Last month, whilst gorging on Dishoom’s bacon and sausage naans (aka the best breakfast in London – a hill I will gladly die on), my partner & I were introduced to their Matka keyring. Named after the Hindi word for pot or cup, and the slang for Bombay’s underground lotteries in the ‘60s, the keyring gives customers a chance to eat for free with a roll of the dice.

All you have to do is show it to a member of staff when you ask for the bill. They’ll then bring you a dice for you to roll. If you land on a six, everyone on your table gets their meal and drinks for free. If I needed an excuse to love Dishoom even more, this was it. On top of an already great ‘product’, they’ve added a 10/10 surprise and delight element to their service. 

Back at my former company in 2017, my marketing team would bribe and cajole the entire office into our self-made direct mail ‘production line’, whether it was the company branded doughnuts, seasonal hampers or some more left-field choices (the empty wine bottle with a USB cork springs to mind). 

It’s hard for your B2B brand to stand out, but factoring in a surprise and delight element to your marketing such as gifting definitely helps. It’s not about measuring this purely on ROI (although it does help start new conversations and accelerate deals) but it builds stronger brand affinity, the impossible to quantify gut-feel human instinct of being less of a faceless corporation but revealing the humans behind these companies