Eating your own dog food* is the phrase often used in the computer industry when describing a company who actually uses their own products. For example, when Apple used their own Xserve server technology to build the iTunes Music Store, they were said to have “eaten their own dog food”. In a more general sense, I think you can boil it down to “practicing what you preach”.
Which brings me to the point of this post. Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, creators of the awesome book Creating Customer Evangelists and the Church of the Customer blog, eat their own dog food. They give out tons of excellent information on their blog and in their podcasts, and are building a group of loyal customer evangelists to help spread the word on Word-of-Mouth marketing. In fact, I have been a loyal member of the Church of the Customer for almost a full year now!
My latest example of how great Ben and Jackie are occurred just last week. I was listening to their latest podcast last weekend when, at the end, they offered free signed books to the first six people to write in. I listened to the podcast the day after it was posted, so although I didn’t think I had much chance of winning, I gave it a shot. Sure enough, I received an email from Jackie last Monday letting me know my book was in the mail. It came quickly – on Thursday I received my signed copy of The Influentials: One American in Ten Tells the Other Nine How to Vote, Where to Eat, and What to Buy, by Jon Berry and Ed Keller, along with a personal thank you from Jackie and business cards from both her and Ben (they have the best business cards I’ve ever seen – simply awesome). They only thing that would have been better was if it was a signed copy of their book!
Thanks Ben and Jackie, you’ve got yourself an evangelist!
Free Stuff from Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba: