Chef -- The Recipe for Success

As the father of a six month old, I don't get out to the movies much.  Have to catch up when they hit the movie channels or when I have the chance.  A couple of days ago, I caught the movie Chef on a flight out to the west coast.  There are a ton of life and business lessons in the movie.

To quote Shakespeare "To Thine Ownself Be True."

Jon Favreau plays a very talented, innovative, compulsively driven chef who is constantly trying to test himself.  He works at a restaurant where the owner, played by Dustin Hoffman, wants him to play it safe.  The prominent restaurant reviewer is coming in to review the place and owner and chef have different views on what should be served.

"Play your hits" says Hoffman.  He may as well as said "Rest on your laurels."  Always a mistake.  It ends up biting them in the caboose.  The staff and chef are uninspired and serve a meal that underwhelms the reviewer.  Essentially, the review asks "Where is the innovative chef I once knew?"

Social Media Lives Forever

Upset, the chef calls out the reviewer on social media. Favreau's character is a newbee to Twitter and is facing someone who is both agile in response and works for a huge media outlet.  Chef may be outgunned, but he is picking up thousands of followers.  He dares the reviewer to return. When the reviewer comes back, the owner again insists on the same uninspired menu, leading the chef to walk out.  Still steaming, in the critical scene, Favreau returning to the restaurant for a core nuclear meltdown at the table of the reviewer.  All of it caught on camera by smartphones.  Spreads like wildfire over Vine, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TMZ and million other sites.  A mistake you can never recover from?  Wrong.

Own Your Assets

Fine, the protagonist is out of a job at this point and he has a ton of negative baggage.  But, he has picked up a huge amount of followers.  While a publicist suggests going on a reality TV show, Favreau instead builds a food truck and takes off across the country.  His young son is a social media genius and Tweets, Instagrams and Vines about where they are going and what they are doing.  As they go across the country, father and son grow closer and teach each other about their worlds, cooking and social media. As a business, the chef is taking advantage of his huge following.

Ice the Cake

The triumphant return to Los Angeles finds the El Jefe food truck and Chef with gobs of followers and fans.  Who shows up to eat and loves the food, the aforementioned reviewer.  He loves it so much, that he offers to back the chef in opening a restaurant based on the truck cuisine.  Chef will be given full creative freedom.  Now, at this point pride might get the worst of most folks.  But, the chef accepts the offer, realizing there is an opportunity here and that there is huge weight in the unlikely story that two social media warriors unite to build an enterprise.

Pave Your Own Road

Any road to success is not smooth or straight. Granted, no business wants to take unnecessary risks.  Few could survive the embarrassing meltdown.  But, unless you are willing to take some risks, unless you are willing to turn every crisis into an opportunity, you cannot succeed.

All Talk No Action – The Sad State of Mobile Marketing

Over a year ago, prior to the 2011 holiday shopping season, a major advertising agency issued a white paper saying the mobile device was the new point of purchase at retail.  Outstanding insight.  Still, brands and agencies were caught flat-footed during the 2011 holiday shopping season.  A year later, there has been little or no progress.  The disease of ATNA (All Talk No Action) is in full force.

What leads me to this observation?  The hernia educing size of the Thanksgiving newspaper (it is an anachronism, I receive a daily newspaper) most of it was filled with advertising inserts.  They were neatly packaged in two plastic wrappers.

None of the ads had a special url, sms, qr calls to action.  Forget the fact that you might be able to gain the name and phone number of someone who might buy your product, you marketers just lost an opportunity to track the effectiveness of your spending.  On top of that, with bonded mobile couponing solutions available, such as Koupon Media, there was no way for the consumer to download the coupon on their mobile devices.

According to many sources, over a quarter of the billion dollars spent during the “Gray Thursday, Black Friday” shopping period was spent online.  Several large chains reported that consumers were comparing prices on mobile devices the wares on the shelves.  This happened last year.  Yet, I did not see anyone with a display saying got to “ourstore.com” or “Text ourstore to 1245” or “scan this code” to get a unique in store special.

By the way, you have to do all three.  The consumer makes the choice on where and how they use their mobile devices and you as a marketer need to have this redundancy.  It is something many in the mobile field have preached for years.  Start doing it.

As for all of the money and time you spent going over and vetting the editorial and artwork of these inserts, publishing them and paying for them to be included in the newspaper, wouldn’t it be wise to invest some of that money into a mechanism that gives you data and a direct relationship with the consumer – mobile?

Brands and agencies have to stop talking about how mobile is the future.  They have to stop talking about embracing mobile.  They have to start investing in the infrastructure and bake it into their overall strategies. 

This morning a study came out that was done by Forrester and paid for by Velti (full disclosure, a former employer) that showed that most marketers are being tactical in their use of mobile and that they are looking for customer acquisition.  The conclusion of the article states “The report takes this as further evidence that too many mobile advertisers are using desktop marketing tactics and haven’t yet adapted to the opportunities presented by mobile.  It recommends that marketers use mobile to deliver highly contextual, relevant information that directly engage individual consumers.”

Marketers it is time to kill ATNA.  Now, before you lose the 2013 holiday season.

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