. We had both seen bottlenecks in corporate life when projects stalled because no one would make a decision – or worse, management by committee. We wanted everyone to feel like an owner and that they could get things done.
- Sense of humour and fun. I had worked in some pretty serious places. I had also worked at Apple. There, we worked hard and played hard, and I always went home thinking my day had been worthwhile. I wanted to work at a place that I wanted to work in. It might sound selfish, but if I was going to choose to be away from my children then it had better be worthwhile. We laughed a lot in the early days and we still do. We never take ourselves too seriously.
- Being a little dog with a big dog personality. This was about being risk takers, flexible and courageous.
How do you use social media and why?
RedBalloon is all about helping people create great memories with wonderful experiences. We use Twitter and Facebook to listen to our customers – they can share their tales and photos, and the experience they have with us in the day-to-day world of RedBalloon.
We keep people updated with new experiences, share photos and run competitions, including a current corporate reward competition – Reward Your Team. We also use Facebook specifically as a customer experience tool to help resolve questions and any issues that may pop up.
