Category Archives: Huh?

April 13, 2016 · 9:10 am

2, Not 250

I was listening to one of the many podcasts to which I subscribe yesterday. The speaker was rambling on about the subject of content generation and he said something that made me rewind the podcast so I could be sure I heard him correctly. He was opining that the only reason that companies are spending money on content creation today is to generate data.

His statement made some sense. After all, brands today don’t think of themselves as sponsors of other people’s content. They’ve been sold on the idea that they need to have their own content creation hubs which can populate multiple channels such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. I encourage that in some ways with my clients since who knows the brand better than the brands themselves?  Who better to speak in the brand’s voice? Who ought to know the customer and the customer’s interests and to reflect those perspectives in their content? But in retrospect, I couldn’t disagree more and here is why.

I might be way naive about this, but I think audiences want to be educated and entertained. I don’t think they want to be tricked into being tracked and giving us data. I think when they are offered a list, that list ought not to be on 25 pages so as to squeeze out every last page view and ad exposure. I think they want to feel emotions – awe, wonder, joy, excitement, rage – and not just kill time. When I read articles about how I can create titles (People love lists! People love “epic”!) to lure people to my blog, I get sad.  I understand that many people are intellectually lazy.  I get that there is a reason for the use of TL;DR as a standard retort on the web but maybe that’s a commentary of what passes for most content these days rather than on the specific content.  People have become overwhelmed by crap and they’re weaning themselves off that crapacious diet by minimizing consumption.

I don’t think greatness is anything is measured by the volume of consumption or traffic numbers.  Thre are still fewer iPhones in the world than Android.  There are still fewer meals served at Per Se than at McDonald’s.  If we all do our best not to post 250 times a day but to post 2 great, enlightening things – however long that enlightenment takes – maybe we can stop the downward spiral of attention spans and intellectual curiosity.  If “stupid is as stupid does”, how about we upgrade what we do?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?

Tagged as , , , ,

April 8, 2016 · 9:42 am

Waste Not

Foodie Friday, and the topic this week is a better bottom line. I went out for breakfast this morning. As I ordered, the server asked me if cinnamon toast was OK. I replied that I didn’t care for any toast at all, thanks. When my breakfast showed up a few minutes later, the toast was parked right on the plate along with some apple butter. I’m sure it would have been delicious but it went uneaten.

Toast, toasted

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The obvious business point is that food – and therefore margin – was wasted. No business can afford to throw resources away. There are some less obvious points as well. I looked at the check – there was no notation on it to hold the toast, so clearly the blame lies with the server and not with the kitchen. Was the server paying attention? What if the customer had expressed a concern about a food allergy and that concern wasn’t passed along to the kitchen?  While my server was quite attentive, refilling the coffee as it disappeared and providing milk as requested instead of the prepackaged cream, she didn’t handle the single most important part of her job – getting the order right.

I don’t mean to blow what is a relatively minor error into an indictment of this server.  I do want to use it as an example of how minor errors can have an impact on the bottom line if they persist.  Wasted resources, inattentive sales reps, and unhappy customers are the kiss of death in any business.  Who knows how many other orders of toast or grits or potatoes went out of the kitchen, only to come back untouched and tossed.  How often does something similar happen in your business?

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , ,

April 1, 2016 · 9:40 am

Menu Madness

This Foodie Friday I want to talk about labels. It might sound as if we’re creeping dangerously close to politics in this post but my intent is to maintain a business perspective so please don’t get confused.

I started my business career working for a TV trade group, the Television Bureau of Advertising (TvB). I know that one of the great functions any trade group has is to help the membership with best practices as well as with advocacy. That’s why I’m a little confused about something that took place over the last couple of months. While there aren’t any overt fingerprints from a trade group on it, I’d be shocked if one or more of them wasn’t working behind the scenes.

You can read about this in detail here, but there is a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires chain restaurants to:

  • Disclose, on menus and menu boards, the number of calories in an item as it is usually prepared and offered for sale;
  • Provide written nutrition information and nutrition claim information to consumers upon request;
  • Provide a “prominent, clear, and conspicuous statement” on menus and menu boards about the availability of the written nutrition information; and
  • Provide, on a sign adjacent to each food item, the number of calories in the item or per serving for self-service items and food on display.

Pretty consumer friendly in my opinion. After all, how can transparency and giving customers information about what they’re considering eating be a bad thing? Nevertheless, Congress passed a law as part of a spending bill to prohibit the FDA from using any funds to implement, administer, or enforce the final rule. Do any of you think your favorite Congress-critter woke up one morning and decided to do this on their own? Probably not. I’d guess one or more restaurant trade groups lobbied for this (and probably made a few donations along the way).

Yes, I get that it makes the restaurant chains involved incur expense. But it’s meant to improve consumer health and not to make the business’ lives easier. It reminds me of the papers pushed by the ANA with respect to ad blocking. Those were more about how to preserve ad opportunities and revenues than about fixing the problem that causes ad blocking in the first place.  Putting profits ahead of people – both those that buy from you and those that work for you – rarely is a good idea, at least in my book.  Yours?

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , ,