Category Archives: Consulting

September 19, 2014 · 8:12 am

Why Saving The Pots Is Bad Business

I’m not a fan of The Olive Garden which is our topic this Foodie Friday. I grew up eating (and cooking) Italian food and Olive Garden is pretty far from the cuisine I love. That said, I appreciate that it’s a lot easier for one to find authentic Italian food in New York and other big cities than it might be elsewhere in this great land of ours. The Olive Garden might have to do for those poor souls.

logo

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A hedge fund recently produced a very lengthy report on Olive Garden’s parent company.  You can read the entire report here – it’s a fascinating look at how a company can lose its way.  I want to focus on one very specific aspect of the report: the food at Olive Garden.  The lessons we can take from it are very instructive for any business.

One main criticism the deck makes is this:

Olive Garden has seemingly lost its Italian heritage and  authenticity.  (It) lost ties to suppliers that offered authentic Italian ingredients and Italian wines at compelling price points. Now Olive Garden serves dishes that are astonishingly far from authentic Italian culture, such as burgers & fries, Spanish tapas, heavy cream sauces, more fried foods, stuffed cheeses, soggy pasta, and bland tomato sauce. Olive Garden has moved away from its authentic Italian roots and now offers what appears to be a low-end Italian-American experience.

The deck has photos of dishes as advertised and as they actually show up on the table.  The difference is amazing.  But it was one last complaint – along with the reasoning behind why the situation is the way it is that really got my attention:

According to Darden management, Darden decided to stop salting the water to get an extended warranty on their pots. Pasta is Olive Garden’s core dish and must be prepared properly.

Uh..duh!  Which is the lesson for any brand.  Diluting your brand causes consumer confusion.  Olive Garden for tapas or a burger?  I think not.  Saving the pots to reduce costs at the expense of the customer experience is lunacy.  Damaging the product – especially the signature product – is a big step down the road to brand destruction.

Many companies lose their core identity in the chase for revenues.  That’s bad.  Hurting the products that got you to this point is worse.  It’s not, as the report points out, just one instance. Breadsticks are another signature dish.  “The lower quality refined flour breadsticks served today are filled with more air and have less flavor (similar to hot dog buns).”  Can your brand survive while committing this sort of product suicide?

Without a brand identity, you’re done.  When any home cook knows more about making your product than you do, it’s time to pack it in.  That’s true if it’s pasta or clothing or web sites or anything else.  Agreed?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, food, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , ,

September 17, 2014 · 10:38 am

Telephone

Everyone has played the game of telephone.  Not telephone tag in which you and someone else keep exchanging voicemails: telephone.  You whisper a sentence to someone next to you who repeats it to the person next to them and so on until the message comes back to you.  Inevitably, what you said is not what someone heard.  In fact, it’s quite possible that the message is completely different when it comes full circle.

You don’t need to be playing that game to have this happen.  What we say isn’t always what people hear. You may not have malice, you might be telling a joke. They might hear it as threatening or as disgust.  When the cook asks you how you liked supper and you smile and say “it was pretty good” they might be hearing “I didn’t like it at all but I want to be polite.”  When you tell a salesperson that you don’t think you need what it is they’re selling, the good ones hear “I can convince you” instead of the firm “no” you were unable to say for some reason.

Listening is a critical business skill.  That said, people are often distracted as we speak to them.  Maybe the phone buzzed; maybe they are thinking about their last email or meeting.  Because of that, making sure that the message we meant to convey to the listener is what they heard is just as critical a skill.  We must think about how what we’re saying or presenting could deliver an unintended message.

For example – Malaysia Airlines recently ran a contest in which they invited travelers from New Zealand and Australia to answer the question, “What and where would you like to tick off on your bucket list, and explain why.” It offered them the chance to win an Apple iPad or return trip to Malaysia.  Message received?  Well, since a “bucket list” is composed of things one wants to do before one dies and the airline has lost two planes recently, any association with death is probably not the message you want people to hear.  You say win something; they hear that you are insensitive.

One trick I’ve learned when I have any doubt about if what I’ve said was heard as meant is to ask someone to repeat it back to me.  Obnoxious?  There is that risk, but in my mind the risk of being misunderstood is far greater since we’ll never know until the message comes back around.  Speaking and writing clearly are table stakes in business.  Getting people to hear you clearly is part of those skills.

Clear?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , ,

September 16, 2014 · 10:54 am

Can You Trust Your Customers?

It’s not news to any of you who are paying attention to media but we’re at a tipping point.

1898 advertising poster

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The cracks in the traditional patterns of media consumption have widened to a point where the foundations of those patterns are falling down. Need proof? How about this morning’s piece is the Wall Street Journal:

Hopes that TV advertising will rebound this fall are beginning to dim. TV networks have been banking on a surge in ad spending in coming weeks, ever since an anemic second quarter reported by media companies and a weaker-than-expected “upfront” advance ad-sales market for the new season. The new season doesn’t kick off until next week but already sentiment is starting to change. On Monday, Jeffries analyst John Janedis lowered his estimates for advertising revenue growth in the second half of the year for most of the biggest media companies

Or this from Kantar Media:

“Four of the nation’s five biggest advertisers,” including Procter & Gamble and AT&T, “cut ad spending on traditional media and online display in the first half of the year.”

So now what?

Millennials spend 30 percent of their time with content created by their peers. This means they’re spending more time with peer-created content than traditional media combined (print, TV, and radio).  Nielsen’s most recent study indicates that Americans aged 18-24 watched a weekly average of 19 hours of traditional TV during Q2 2014. That was a substantial 2-and-a-half-hour drop-off from Q2 2013, which in turn had been down by an hour from the year before.  Spending more heavily in those channels isn’t going to happen.  The impact of most digital display is negligible.  Where is the light at the end of the tunnel?

The answer might just be in the audience itself.  Putting consumers and their messages about the brand front and center – probably through social channels – might just be the way forward.  That’s where is the audience is spending time and the messages are from trusted sources.  As Nielsen found:

Word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, often referred to as earned advertising, are still the most influential, as 84 percent of global respondents across 58 countries to the Nielsen online survey said this source was the most trustworthy

The real question is do you trust your consumers enough to hand over your brand?  Can you get on board with them creating content that you’ll push for them?  Are you willing to provide tools – images, logos, whatever – or to promote the products that consumers choose, not those slated for promotion in the marketing plan?

Interesting times.  What’s your take?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media, Reality checks

Tagged as , , , , , ,