Boosting Restaurant Revenue: Part 8 of 10 – Something New to Buzz About

Something has gone wrong at one of my old favorite restaurants.

Ironically, I decided to make my notes for this part in the series from a table at one of my old favorite restaurants in Orlando – Luma in Winter Park.  Five years ago, Luma was the hottest new restaurant in Central Florida.  It was a first date kind of place.  We entertained some of our best clients here, and for awhile I was spending a significant pile of cash here every week, without an end in sight. This was a great restaurant, with an adventurous menu of contemporary American fare, and creating massive buzz throughout Orlando and Central Florida – but judging by my latest visit, Luma has fallen from grace. Read more »

Restaurant Branding: Brand Story

Humans think, relate and communicate in the form of story.  Hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press epic stories like the Iliad and Odyssey traveled the world because they were compelling and easy to remember stories.  Religious, civic, community, and business leaders make their point with stories rather than just hard facts.  Stories that help us understand where we’ve been, where we’re going, and how our piece fits in to the bigger picture are among the most powerful tools used by great leaders.  Whether you run a global restaurant chain, the marketing department, or are a start-up restaurant owner, you can build more consensus and become a better leader by telling stories.

We can all agree that the best marketing is word of mouth marketing.  But what is surprising is when you ask restaurant marketers what they are doing specifically to ignite and fan the flames of word of mouth they have a dumbstruck look on their face.  Isn’t it amazing how – while everyone agrees in the utmost importance of word of mouth marketing being the best – there aren’t specific actions being taken to build it or sections of the restaurant marketing plan that address it?

Imagine this – your marketing director goes down to the local television station and says here’s a check for $25,000; please run an ad for us but it is totally up to you what you say or do in the ad because we would rather you figure out what to say than us.  That would never happen.  The reason is marketers want to craft and control the brand message.  They pour over the details; spell out exactly what to say and how to say it.  Yet, they leave word of mouth entirely at the discretion of the customer without efforts to help shape and influence the message.

The fact is that customers are left to come up with the brand story for themselves.  They craft the word of mouth message without the benefit of the talking points that the public relations team sends to media or the training departments instill in their orientation for new employees.  Yet, the word of mouth message can be influenced. The brand story, once properly articulated, can be used for a whole variety of applications including training, marketing, branding, public relations, media relations, investor relations, franchise sales, real estate programs and working with landlords to secure prime locations – the list goes on and on.

There is a saying, “He who has the best story wins”.  When you have a succinct, compelling, and fun-to-tell brand “story”, you are endearing your audience and stakeholders in a way no other single tool can.  “Facts tell but stories sell”.

Another one-liner I like to use came from one of our copywriters who wrote a bestselling book on direct response marketing.  He said the motto in direct response copywriting is “Tell me quick and tell me true, not how this product came to be, but what the darn thing does for me”.  It makes sense.  Customers don’t care so much about the facts of your restaurant as they do the narrative that those facts create when put together in the form of a story.

The best way to lead and to effectuate word of mouth is to build a powerful and compelling brand story and tell that story to any and everyone willing to listen.

More to come on the elements of a well-crafted brand story in future blog posts so stay tuned.

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen

Restaurant Branding: Brand Personality

Brands, like people, should have a personality.  There are six billion people on planet Earth and only a very tiny fraction of them are highly paid celebrities.  The celebrities have a personality that is so unique and stands out that others gravitate to them and become their fans.  Often, the fame and status of a celebrity is in direct proportion to their uniqueness of talent and personality (not in every case – some are famous just for being famous, but that’s a different blog post).

The way your brand walks, talks, acts, dresses and behaves should be defined in the context of the brand personality, brand positioning, brand promise, and brand story.  When these elements are properly defined, the answers to questions like “what kind of uniforms should we use”, or “what colors should we use in our designs”, or “how should we design our restaurants” become much easier.  The answers are simply an interpretation of the stated brand attributes.

People buy brands that reflect how they see themselves in the world.  When you have a brand promise and a brand personality that resonate with your core audience, they can more effectively be turned in to fans and do your marketing for you.

So, if your restaurant was a person, how would it walk, dress, talk, act and behave?  Would it be funny and irreverent?  Whimsical and carefree?  Refined and worldly?

Write down the personality traits of your restaurant brand as if you were describing a person.  This will help you with defining and articulating your brand personality.  The brand personality is a critical component that must be clearly articulated before you send a dime on designs and marketing.

Often what we find is that the personality of the brand often mirrors the personality of the entrepreneur that first created the company.  This is often why you see companies that fire their founder later flounder.  Steve Jobs was Apple.  Then he was fired and replaced with a “better” management team.  The new management team may have had better resumes and credentials, but the personality of the Apple brand changed; and when that happened, the culture, the performance, and a number of other key performance areas also changed for the worse.  Apple brought Jobs back and now – by bringing back that personality and culture of innovation (and other aspects of who Steve Jobs is) – the company has recaptured its former glory and success.  Apple is now the highest valued technology company in the world.  Unquestionably, Apple has a very distinct brand personality.  Notice the similarities of the Apple brand personality and the Steve Jobs personality.

When you have a charismatic brand personality, you have a far better chance of finding success than those poor restaurant companies who lunge from side to side trying to mimic the tactical movements of their competitors.

Much more to come on restaurant branding and brand personality in future posts.  This is a big subject and will take lots of examples to fully express the principles, so stay tuned!

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen

Restaurant Branding: Brand Positioning

The father of modern day positioning – and my favorite marketing author – is Al Ries.  I certainly wouldn’t attempt to out-do him in explaining brand positioning so if you have not yet read his books, I highly encourage you to (starting with Focus).  What I can do though is help restaurant and food industry companies apply the principles to their own branding and marketing.

