The Doc is in…for lunch

Now, the cynical traditionalists will scoff, but we think it behooves (love that word) food marketers to find ways to appeal to people’s desire to connect to unique and relevant brands with local flavor.

It’s pretty clear to us when something is completely contrived, like when we walk into ESPN Zone and the hostess has no clue who Stuart Scott is. Boo-Yah? No, just Boo.

But when you walk into a place called Doc’s Steakhouse in Wichita, you know you are someplace special.

There is a “676 Miles to Wall Drug” sign on the wall. The signature dishes are the Garlic Salad and Hamburger Steak. News clippings heralding the discovery of “new galaxies” also adorn the walls, along with menus from the last half-century. Worn carpet and stale smoke complete the bygone experience. As soon as you are seated, ice water in stubby, eight-ounce tumblers is raced to your table.

I went with my friend Steve. Here are just a few of the things I heard from him:

“My dad used to take us here for special occasions.”

“My wife and I used to come here a lot when we were dating.”

“I remember when the guy taking your money at the cashier stand wouldn’t let you by without talking to you for awhile, even when the line was backed up 15-people long.”

Ought to be some way for chain restaurants and supermarkets to tap into the potential to be unique the way Doc’s has done.

It has to have integrity and can’t appear stilted. Just authentic, neighborhood and familiar. Giving people a little something extra to hold on to in uncertain times never hurts, either.

Beef, leather, fruit and jerky. It’s all good.

The Spoon has long been a fan of the jerky. Beef. Venison. Turkey. Good stuff. Don’t spare the salt. Natural-style. Stick. Strip. Pepper. Barbecue. Teriyaki.

You can’t go wrong with a good hunk of jerky.

Now, thanks to the wonders of mass dehydration, we can experience the wonders of fruit leather. I’m not talking about any wimpy, thin fruit rolls here. I’m talking all-natural and organic, thick strips of sweet, pressed fruit in all sorts of flavors. They’re one of the best snack foods since string cheese.

The eating experience of these foods is intensified by the genius behind their creation. People have been drying meat over fire and fruit under sun for centuries.

We have since learned that you don’t have to use the prettiest, most savory cuts and pieces for these convenient snack and meal replacement applications. But, oh! The wonders of culinary creativity when function and flavor collide!

Three great foods:

• Barbecue riblets
• Beef jerky
• Fruit leather

Besides being tasty and convenient, they share one other common characteristic: Industry found a way to use them to get more value out of an input that might otherwise have been wasted.

Bravo!

T.G.I.F.

Warning: The following is a shameless promotion of one my favorite brands.

I could probably live without Applebee’s.^® But then again, why? Sure, that whole Onion Peels thing didn’t really grab me, but they have, quite possibly, the single best menu item in the history of family casual dining:

The Oriental Chicken Salad

That’s right, I just took up a boat-load of space on the server with that obnoxiously large photo. And you know why? Because this is one awesome salad, baby. And food marketing genius must be recognized.

One of my favorite things about this item, besides the dressing (they always bring extra, no questions) and the delicately fried strips of chicken, is that it is available in a half size. Remarkable! And they put it right there on the menu:

Oriental Chicken Salad
Fresh Asian greens tossed in a tasty Oriental vinaigrette and topped with crispy noodles, toasted almonds and juicy, golden fried chicken breast.
Half Size $6.99 Regular $8.99

It’s a smart menu item from an operational standpoint, too. Easy to assemble. Hard to mess up. Easy to maintain consistency across locations and customer visits.

Every potentially loyal customer is looking for one thing: The “I can’t get it someplace else, always good and worthy of being my ‘usual,’ my stand-by, can’t-go-wrong item.”

And who better to give it to me than America’s favorite neighbor? I’m not sure how you came up with that name, but Applebee’s, I salute you.

Does 64 years make a difference? Sometimes, yes.

This is a pack of gum as it might have appeared in 1944. It cost about 10 cents.

This is today’s chewing gum packaging. It now costs $1.39 for about the same amount of gum.

The price has gone up 14X.

This photo shows the baked bean packaging design and technology of 1944 next to that of today.

Not much difference, eh? The price appreciation since 1944 has only been 7X, half that of chewing gum.

Not a terribly scientific study, I know. Just thinking.

