She was a lovely lady whom I happened to meet at one of the gatherings that I sometimes attend. Over coffee a few days afterward, she shared her story with us and how she'd come thus far.
We chatted for a couple of hours, parted ways after that, and sad to say, didn't have an opportunity to meet again.
I haven't kept in touch with her either.
Not because we disagreed or anything like that, but because the solutions we felt were necessary needed far more effort than the short-term, quick-fix solutions she was hoping for.
She was hoping for a quick sale of her fine dining place.
We were suggesting that the business overhaul some of her present marketing and PR efforts to engage the right market and raise its value before going for a sale.
I think she was a lil more tired of the whole d*** business than she would openly admit.
Someone else might have boldly shared their lamentations to anyone and everyone willing to hear, but not this lady, not this dignified, well groomed lady with a special-enough background.
Honestly, I do empathize.
If you come from a background that has had a good reputation and established certification in fine dining, it is going to be very difficult to understand why, even with the right influencer marketing strategy, you're still losing out to the casual dining sphere.
I shan't specify which cuisine it was but let's just say that it was something very close to her heart, and she believed that she had the structure and everything down pat to the details. Her chefs had excellent skills and even better background experience, her dishes were expensive, yes, but the ingredients were of the finest quality and she did not compromise on quality nor on flavour or presentation. Add to that, she shared, she offered diners a comfortable, simple, uncluttered place with modern décor that catered to groups big and small, and she had dishes on the menu of both the casual and fine category.
So why, she wondered, was it not gaining traction with the right customers? Why was it that, despite her best efforts, the customers she desired were not turning up at her establishment, and instead going to the very casual ones?
It didn't make sense, she shared.
"'I'm not just offering the best of (region) cuisine, you know. I'm also offering (trending street food) and it is not expensive. The (region) food is expensive, yes, but the ingredients are specially flown in and prepared exactly the same way as they have always been prepared for (privileged customers), so of course it cannot be of low price. But the (trending street food) is similar to elsewhere."
The fact that the ROI from extensive influencer marketing was lower than hoped for befuddled her even further. It wasn't possible, she said, that she had targeted the right market and yet... they were not turning up. Not only were they not turning up, they were going elsewhere! To places that offered... very casual food in very casual atmospheres!
I guess this is one of the misconceptions people sometimes have about influencer marketing and the like. It is often perceived, thanks to the efforts from the fashion industry (!) that luxury products, fine foods, and jet-setting lifestyles can bring in the millennial and Gen Z marketing with the efforts of influencer marketing and social media strategies.
But sometimes- sometimes- it doesn't always happen that way.
Let's go back to what Marketing really is. If I recall correctly, marketing and advertising is about convincing a person to spend money on something that they believe they want, or need. It can be a new shampoo, or a shirt, or a pair of shoes, or a piece of jewelry. But because no one company has an unlimited budget and unlimited time, we embark on target markets and target consumers. We arrow our campaigns, our brands, even the message of the brand into the heads and hearts of specified consumers whom we want to spend. On the flip side, then, would not the said target market have an obvious lack that the business, with their marketing efforts, determines to fill?
Thing is, the lack can get rather glaring... making reality more practical than what we see on the Instagram pics, and even way, way different from what we see.
We don't want to go into whether this is true or not- after all, we could be wrong- but it is not hard to take a glance at some of the spending trends and do the sums.
It is also not hard to look at some of the money diaries and determine what the difference between yearning and reality is.
A solemn realization it might be, but if one does, it is easy to come to the conclusion that whilst xennials, millennials and Gen Z all work hard to enable comfortable lifestyles and products of good quality for themselves and their loved ones, it is a journey getting there.
They aren't afraid to say that they're not there yet. In fact, some of them have boldly glamorized the "road" to there, plushing up the commonplace stuff and their normal, ordinary lives into a distinctive lifestyle of their own.
After all, if some of the top influencers in their glam shots, their exotic locales, their delish food, their jet setting lifestyles, and luxuries can openly claim that there is more to that than meets the eye, and that they work hard for their s***, then companies marketing the finer things in life will have to take more than a couple of blogposts and a couple of Instagram pictures from everyone else to get their friends and followers to come.