The idea of positioning is that “You don’t merely want to be considered the best of the best; you want to be considered the only one who does what you do”.

People don’t buy “better”, they buy “different” (also visit blog post Be the Only for more on this aspect of brand positioning).  In marketing, you only sell differences.

Thousands of years of human evolution have conditioned us to instinctually notice what’s different.  This was for survival.  When a cave man was walking in the jungle he would see “jungle bush, jungle bush, LION FACE” and noticing what was different kept him from being eaten.  This has not changed and is as true today.

A major league baseball player can see the entire field and stadium, but when the pitch is thrown everything else fades away and he sees only that 90 mph fastball hurling at him.  His eye is trained to see what’s different and to focus on that.

Likewise, the modern day consumer is overrun with more than 4,000 commercial messages per day.  They have become conditioned to fade all of this cacophony of noise out and see only what’s different.  In a crowded sea of millions of restaurants around the world all shouting for the attention of more customers, employees and media mentions, yours has to stand out.  That’s the aim of brand positioning – to focus your brand on what makes you different.  That’s the point of your restaurant marketing – to communicate your brand personality, brand positioning, brand promise and brand story.

Restaurant Branding: The Brand Promise

What do you promise to customers, employees, the community, partners, vendors, media, and other key stakeholders?

Great restaurant branding is about making a promise and reflecting that promise at every customer touch-point.  The idea is that you don’t want to have a “business” – you want to have a “cause”.  When you make such a brand promise and have a cause, you are more likely to enlist the passionate help of your key stakeholders to help you cause (which benefits your business).  When you stand for something, you stand out.  When you stand out, you are doing one of the most important things in marketing – showing you are different (in marketing you want to emphasize how you’re different, rather than how you’re better).

A brand promise must be bold, clear, and made publicly.  Everyone you deal with should know what you stand for and what you won’t stand for.  A brand promise can be confused with a mission statement; and while there are some similarities, the two are dramatically different.

Often I am asked for examples of successful restaurant companies who have a brand promise.  There are hundreds of examples but a very timely one is Chipotle.  They had the highest performing stock of 2010 with a 170% increase.  Their brand promise is “food with integrity”.  Their promise was so clear, the communication of the message so effective, and the “cause” of the business so compelling that they not only rocketed upwards in sales and profitability but they are creating and perpetuating number of new food movements in the wake of their success (see Rise of the Celebrity Farmer).

The promise can’t be “good food, good service and good atmosphere”.  Those are simply the tokens to get in to the game – all restaurants must have this and deliver on this inherent promise of the industry, so this is too generic to be your restaurants brand promise.

In pursuing the answer to “what’s our brand promise”, ask yourself what would be your “cause”.  Sure, it’s to feed people, do what restaurants are supposed to do which is “restore”, be a good employer, but past all that, what’s your reason for being?  What do you stand for?  What are your non-negotiables?  What do you defend or champion?  What are your belief systems and governing codes?  The answers to these questions will help you reveal the components of your brand promise.

A strong restaurant brand is built when the brand promise and operational/marketing execution are closely aligned.  You have a bold promise, deliver on that promise consistently and without wavering, and as a result you build a remarkable restaurant brand.  This notion – by contrast to what many restaurant consultants, ad agencies, and branding types preach – is the cornerstone of restaurant branding; not fancy creative, nicely designed logos and corporate identity, and the like.  Those can be tools to help communicate what the brand stands for, but the “brand promise” is the starting point and mother of all restaurant marketing efforts.

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen

“Ask Why” for Restaurant Branding

A brand is a promise. The best restaurant branding I have seen is when the promise of the organization is inspiring, believable and reflected at every touchpoint. The customers, employees, suppliers, investors, media, all of the stakeholders – they all see and feel the promise in a way that is authentic and visceral.

People buy brands that reflect how they see themselves in the world. Sure, millions of people buy from the Chipotle brand just because it’s a good burrito or they saw a funny billboard or they were just close by when they got hungry. But the reason the Chipotle brand is so successful is because it is not just a business but a “cause”. Their tagline “Food with Integrity” is more than a catchy restaurant slogan, it is a core belief of the company. It’s a promise that is a non-negotiable. The promise has been reflected at every touch point. The employees, the suppliers, the media, the customers – they have all bought in to the ideal of sustainability and being part of something bigger and more important than “we have the best burrito”. And the result? Chipotle is the best performing restaurant stock of 2010.

In developing new restaurant brands or facilitating improvement of established restaurant brands, we start by helping the company define its “reason for being”. We facilitate defining and articulating more authentic and inspiring brand compoents including the Brand Promise, Brand Positioning Strategy, Brand Personality and Brand Story. These elements all get wrapped up in the Brand Constitution. From there, the rollout plans are devised for how to get those brand elements inextricably connected and weaved in to the fabric of the company so it is reflected at every stakeholder touchpoint.

A lot of marketers and restaurant consultants start at a tactical level and talk through things like new logos, creative campaigns, how to jump in to digital media…they are all about how to say it not “why”. That’s the difference between great restaurant marketing and uninspired “me-too” approaches that just don’t work. The process is a lot more akin to psychology than it is to the marketing profession most of us think of when the topic “restaurant branding” comes up.

The Ask Why video is a powerful message and great insight in to the right way to approach restaurant branding and leadership.

The Branding Invasion

It appeared as silently as the surprise attack of Pearl Harbor. Then, like an explosion, the buzz of “branding” hit our industry, and we’ve been bombarded by the self appointed ambassadors of the message ever since. Read more »