The antioxidant revolution

It’s hot here in Kansas. I just finished my third glass of iced green tea. Earlier today, I had some green tea chewing gum.

And you know what sounds good right about now? A frozen green tea Frappuccino from Starbuck’s.

Functional foods haven’t caught on quite as fast in this country as in Europe. But if anything has a chance, it appears to be anything that promises antioxidant benefits.

Green tea. White tea. Red tea. Lutein. Acai. Beta carotene. Gingko biloba.

We seem to be fascinated with cleansing and purification. And if we can do it in tasty, convenient ways, then all the better.

Experience is always the best teacher

No matter your age, one of the best ways to learn is to play. Recently we took this to heart and took it upon ourselves to understand our customers’ lives. One of our clients sells beef to supermarkets and restaurants, and we wanted to experience the challenges of creating fresh beef cuts that will appeal to consumers.

So we bought 20 pounds of shoulder clod and strip loin, popped in an instructional DVD from Canada’s Beef Information Centre and went to town.

First, we learned that the guys with knives on the video make it look a lot easier than it really is. It took a roomful of our heads and several rewinds of the segments before we were able to roughly imitate our customers’ craft.

Once you’ve experienced your customers’ challenges and victories, you will begin to have empathy for them. Once you experience empathy, you’re better able to speak their language and reach them with your message.

I’ve heard that really savvy investors like Warren Buffett experience the products and services of companies before taking major equity positions in them. Remember Victor Kiam? He liked his Remington shaver so much, he bought the company. Shouldn’t we be just as passionate about understanding our customers?

All I know is, we had a great time, we developed understanding and empathy, and we learned something about our customers together as a team.

Plus, how often do you get to eat your teaching tools? The strip steaks and chuck steaks we cut ourselves were quite satisfying.

I guess it’s just part of a day in the life of a place where understanding the target audience is priority one for everyone, from the business manager to the brand manager to the copywriter and the proofreader. The challenge is maintaining that focus. But having a little fun is one way to do just that.

To take advantage of a megatrend, just focus on the family

For some, the most wonderful day of the year comes once in the fall, but it’s not a paid holiday or a religious celebration. It’s Family Day, and this year, it falls on September 22.

So why talk about it today of all days? Summer vacation have visions of loud, sweaty nine-hour minivan rides dancing through your head? Well, just briefly, let’s consider a few facts:

• According to Yankelovich MONITOR, more than three-quarters of adults wish they had more time to spend with their kids.
• About the same portion says they receive their greatest satisfaction from their children.
• When pressed, many children echo these sentiments.

In a Post-911 world, the American family unit has regained its position as the epicenter of the social network. This is heightened by the influx of other cultures which bring an even more profound emphasis on staying connected with family.

Which begs the question: Are we as food marketers doing all we can to leverage the emotional power of family ties? You don’t have to look far to find that there is profit potential in the most mundane occurences of family togetherness.

It’s true, Family Day gives an almost unavoidable reason to focus on family, but our chance for relevance rests in how well we relate to the reality of consumers’ family interactions on a day-in, day-out basis.

Today, I encourage you to examine the basic components of your family life that make it special. You may just uncover an insight that leads to your next packaging innovation or promotion.

Viva la familia!

Making your ends meet by helping consumers make their ends meet

Economist C.K. Prahalad, in his 2004 book, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, identified ways marketers can tap into income streams by tailoring products, packaging and promotion to “the four billion people living on less than $2.00 a day.”

Prahalad urges us to take advantage of little insights about these consumers, such as:

• Smaller packages are more affordable
• Brands connections can still be strong, even at lower price points
• Today’s bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) consumers may become higher-margin prospects for up-market brands later on

I’m not suggesting everyone go after a slice of the BOP market. The bigger lesson I took from Prahalad’s book is that we sometimes hide opportunities behind our own bias. We are constantly chasing the fashionable and much-discussed value streams: Trading up, premium, green consumerism, marketing to millenials. So much so that we lose sight of gaps in the market.

Much of the value to be extracted from a gap in the marketplace has been siphoned away by the time stories about it start showing up in BusinessWeek and The Times.

We look for opportunities within opportunities. Want to discover value? Ask yourself the question: Is there a segment within the demographic or behavioral pie that we can slice off for ourselves?

For example, marketers are fond of tossing this one out at cocktail parties: “Did you know that Hispanics will be responsible for 10 cents of every dollar spent in the US in a few years?”

