Checking The Nation’s Restaurant Communications For Freshness.

Our long, national Kitchen Nightmare is over. Oh wait, it’s not over…

May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment

You’ve watched this by now?

And you’ve guiltily enjoyed the social media “meltdown”?

You never win a fight with the internet. That’s a rule for all of us—but to fight with such spectacular lack of awareness, such complete blindness to how this was going to play out. Delicious.

You never win a fight with the internet. That’s a rule for all of us—but to fight with such spectacular lack of awareness, such complete blindness to how this was going to play out. Delicious.

News today from Eater announces that these Kitchen Nightmare rejects are going to open again after sullenly shutting their doors and chasing away reporters. They’ll donate proceeds to a cyber bullying charity.

Wow, Amy. Wow, Samy.

Okay, I’ll grant that in a reality TV show edit room, with a skilled and snarky editor, footage can be manipulated to tell more than one story. And I grant that the Kitchen Nightmares reality TV show staff is always going to make host Gordon Ramsay look firm-even-fiery-but-ultimately-fair. Still. You can’t deny that this is a good example of how not to behave when you know there are cameras.

Still, the focus should probably be on the social media response, captured thoroughly here by BuzzFeed.

They got up the next morning and decided to claim they got hacked; so did Representative Anthony Wiener. And him, I wanted to believe.

Learning to navigate efficient food prep, personnel management, cost control and other demands of the restaurant biz often leaves smaller places like Amy’s Baking Company with very little time to think through their marketing plan.

But make this a rule—if you’re not sure how a particular social media site tends to function, proceed with caution: Don’t hurl insults. No caps lock, no threats, no invocations of whichever God is on your side. Don’t whine you’re being bullied. Be unfailingly civil.

In absence of a plan, that’ll be the plan.

Thank you, Amy and Samy, for providing the latest teaching moment for social media advisors.

And for your sake, I hope that soon you may echo the first words out of Gerald Ford’s mouth here:

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Filed Under: Exploring In Real Time Together, Kind of Funny, Links To Stories, Opinion, Social Thinking

KFC returns us now to the thrilling era of the catchphrase with “I Ate the Bones.”

April 30, 2013 By Leave a Comment

I can’t believe I ate the whole bones thing, is what comes to my mind.

Try the bones, you’ll like the bones. Mama Mia, that’s some spicy bones.

What’s really interesting is, these KFC ads are running simultaneously with the new K-Mart catchphrase attempt.

Talk about your zeitgeist. Does this mean that we’ll soon be battling gasoline shortages, high inflation, and a jowl-shaking president who is forced to resign in disgrace after bumbling hired thieves are caught burgling the opposition’s political headquarters in a DC hotel? Hope not, because that means we have to live through the 80s and Duran Duran again.

Hahahahahahaha.

Anyway. I enjoy those “I ate the bones” ads, and I think they do a good job of making people: 1. pay attention 2. understand what exactly is going on here which is, for some, big news and 3. tend to remember, repeat, and even re-use the line in the personal lives with their friends. There is practically no higher praise for a piece of creative work (besides, “it sold stuff”).

Let’s screen another one:

(I do like the voice of the actor who says, “Original recipe.” I wish I could talk that good.)

Here’s my only quibble. When they roll out most creative lines in other media—billboards are the classic example—often the creative team talks about it and ultimately decides to feature the catchphrase prominently, especially on media with limited story-telling abilities. Like billboards. Or parking lot lightpole signage:

It’s a mysterious sign in the parking lot that, having not seen the TV, makes the experience seem somewhat questionable. Should we go ahead and hang it up?

It’s a mysterious sign in the parking lot that, having not seen the TV, makes the experience seem somewhat questionable. Should we go ahead and hang it up?

And if that parking lot lightpole sign said, “I just shipped my pants!” or “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!” we’d be through here. But it says, “I ate the bones!” And though there might be a viral component to this (I mostly only saw the K-Mart ad on my Facebook feed), the days are gone, gone, gone where you can assume that Mr. and Mrs. America are watching the very episode of All In The Family in which you have chosen to run your “I ate the bones” campaign. Mr. and Mrs. A. tend to miss a lot of TV ads these days.

And if you (like me, actually) are driving through town and see the lightpole sign that says “I ate the bones!” (like I did) you might be forced to think about it a little too much and come up with the idea (as I did, before I knew the score) that the bones might be ground up and included like Jamie Oliver’s nugget paste right in the goo they make the chicken from. That’s not what I really thought, but I had to consider that as one possible interpretation.

Whatever. It’s not what most people will think, probably, but it does point out that we can’t assume that anyone has seen any other part of our campaign, especially if it’s a TV campaign running in this fragmented media landscape. And we always have to consider how an uninformed person might read the sign, and whether the conclusion they might reach (or the image that might come to mind) isn’t really what we want them to be thinking.

I misinterpreted the bones!

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Filed Under: Advertising, Exploring In Real Time Together, Kind of Funny, News, Opinion

That’s not how you throw a chair, Applebee’s.

April 2, 2013 By 2 Comments

My wife was actually at the IU game where Coach “Anger Issues” Knight threw that infamous chair. It was a childish thing to do, but he was The General and the tolerance in the mid-80s was way, way, way more than zero, so he got by with it.

I guess it’s okay to joke about now, since he’s a harmless senior citizen.

Whatever. He’s not the first person to misbehave in the state of Indiana and turn it into something to talk about for money.

What I will say is this: when a brand starts borrowing old jokes from randomly placed mini-celebrities to sell its $20 Bourbon Street whatever-they-saids, I think they have abandoned any hope of figuring out what makes them different from everybody else. We might enjoy visiting with the celebs and mini-celebs, but whatever implied endorsement they make is pretty irrelevant, and in the end all it does it make you say, “Did you see Knight in that ad? It was for a restaurant or something.”

