Connected to Panasonic

It has now been almost a month since the Crazy Calandros went to CES and were wowed by Panasonic, their incredible products, and personable family of employees. The experience will go down in our Calandro Family History as the stories are told and retold. However, this little anecdote takes the entire journey to a new level of service and dedication. This is a story of when a little bit goes a long way:

A few weeks ago we received a very discrete letter from Panasonic. The return address was pre-printed on the envelope with the words "Panasonic Ideas for Life". It looked like it could have contained anything, but what was inside was anything but ordinary. It was a thank you letter from Yoshi Yamada, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Panasonic of North America. He thanked us for appearing on the CES 2009 Main Stage as a Spotlight on Ideas speaker. He told us we contributed "a new level of extremely relevant information" with our appearances. At the end he simply said, "I know this kind of commitment of your valuable time was a challenge, and I truly appreciate your making it happen."

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? Panasonic flew us there, gave us money for food, put us up in a hotel room for five nights, and celebrated my son's birthday as if he were a member of their own family and HE is thanking US! Sure, organizing the five of us to appear onstage every day and getting to and from Vegas was no small task, but we never dreamed of getting this kind of acknowledgement for our efforts.

Plain and simple: Panasonic gets it.

Mr. Yamada, in front of everyone who is reading and listening: we thank you. From the bottom of our Crazy Calandro hearts, thank you. Being with your company and your employees at CES gave us the opportunity to connect with a brand in a way we never thought possible. Everyone we met and talked with cared about us and what we had to say. Panasonic was interested in our opinions; we mattered. As humans, we instinctively want to feel like we are important, like we belong. Everyone at Panasonic listened to us when we talked about their products or even when we were just talking about our lives back in San Luis Obispo. For that, we thank you. We thank you for working tirelessly to link your philosophy to your consumer and the Panasonic products. Your company's vision was presented to us every day: you care about the people using your products and you want Panasonic to improve people's lives. Your personally signed letter following our trip demonstrated the importance of us to you.

That's the part you got completely correct, Mr. Yamada: you and Panasonic have improved our lives more than you can ever know. Tonight John is relaxing in front of our awesome TV and I am blogging via our laptop while sitting at my kitchen table. Tomorrow I will be taking our youngest son, Miles, to his first day of preschool. At night we will all gather in front of the TV, insert a little SD card in the slot on our television and our whole family will share in this momentous event in HD. Four months ago these occurrences would have been drastically different in our home and far less enjoyable. Thank you Mr. Yamada and Panasonic. Your "Ideas for Life" have made ours absolutely wonderful.

Four big boxes

Our contact from Panasonic called us about a week and a half after we had found out that we had won. He explained the program to us:

We are family 39 and they are adding more families throughout the year. We would be asked to participate in weekly surveys and would be encouraged to use and share our equipment. Panasonic really is interested in knowing what we think about all of the equipment we would be receiving and would use the information we provided to improve and enhance future products. The entire family is encouraged to use all of it and we are expected to report the good and the bad.

A few weeks later, we finally had a date set to receive all of our equipment. Before the equipment was shipped, we participated in a family pre-interview that asked about our family, our viewing habits, our use of technology, and how we thought things would be different when we got the equipment.

To be honest, at that point, it was really hard to imagine...What would it be like to have all of this new equipment in the house. When my wife and I sat down to think about it, we realized it was very rare for us to buy the best of anything (mostly because we can't afford it). Here we were, about to receive not only all of the technology that I had ever wanted, but it was the best equipment there was- and we were getting all of it...at once...and it was all going to be installed!

A few weeks later, Here is what we saw:

Four big boxes- The TV (WOW!!), a big mystery box simply labeled "39 Calandro ", some speaker stands, and another long box...The box was delivered while I was at work. I had to sit through a rather long meeting knowing that it was all there...waiting... My wife was kind enough to wait for me!

Needless to say, the boys were excited.

And were dying to see what was inside the big box, which contained a ton of stuff!

Like the video camera (note the stunned look on my face- not my best look!), the receiver, the speakers, two digital cameras, power strips, cables,

the Wii (the boys' favorite thing!),

and a big bag of other stuff- cables, SD cards, blu-rays, Wii games!!! Wahoo!

The youngest, of course, just wanted to play with the box from the computer.

The excitement was beginning to peak...We opened everything up and charged all of the batteries so we would be ready for the installation....