March 25, 2014 · 9:56 am

Nowhere To Run

I had a hard time about this week’s TunesDay selection.

Nowhere to Run (Martha and the Vandellas song)

Nowhere to Run (Martha and the Vandellas song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh, the song itself wasn’t too difficult. Rolling Stone named it in its 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time and it’s from a songwriting team – Holland-Dozier-Holland – that cranked out many of the radio hits of my youth.  You might know the artists – Martha and the Vandellas – from Heat Wave and Dancing In The Streets.  This song is the third part of their top hit trinity – give it a listen:

Hard not bop along to the Motown house band (The Funk Brothers!) although I’m not sure running through the auto plant’s paint department without a respirator is great for one’s voice.  In any event, why did this choice give me trouble?  Maybe because it inspired so many business thoughts.  Let me share a couple.

These lyrics:

It’s not love
I’m running from
It’s the heartaches
That I know will come

‘Cause I know
You’re no good for me
But you’ve become
A part of me

made me think  of technology.  Every day there is a new story about someone invading consumers’ privacy.  None of us seem to have enough time in the day to focus on anything because we’re all too focused on everything.  In the tech world (and elsewhere) we’ve gone from taking the time to make sure what we produce is great to trying to crank out something – anything – that’s good enough.  After all, the product will be obsolete in a few months anyway.  Yet there is nowhere to hide – we depend on these devices and it’s hard to stay private when you’re using publicly accessible tools.

I also had a thought about customers becoming addicted to products.  Putting aside the obvious issues with a physical addiction to drugs or alcohol, I think some brands like the notion of having customers feel “you’ve become a part of me.”  True enough – fostering a conversation is where marketing needs to be but despite the upbeat music, this song is quite dark. Do we want our customers feeling there’s no place to hide, whether it’s from our ads or our prying eyes?  I think not – what do you think?

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March 24, 2014 · 9:55 am

What Oreo Has Wrought

Let’s begin the week with another entry in the book of social media marketing stupidity.

English: Two regular Oreo cookies. Please chec...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One trend of which you might be aware is real-time content marketing – brands responding to events as they happen. It’s rapid response content creation and the best-known example is Oreo tweeting out a clever marketing message in response to the blackout at last year’s Super Bowl.  This wasn’t the result of a smart intern winging it.  There were ad agency and brand people at Oreo’s social media command center during the game.

The success Oreo had inspired many copy cats.  In fact, a study done around that time found that over half the brand folks surveyed thought they’d be making greater use of real-time data in their marketing.  Fair enough.  Now let’s see what Oreo has wrought.

Yesterday during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, CBS showed a shot of a young Kansas fan who was crying as his team lost.  Some marketing genius at KFC thought it would be clever to tweet out a screengrab of the teary child along with a marketing message to the 500,000 people following their Twitter account.  After all, what better way to sell fried chicken then on the back of an upset kid! It was such a good idea that KFC pulled the tweet down shortly thereafter as someone woke up and realized that finding a sales message in a crying kid’s unhappiness is way over the offensive line.  Credit them for moving fast to pull it down (although it would have been nice if they’d have issued an apology as well).

Contrast this with something I saw this morning in an online golf publication I read.  The former head of the USGA passed away yesterday – the announcement came late in the day.  Less than 12 hours later, the USGA has a tasteful ad in the publication saluting the man.  Real-time?  Not exactly but certainly quickly after the event.  Different from social media?  Yes, although they certainly could have used this in all of their social channels and they did, in fact, do other things in those channels.

Real time doesn’t mean “speak before you think.”  It means coming across as authentic and relevant (and really funny never hurts either).  That’s not as easy as giving a kid the keys to your social account and a TV to watch what’s going on.  It may not take a lot of planning to be good in real-time – that would kind of negate the purpose.  It does take managing, however, which is clearly what someone did after the KFC tweet went out.  Do you see the difference?

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March 21, 2014 · 9:12 am

Caul Fat And Management

Foodie Friday, and today the topic is caul fat. “Never heard of it” you say?

Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Caul fat is one of those ingredients that is rarely used by the home cook and sort of falls into the “secret ingredient” category along with duck fat.   It’s the web of fatty membrane that encases the internal organs of various animals.  Pork caul fat is the one most cooks prefer but cooks use that of cows and sheep as well.

The cook wraps whatever he’s cooking in the fat before cooking it and it adds moisture and flavor. Most of the time, you see caul fat being used as natural sausage casings in crepinettes (fegatelli for my Italian friends) or to wrap items that lack a great deal of their own fat such as game birds.  It’s also used as an outer shell of sorts for patés when they’re being cooked.

What does this have to do with business?  I think good managers are like caul fat.  They bring things to the business that aren’t always readily apparent unless you dig down into the recipe.  It may be how they set the tone for the business.  It may be how they hold the team together, much as caul fat holds the sausage patties that are crepinettes together.  Caul fat is one of those ingredients for which you have to search.  You probably won’t find it in your supermarket.  Great managers are the same way, and like caul fat, when you first come across a great manager you might be surprised by it.

Secret ingredients are what make any dish really memorable.  After all, if every restaurant cooked the same dish the same way, why would we try new places?  Those ingredients are things that help a dish, a restaurant, or your business stand out in a crowd.  Caul fat’s why one cook’s roasted chicken breast is moist and flavorful and another’s, who cooked it the same time at the same temp with most of the same seasonings turned out a dry, flavorless product.  Great managers are a secret ingredient which, like caul fat, make a huge difference in the finished product even if it’s not clear who that fabulous final product came to be.  They make the difference between a good business and a great business.  That’s my take – what’s yours?

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