How long is two weeks? Well if you ask Belinda and Makhosana affectionately known as The Chicken Inn couple the answer you’d expect is a very long time. Indeed it has been a rollercoaster for them as so many businesses and people have come through and offered them services and gifts. The icing on the cake should be Chicken Inn announcing a paid ambassadorship program for them.
It took Chicken Inn a while to figure out how to capitalize on their viral proposal picture. I’d certainly say it was worth the wait. I hope it’s not understatement to say that the couple got more than they bargained for. Details of the ambassadorship program have not been made available as yet.
Capitalizing on opportunity
They say luck is when opportunity meets preparedness and this one good example of such. The couple has risen the wings of opportunity and opened up doors. In the previous article covering this couple I spoke about how the corporate response shows that we have businesses that are still invested in being part of the community and its conversations.
Zimbabweans have long used the internet and social media for many purposes, many controversial purposes. In the noise it is easy to forget that social media’s application for business great. Chicken inn garnered attention through this couples picture and subsequent meteoric rise to popularity that many of their competitors would rightly be envious of.
This couples experience over the last 14 or so days is the very proof that there is a hunger for corporate use of social media. While the opportunity is plenty it is not always in the most obvious things. Dynamic ideas, intentional or not will be rewarded. Makhosana says he chose to propose at Chicken Inn because that’s where they met. It sounds crazy to write it now but at the time the picture went viral this was the cause of ridicule that lead to the attention they received. We live in what is being called the attention economy and they have certainly monetized the attention they received.
I hope we all find encouragement to pursue our goals. No matter how small we are or how far the goal seems, there’s space for your idea if it’s good enough. An honest gesture has become a business opportunity. Hopefully the first of many. Ideas that capture the imagination can go very far. But please don’t go proposing in front of LaFarge cement or Econet. Then again, maybe you should.