What's your money worth?
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I get a lot of flack for browbeating chefs into participating in their own success.
I think they should tweet, blog, Facebook and Flickr themselves -- just a little bit, every day. I think when the media calls, they should do their own interviews. And that they need to get out of the kitchen and into the community if they want to start getting recognized for their talents and charisma.
There's two reasons for this. The first is probably best summed up this way: If you had the opportunity, would you rather go on a date with Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie (whichever applies) or would you want to go with their publicist? (Or maybe that's not the best example, since they fired their publicist to go it alone.)
I thought so. And in all seriousness, the media and diners actually really want to connect with chefs -- chefs as people, interesting people, with talent and insight and charm.
But all that charm aside, the real reason I urge chefs to do it is money. It takes a lot of money for someone else to do all that for you. It takes time to interview you to see what's tweetable and bloggable. It takes time to write it up, to run it by you, to get it posted, and to write a report so you know it happened. That time is money, a lot of money -- and it's time not chasing down media, to boot!
Which leads me to wonder if chefs really understand that the reason their PR often doesn't work isn't because the publicist isn't working hard enough, it's because there isn't enough money in the budget for the publicist to meet the chef's goals.
Recently, I received a request to do national PR outreach for a client. On the surface, the project looked easy. Send some emails with pitches to some media I already know well, hand over a customer mailing list, make some connections with some dignitaries I know around town. In all, on the surface, that should be half a week's worth of work.
In reality, because the concept was just not happening, the amount of work it would take to achieve the goals of the client was probably going to realistically hover somewhere around half a year. And that's why the bill goes up.
Anything is possible, that's not the point. What is the point is that everything costs money and time, and when the pieces of the puzzle are not in place, it takes a whole heck of a lot longer than necessary to finish the job.
At RIA, we are constantly struggling over deciding what is going to be essential in the buildout of our web tools. I tend to have grandiose ideas about what is possible. I am a dreamer, albeit a somewhat grumpy, plain-speaking one.
What I want to happen is often "iceboxed" for what needs to happen. The icebox, where all the great ideas I want sit in what seems permanent storage, gets anything that isn't absolutely essential because absolutely essential is all I can afford right now.
Unfortunately, in the world of restaurant PR, iceboxes don't seem to exist -- and yet there aren't magical unlimited supplies of money, either. The result, of course, is unhappy clients whose dreams don't come true.
Which gets me back to chefs participating in their own success. Chefs don't have to do all that tweeting and Facebooking and everything else, of course. It isn't my point that all that is more important than cooking -- it isn't. Never was.
What is my point, though, is that choices do need to be made and along those lines, here are some things to think about:
1) In my experience, restaurants with super clear concepts -- interesting concepts that are unique -- get a fair amount of press and stay fairly busy. If you're not clear -- or busy, you should really start there and focus your time and attention on solving that problem. Your money is worth more than to spend time trying to get press when you aren't interesting and clear.
No, I didn't say your food wasn't life-changingly delish. Unfortunately, life-changingly delish food, served gracefully, doesn't necessarily mean lots of press or diners. Interesting clear concepts do.
2) When you do go with a marketing strategy, investigate a bunch of different options, not just PR. You could get the job done with social media. You could be best served by some great content developed for newsletters or other custom publishing options. Press isn't your only option, it's one. And your money is worth your taking the time to do some due diligence so you can spend it wisely.
3) Whatever you do, whomever you hire, for whatever job you hire them to do, stop asking them to do shit that isn't their core job. Because guess what, all those "therapy sessions" and "favors" and "secretarial tasks" they end up doing for you, those take away from the job you hired them to do. They don't get tacked on top just because your food is life-changingly delish. Your money is worth you getting what you are actually trying to spend it on, not some overpriced personal assistant adminy whatever.
I think they should tweet, blog, Facebook and Flickr themselves -- just a little bit, every day. I think when the media calls, they should do their own interviews. And that they need to get out of the kitchen and into the community if they want to start getting recognized for their talents and charisma.
There's two reasons for this. The first is probably best summed up this way: If you had the opportunity, would you rather go on a date with Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie (whichever applies) or would you want to go with their publicist? (Or maybe that's not the best example, since they fired their publicist to go it alone.)
I thought so. And in all seriousness, the media and diners actually really want to connect with chefs -- chefs as people, interesting people, with talent and insight and charm.
But all that charm aside, the real reason I urge chefs to do it is money. It takes a lot of money for someone else to do all that for you. It takes time to interview you to see what's tweetable and bloggable. It takes time to write it up, to run it by you, to get it posted, and to write a report so you know it happened. That time is money, a lot of money -- and it's time not chasing down media, to boot!
Which leads me to wonder if chefs really understand that the reason their PR often doesn't work isn't because the publicist isn't working hard enough, it's because there isn't enough money in the budget for the publicist to meet the chef's goals.
Recently, I received a request to do national PR outreach for a client. On the surface, the project looked easy. Send some emails with pitches to some media I already know well, hand over a customer mailing list, make some connections with some dignitaries I know around town. In all, on the surface, that should be half a week's worth of work.
In reality, because the concept was just not happening, the amount of work it would take to achieve the goals of the client was probably going to realistically hover somewhere around half a year. And that's why the bill goes up.
Anything is possible, that's not the point. What is the point is that everything costs money and time, and when the pieces of the puzzle are not in place, it takes a whole heck of a lot longer than necessary to finish the job.
At RIA, we are constantly struggling over deciding what is going to be essential in the buildout of our web tools. I tend to have grandiose ideas about what is possible. I am a dreamer, albeit a somewhat grumpy, plain-speaking one.
What I want to happen is often "iceboxed" for what needs to happen. The icebox, where all the great ideas I want sit in what seems permanent storage, gets anything that isn't absolutely essential because absolutely essential is all I can afford right now.
Unfortunately, in the world of restaurant PR, iceboxes don't seem to exist -- and yet there aren't magical unlimited supplies of money, either. The result, of course, is unhappy clients whose dreams don't come true.
Which gets me back to chefs participating in their own success. Chefs don't have to do all that tweeting and Facebooking and everything else, of course. It isn't my point that all that is more important than cooking -- it isn't. Never was.
What is my point, though, is that choices do need to be made and along those lines, here are some things to think about:
1) In my experience, restaurants with super clear concepts -- interesting concepts that are unique -- get a fair amount of press and stay fairly busy. If you're not clear -- or busy, you should really start there and focus your time and attention on solving that problem. Your money is worth more than to spend time trying to get press when you aren't interesting and clear.
No, I didn't say your food wasn't life-changingly delish. Unfortunately, life-changingly delish food, served gracefully, doesn't necessarily mean lots of press or diners. Interesting clear concepts do.
2) When you do go with a marketing strategy, investigate a bunch of different options, not just PR. You could get the job done with social media. You could be best served by some great content developed for newsletters or other custom publishing options. Press isn't your only option, it's one. And your money is worth your taking the time to do some due diligence so you can spend it wisely.
3) Whatever you do, whomever you hire, for whatever job you hire them to do, stop asking them to do shit that isn't their core job. Because guess what, all those "therapy sessions" and "favors" and "secretarial tasks" they end up doing for you, those take away from the job you hired them to do. They don't get tacked on top just because your food is life-changingly delish. Your money is worth you getting what you are actually trying to spend it on, not some overpriced personal assistant adminy whatever.
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