This weekend, I was taking a break. I've just traveled a lot so I felt as though a weekend with a lot of napping, television, family time and relaxation was in order. As I was channel hopping, I ran across the British version of Hell's Kitchen on BBC America. Gordon Ramsey was working with a classic British pub, that was trying to sell complex, gourmet sauce dripping meals that were completely inconsistent with a cozy British pub.
The owner kept saying how he wanted to do something different, that people would remember. Finally, Ramsey convinced them to sell good, hearty pub food. After that decision, he pushed them to do something remarkable. He had them walk the streets of their town, with a bull horn, asking the people to join the pub as they launched the campaign for real gravy. They handed out Yorkshire Pudding drizzled with "real" gravy, to the delight of the pedestrians.
This was pure brilliance and makes tremendous marketing sense.
What Ramsey did was help them find something to talk about that was not only buzz-worthy but made sense to the brand they were building. Gees, we could learn a lesson from this. Our goal is to create marketing that taps into consumer's points of passion in a remarkable way, but to do it, in a way that it "fits" with the brand.
That's why we work hard to audit both the brand and the consumer to understand where these points of passion "connect." Without understanding both sides of the equation, social media can and probably will fall flat on it's face.
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