I think Applebee’s current agency—a talented bunch of people, by reputation—started out trying to position them with at least a clear point of view.

But those days are gone. Apparently.

So many of these big chains struggle to come up with a clear strategy, an “own-able” voice, and a promise that separates them in some way from the next restaurant on the strip by the mall.

So they do a temporary fix. They bask mildly in some other entity’s glow. In the old days we called this “borrowed interest.”

By the way, friend of the blog Eric pointed out that this ad also borrows interest (noticeable if you’re one of the 15 million who viewed this stupid thing) of the following meme bait.

Advice? Do not invest any time in the preceding YouTube video. I’d sooner have you put on the 10-hour loop of Nyan cat. It’s way more enjoyable. (Fun note: I went to get the link for Nyan cat and there was a :15-second ad for Olive Garden right before the ten endless hours begins. Who’s borrowing whose interest, now?)

 

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Filed Under: Advertising, Cliché, Kind of Funny, Opinion, Social Thinking

All you had to do was ask: McDonald’s will serve unfoldable eggs.

March 26, 2013 By Leave a Comment

On the topic of secret menus and knowing what to ask and where to ask it, we have just learned from Serious Eats that people-in-the-know walk up to the counter at McDonald’s and offer a sly sidewise look, maybe a wink, then the phrase, “I’d like my [breakfast sandwich of choice] made with A ROUND EGG.”

And they get real eggs with their [breakfast sandwich of choice]!

Look at the beautiful fold on that egglike substance. Which is apparently a #4.

Look at the beautiful fold on that egglike substance. Which is apparently a #4.

I love it.

You can’t fold round eggs, people. Ray Kroc tried and you can’t.

So the question that remains: will my personal breakfast sandwich of choice (which is a Sausage Biscuit with Egg) be better with a round egg? Or will I emerge disappointed, and feeling sort of weird that I’ve grown to prefer the artificial version of life like the disappointingly evolved humans in Wall-E…?

 

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Filed Under: Exploring In Real Time Together, Kind of Funny, Links To Stories, News

Heidi Klum for Carl’s Jr. / Hardee’s: Four Things I Love, Two Things I Don’t Love.

March 21, 2013 By Leave a Comment

Hardee’s Food Bounce, 1Hardee’s Food Bounce, 2Hardee’s Food Bounce, 3

1. I LOVE HOW THE FOOD BOUNCES AT THE END. Always have. That’s something Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s owns. It’s just terrific food photography—it not only makes the food look good (I think there’s some kind of rule about the food being in motion that food photographers tend to obey), but it also makes the following branded statement:

“We don’t give a flying F, and in fact, we’re casual and macho and care-free, so we’re just going to drop the food, which confidently speaks for itself. Let other restaurants be all fussy. Know what? Let the GD burger just do whatever it does, just drop it, while we smirk at you with a scornful, condemning sneer for not being MAN enough to just go ahead and say ‘flying f**k.’”

2. I LOVE HOW THEY MAKE ALL ADVERTISING AND FOOD-RELATED JOURNALISTS TYPE THE VERY-DIFFICULT-TO-TYPE “Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr.”. It’s really hard to type. But they just say “Eff you! Carpal tunnel it up, Mother Effers. Both words represent established regional brands and we don’t give an F about you. We’re not going to buckle to your pressure. We don’t have to decide? We’re not going to decide.” No comma after Carl’s, for the record. I looked it up.

3. I LOVE WHAT MIKE NICHOLS DID WITH BUCK HENRY’S SCREENPLAY. Here’s an interesting discussion of The Graduate. I always enjoy being reminded of that movie, which this ad apes.

4. I LOVE THE CLARITY OF THIS BRAND. They have identified their target, they have decided that they’re comfortable aiming only at that target, and they virtually never swerve from the path that will lead them to the young, horny dude who will eat a burger the size of the calf of the cow it came from.

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1. I DON’T LOVE FAINTLY (OR NOT-EVEN-FAINTLY) MISOGYNISTIC MARKETING PLATFORMS. I mean, that’s what this is, right? Or is it merely “sexist?” I’m sure the people who work on this have a well-worded rationale for aiming Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. at young men who watch pornography. They can probably explain to their friends the difference between this and Hooter’s or those GoDaddy embarrassments. But let’s not be coy: The fantasy lady curves. The salacious licking and sultry eyes. The poses, the make-up, the total comfort with the juicy nature of the big burger—I suppose there are women who are empowered by pornography, but there are a whole lot more who are uncomfortable with the idea that they are mostly “about” their bodies. I think Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. is/are [see #2 in the previous list, dammit] perpetuating the idea that women are a Wonderland, as it were, and that’s about it. Plus these incredible BABES even eat sloppy, like the young men they were put here to please. It’s the punchline of an as-yet-unwritten dirty joke.

2. I DON’T LOVE FEELING LIKE I’VE BEEN HERE ABOUT A MILLION TIMES. I do believe in brand consistency. I do believe in setting up expectations and then meeting them. I don’t know if I believe Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. ads are anything more than ‘on a rail.’ There are plenty of consistent campaigns out there that continue to find ways to surprise me.

Hardee’s/Carl’s Jr. is not one of those campaigns. It never surprises me. It makes me uncomfortable when I’m watching TV with my daughter. It maintains my grudging respect for understanding how the brand would handle any given situation, but it’s wearing thin. I get it. Sexy girls will pretend they like your burgers for money, and your audience will show its appreciation by driving up and handing money through a hole in the side of your restaurant.

But I don’t love it if you’re just doing it out of habit, night after night, and the fire is out.

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Filed Under: Advertising, Kind of Funny, Opinion
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