The New Food Marketer might smile, stifle a giggle and knowingly nod while thinking to herself, “Yes, but unlike you, I also know that the most profitable segment of that audience for my brand is conservative women who earn $75K+, with 2+ children and an SUV, and I plan to use that knowledge to crush my competitors.”

Go on now, don’t settle for being spoon-fed. Dig into that bowl of information and uncover something rich and tasty.

Marketing Spoonful

Nobody likes to waste their time searching for knowledge only to find that it falls way short of expectations.

That’s why we’re creating the Spoonful; to give food marketers a reader-directed resource for information that guides decision-making.

In fact, we can’t tell you exactly what it’s going to look like because we want you to help us build it. So if you have ideas, send them to thespoonful@shscom.com.

Meanwhile, here’s just a taste of your Marketing Spoonful.

Turn the other cheek into a marketing opportunity

With so much in the news today about the relationship between high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and obesity and the vilification of the quick-service restaurant industry, the average reader couldn’t help but believe that food is to blame for obesity.

Few people have probably seen the study from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that finds HFCS and cane sugar affect our body’s appetite in the same way.

Unfortunately, the experts who mislead the public have not emphasized the point that our body weight is a physical and mathematical function of many factors, including:

Genetics

Untreated emotional imbalance

Number of calories consumed (of any kind)

Number of calories expended (exercise)

The unfortunate result is that it is hard for us to change people’s minds after they’ve already seen something on a television news magazine that convinces them that soft drinks, HFCS, farmers and the government are making their kid obese. Contributing to obesity, maybe, but not the sole factor.Consider three reactions to this potential crisis: 1.) Do nothing, 2.) Fight, 3.) Embrace the opportunity presented.Here are the scenarios:1. Do nothing. Not only will you be putting warning labels about HFCS on your products or using costlier ingredients, you might eventually be responsible for telling people that your product is unhealthy if consumed in large quantities.2. Fight. You’ll just look like the big bully corporation that is hurting kids.3. Embrace the opportunity presented. The low-carb craze has faded now, but it forced you to focus on an important consumer trend toward whole foods. Even as you consider alternatives to HFCS, find the virtues of it. Is it greener because it takes less energy to produce and refine? What do food scientists tell us about potential health benefits of it? Finally, be the loudest and proudest proponent of exercise, family outdoor activities, the YMCA or create your own Biggest Loser for Kids.Remember, food is at the heart and soul of every culture. We are fortunate to have so much choice, and consumers’ unquenchable desire for choices is what keeps our brands alive.

Oh, yeah, has anybody seen McDonald’s latest quarterly numbers?

Creating value, innovation and other clichés

Clichés can be convicting. They can be irritating. But rarely are they untrue.

Think about how a few of them apply to branding and marketing:

Dance with the one what brung you: Be true to your brand’s values. Change your brand’s clothing, but don’t try to change its soul.

Luck favors the prepared: Do your homework. Know your market. Set yourself up for success.

The worst kind of fear is fear of failure: How often do we hesitate on an opportunity because we aren’t 100-percent sure?

Recently, a Carnegie Mellon professor named Randy Pausch gave his last lecture to a packed hall of students, alumni, family and friends. You’ve probably heard of Randy by now, but in case you haven’t, do yourself the favor of watching the video or picking up his book. His story is inspiring and his insights have become legendary.

Randy is one of the closest things to a rocket scientist—he’s a computer-human interaction researcher and teacher—and he is dealing with pancreatic cancer. So I attach a high measure of credibility to what he has to say about life, business and relationships. One of my favorite pieces of wisdom from Randy’s book and lecture is his observation that clichés become clichés because they are, in his words, “right on the money.” They are repeated, not only because they are catchy, but also because they are true.

Some of our clichés in marketing and branding have become passé because we don’t adhere to the underlying truths that made them clichés in the first place.

We think if we say the word strategy that we’re being strategic. We say we’re innovating when what we’re really doing is inventing. (It doesn’t become innovation until someone pays for it.) And when it comes to creating value, many of us have lost our passion.

Now, this is going to sound really cliché, but I bet if each of us challenges each other to approach our industry the way Randy Pausch has approached his research, his family and his illness, we will exceed anyone’s expectations for innovation, strategic thinking and value creation.