We chatted for a couple of hours, parted ways after that, and sad to say, didn't have an opportunity to meet again.
I haven't kept in touch with her either.
Not because we disagreed or anything like that, but because the solutions we felt were necessary needed far more effort than the short-term, quick-fix solutions she was hoping for.
She was hoping for a quick sale of her fine dining place.
We were suggesting that the business overhaul some of her present marketing and PR efforts to engage the right market and raise its value before going for a sale.
I think she was a lil more tired of the whole d*** business than she would openly admit.
Someone else might have boldly shared their lamentations to anyone and everyone willing to hear, but not this lady, not this dignified, well groomed lady with a special-enough background.
Honestly, I do empathize.
If you come from a background that has had a good reputation and established certification in fine dining, it is going to be very difficult to understand why, even with the right influencer marketing strategy, you're still losing out to the casual dining sphere.
I shan't specify which cuisine it was but let's just say that it was something very close to her heart, and she believed that she had the structure and everything down pat to the details. Her chefs had excellent skills and even better background experience, her dishes were expensive, yes, but the ingredients were of the finest quality and she did not compromise on quality nor on flavour or presentation. Add to that, she shared, she offered diners a comfortable, simple, uncluttered place with modern décor that catered to groups big and small, and she had dishes on the menu of both the casual and fine category.
So why, she wondered, was it not gaining traction with the right customers? Why was it that, despite her best efforts, the customers she desired were not turning up at her establishment, and instead going to the very casual ones?
It didn't make sense, she shared.
"'I'm not just offering the best of (region) cuisine, you know. I'm also offering (trending street food) and it is not expensive. The (region) food is expensive, yes, but the ingredients are specially flown in and prepared exactly the same way as they have always been prepared for (privileged customers), so of course it cannot be of low price. But the (trending street food) is similar to elsewhere."
The fact that the ROI from extensive influencer marketing was lower than hoped for befuddled her even further. It wasn't possible, she said, that she had targeted the right market and yet... they were not turning up. Not only were they not turning up, they were going elsewhere! To places that offered... very casual food in very casual atmospheres!
I guess this is one of the misconceptions people sometimes have about influencer marketing and the like. It is often perceived, thanks to the efforts from the fashion industry (!) that luxury products, fine foods, and jet-setting lifestyles can bring in the millennial and Gen Z marketing with the efforts of influencer marketing and social media strategies.
But sometimes- sometimes- it doesn't always happen that way.
Let's go back to what Marketing really is. If I recall correctly, marketing and advertising is about convincing a person to spend money on something that they believe they want, or need. It can be a new shampoo, or a shirt, or a pair of shoes, or a piece of jewelry. But because no one company has an unlimited budget and unlimited time, we embark on target markets and target consumers. We arrow our campaigns, our brands, even the message of the brand into the heads and hearts of specified consumers whom we want to spend. On the flip side, then, would not the said target market have an obvious lack that the business, with their marketing efforts, determines to fill?
Thing is, the lack can get rather glaring... making reality more practical than what we see on the Instagram pics, and even way, way different from what we see.
We don't want to go into whether this is true or not- after all, we could be wrong- but it is not hard to take a glance at some of the spending trends and do the sums.
It is also not hard to look at some of the money diaries and determine what the difference between yearning and reality is.
A solemn realization it might be, but if one does, it is easy to come to the conclusion that whilst xennials, millennials and Gen Z all work hard to enable comfortable lifestyles and products of good quality for themselves and their loved ones, it is a journey getting there.
They aren't afraid to say that they're not there yet. In fact, some of them have boldly glamorized the "road" to there, plushing up the commonplace stuff and their normal, ordinary lives into a distinctive lifestyle of their own.
After all, if some of the top influencers in their glam shots, their exotic locales, their delish food, their jet setting lifestyles, and luxuries can openly claim that there is more to that than meets the eye, and that they work hard for their s***, then companies marketing the finer things in life will have to take more than a couple of blogposts and a couple of Instagram pictures from everyone else to get their friends and followers to come.