Hello. My name is Squidy.

My name is Squidy.
Originally uploaded by christophercarfi.

The seduction starts simply enough, as soon as you sit down at the table. It starts with a spiral-bound menu, a roughly-drawn caricature, and a simple statement: “My name is Squidy.”

You look around, and realize there are more pictures on the walls, framed as if they are fine art.

You open the cover, and find the first page of the menu. It says:

Tawan’s menu
Originally uploaded by christophercarfi.

My name is Tawan. That means “The Sun” in Thai, and this is my restaurant. My parents opened the restaurant in 1997, and named it after me. You may see me hanging around at the back table sometimes, studying, playing, drawing, or maybe eating. If you see me at the table, be sure to say hi.

I love drawing and creating my characters for people to see. You will find many of my drawings on the menu and some are available on t-shirts that you can buy. I hope you enjoy my mom’s food, it’s the best, just be sure not to order hot unless you can handle it.

The Tawan’s menu is a fantastic example of “social currency.” Or “ooze,”as Hugh McLeod and Johnnie Moore refer to the concept. (“Ooze” standing for “objects of sociability.”)

Deborah Schultz at Tawan’s
Originally uploaded by christophercarfi.

Deb thinks the menu is pretty cool, too.

So, why am I writing about Thai food? There are really two things at work here:

• Thing 1: The product itself.
• Thing 2: The vector that helps the message about the product propagate.

Now, sometimes the product is so different, or amazing, or visible/portable that the product itself is the vector for the message. The iPod is a great example of this. Since the iPods themselves are everywhere, they provide the vector.

In other cases, there is a second thing that provides the vector for the product. In Tawan’s case, the caricature menu is the vector. It is the thing that carries the Tawan’s message from place to place. Through the menu (the vector), folks learn about the food (the product).

So. You have a great product. What’s the vector that will carry its message?

Added later: There is another important concept at work here as well. The vector in this case is more than a catch phrase, or a tchotchki, or an abstract ideal. It actually is a human introduction that starts to broker a relationship between the customer and Tawan himself. It is almost a calling card, in the Victorian sense of the phrase.