October 12, 2012 · 9:14 am

Walking First

Foodie Friday again, thank goodness.

English: Apprentice. Man and boy making shoes.

Apprentice. Man and boy making shoes. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As we end the week, let’s talk about the professional kitchen, which may be one of the last great bastions of the apprenticeship system.  Escoffier invented the notion of the “Kitchen Brigade.” This system is still used in many restaurants and kitchens and forms the basis of the hierarchy in which people learn.  Typically, aspiring chefs take on the most menial tasks like peeling and prepping vegetables before they’re allowed to have a “real” station.  What’s going on in that world is a business point as well.

Culinary schools have changed the apprenticeship dynamic.  Now applicants come to kitchens feeling as if they’ve been through the grind of the line.  Putting aside having never been under the stress of a real dinner service for days at a time, the reality is that they are “book-smart” and the real world is a very different place.  They want to run before they really know how to walk.  This from a respected chef, Mark Vetri:

I once had a young cook who used to bring in modern Spanish cookbooks because he wanted to make things like mango caviar eggs and chocolate soil. I told him, “Hey, how about you learn how to blanch a goddamn carrot first, cook meat to a correct temperature, clarify a broth and truss a chicken? Once you can do these things then, and only then, should you try to learn these other techniques.” Trust me when I tell you that José Andrés is a master of the basics. You should strive to be one too.

This isn’t limited to the professional kitchen.  If you’ve ever managed younger people, many of them think they know the business thoroughly because they have an MBA or a couple of years in an office.  The reality is that much of what we teach as managers are basic skills that either aren’t taught at all in schools or are given a week’s worth of attention.  Listening, politicking, presentation skills, office culture, and the knowledge specific to an industry are generally not areas in which young folks come prepared.  Try to tell them that!

I was managing people (some older than me) when I was 23.  I was a department head by 25.  In retrospect, I was lucky not to have screwed up more often than I did because I was learning as I went and much of what I was learning were basic skills.  As in the kitchen, learning the building blocks of the industry and business frees you up later on to be able to do anything.  Walk first!

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October 11, 2012 · 9:30 am

Crappy Consultants

The screed today hits close to home since I want to throw a little sunlight on something going on in the consulting world.  While it’s been on my mind for a bit I read a piece this morning called How Social Media Consultants Dupe Their Corporate Clients from Dave Copeland of ReadWriteWeb that brought it front and center.  The piece talks about how a friend of Dave’s was underwhelmed by a consultant brought in to get the company up to speed with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and the rest.  Not only was the presentation the consultant made stunningly simplistic, but it may have been wrong.  As the article put it:

…the company has little digital expertise. That leaves it open to exploitation by so-called social media experts who take a one-size-fits-all approach to every client. These consultants often bill tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars before anyone realizes there is little or no return on the investment.

Amen.  As I’m out meeting with potential clients I often run into the work of some “consultant” who knows how to post on Facebook but doesn’t understand how Facebook is used as part of a business.  Forget knowing about the social graph – these folks don’t have a clue about asking the most important question – why social media in the first place?  After all, it’s not right for every business and there certainly is no standard implementation that’s going to work across the board.

I’ve had prospective clients hand me the “white paper” some other consultant did that was nothing more than a document grabbed off the web.  I’ve had another client think that someone had built them a solution when all they were doing was using a white-label provider and marking up the cost.  In each case the warning signs were there – the person they’d hired didn’t have a lot of business experience (it’s hard to claim a ton of social media experience – it’s s new medium!) and treated social as just another marketing megaphone.

It’s hard to convince anyone that there is an ROI to social, especially since it’s very resource intensive if done well.  It requires someone who can digest a 360 degree view of the business and align social with other marketing efforts, including the analytics to evaluate it all.  The charlatans identified in the article hurt clients.  They hurt folks like me who have to battle against their failures to get hired (usually to clean up a mess).  They hurt the industry.  I wish they’d go away – maybe a little sunlight will scare them off.

Have you had an experience with someone like this?

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October 10, 2012 · 9:21 am

Inappropriate Brand Behavior

The folks at Lab42 put out a piece of research concerning how consumers interact with brands on Facebook.

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

I find it illuminating although not particularly surprising. Let’s see what you think.

As reported by the Media Post folks:

Nearly one-half of social media users have liked a brand without ever having intentions to buy from them. Among those 46%, more than one-half say they were motivated to like the brand by a freebie, and 46% simply wanted to associate with the brand, even though they couldn’t afford the brand’s products.

As they say on Facebook, OMG!  People have ulterior motives, although I’m not really sure that wanting to save a buck or seeing certain products as aspirational are exactly out of the norm.  In fact only 14% of social media users who like brand pages say they do so out of loyalty to the brand.  What’s even more interesting are the reasons people gave for un-liking a brand:

73% of social media users have un-liked a brand, citing a high frequency of brand posts, no longer liking the brand, or a bad customer experience as reasons for doing so.

In other words, the brand is using Facebook (and probably other social media as well) as yet another marketing megaphone rather than as a way to conduct conversations with consumers.  In fact, there is a segment of the Facebook base – 15% or so – who just don’t like brands at all, mostly out of privacy concerns and not wanting the clutter in their news feeds.  Of course, communication from a brand is only perceived as clutter if it has no value to the recipient (and for the record there are certain people who are guilty of doing the same thing to their friends’ feeds).

All of this makes sense.  Facebook and other social media are not where people go to interact with brands and brand messaging – that would be a brand’s website.  Obviously social media is a place brands need to be but they need to respect why users are there and interact appropriately.  Giving something of value is clearly appealing – cluttering up news feeds is not.

What are your thoughts?  Do you like brands on Facebook and other social media?  How is their behavior?  Have you un-liked any?  How come?

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