By Amara Osei

A single post about a bouquet of sympathy flowers earned Chewy more than 681,000 likes — and a reply thread that thousands of customers filled with their own stories of the pet retailer's gestures. That thread, not the like count, is the asset most marketers misfile as luck.

In 2022, Anna Brose of Madison, Wisconsin contacted Chewy to ask whether she could return an unopened bag of dog food. Her dog, Gus, had died. Shortly after, flowers from a Chewy rep named Jordan arrived on her porch. Fortune later reported that other customers had received sympathy flowers, handwritten cards and hand-painted portraits of deceased pets. One commenter summed up the reaction in three words: "Customers for life."

Chewy says it has sent gestures like this since its earliest days. When a customer cancels because a pet died, the company typically refunds the order, suggests donating the food to a shelter and often follows with flowers or a card — the regular work of a dedicated "Wow team." It is not a guaranteed policy. It is a system, and if you run it deliberately, it compounds.

Why does a recommendation carry financial weight?

Every recommendation is a reputation loan. If the referred customer has a mediocre experience, the recommender gets silence or an awkward "Yeah, I guess it was fine" — and becomes less likely to stake their name on you again. If the experience is great, the appreciation flows back and the next recommendation lands with more confidence.

The math backs this up. In a study published in the Journal of Marketing in 2011, Philipp Schmitt, Bernd Skiera and Christophe Van den Bulte tracked roughly 10,000 customers of a German bank for almost three years. Referred customers were at least 16% more valuable than comparable customers acquired other ways, and at any given point about 18% less likely to leave. The margin advantage faded over time. The retention advantage did not.

The catch: the bank paid a €25 voucher per referral. The researchers attribute the staying power to two causes — referrers send people who fit, and having a friend at the same bank strengthens the bond — not to the money. Incentives can fill the top of the funnel; only stories worth retelling keep it filling itself. And when the listener knows the recommender gets a cut, the vouch itself is worth a little less.

What does the 5% rule buy?

Will Guidara took Eleven Madison Park from No. 50 to No. 1 on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. In "Unreasonable Hospitality," he lays out the rule that funded it: "Manage 95% of your business down to the penny; spend the last 5% 'foolishly.'"

The "foolish" 5% paid for his most famous gesture. When he overheard tourists lamenting that they had never had a New York street-cart hot dog, he bought one. Chef Daniel Humm cut it into four pieces, plated it with a swoosh of mustard, and served it as a course. The restaurant later created staff roles called dream weavers to manufacture such moments.

The author reports advising clients for 30 years to set aside 5% of media budgets for "win or learn" efforts. One client approaching its 75th anniversary launched a summer of 75 nontraditional acts — starting with employees writing and mailing handwritten thank-you notes — that earned appreciation rather than CPM data (CPM: cost per thousand ad impressions).

How do you show preference to a CFO?

Brand budgets get cut because preference rarely shows up on a weekly dashboard. Three measures make it visible, trended quarterly:

• Referral share: ask "Who sent you?" at purchase or signup, and store the answer as a CRM field, not free text.
• Referred-customer value: compare retention and margin against other channels, as the German bank study did.
• Story signal: track unprompted public mentions describing a specific moment, not just a star rating.

Rising referral share among full-price customers is what preference looks like on a spreadsheet. The caveat the data carries: none of these measures works if the experience gives people nothing worth saying.

Chewy didn't buy those likes — it sent flowers. Guidara didn't advertise a hot dog; he served one. What customers say next is the only return that matters.