Driving to work Monday morning, I passed a small convoy of  brightly adorned vehicles from Hudsonville Ice Cream. It made me smile, as I imagined them on their way to some special ice cream “event”  of the kind I’ve mentioned here before. It was a little ice cream party waiting to happen. This time, as I later learned, they were headed for a celebration for 3,000 Whirlpool employees, honoring their participation in a Habitat for Humanity project – so it was a well-deserved reward.

Hudsonville has mastered the art of keeping customers (and bystanders) smiling. Looking into what they had done lately, I noticed that they had given new Michigan governor Rick Snyder a tour, and named a couple new Michigan-themed flavors in honor of the occasion, including Michigan Mitten Sundae.

The governor and "Chief Flavor Developer" Ken Filippini

I continue to enjoy the spirit Hudsonville Ice Cream manages to display consistently throughout its marketing and promotional activities. Sure, it’s a business, and it’s a logical way for them to behave, given their product category. But lots of companies could take a lesson from them in identifying the appropriate personality, and striving to live up to it.

Passing those brightly-decorated vehicles this morning perked up my mood, even without benefit of the product  (which would have come in handy even at 7 a.m on such a hot day). As I passed, I did look into one of the vehicles, and the driver was a nice young woman who was, of course, smiling. Now, maybe it was from something she had just heard on the radio, or some random thought.

But somehow, since it was a vehicle from Hudsonville, it seemed right. It’s what I would have expected. And that fact is not a bad indicator of a company building a brand and living it.

Keep up the good (and cool) work!