In Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin writes about dining critic Joanne Kates:
One of my dearest friends is Joanne Kates, the restaurant critic for The Globe and Mail, the most important newspaper in Toronto. Joanne carries a credit card with someone else’s name on it (I promised I wouldn’t say who). Despite her precautions, her picture is posted in the kitchen of dozens of top restaurants. Why? Because once a restaurant knows that Joanne is wearing a wig and sitting in the dining room, the staff can influence the review.
Once a server knows it’s her, he can make sure the service is perfect, the food is hot, and the check is calculated properly. Once he knows it’s her, he can guarantee that the staff will do their best.
Seth goes on to explain what is wrong with this strategy under the rules of New Marketing:
You’ve already guessed the problem with this strategy. The problem is Zagats (and Chowhound.com, and a thousand other restaurant blogs). There isn’t just one Joanne Kates in Toronto anymore. Now there are thousands.
You can no longer be on the lookout for Joanne. Now you have to be on the lookout for everyone.
Joanne is everywhere - there are thousands of people walking the earth with PageRank 4 or better blogs at their fingertips, ready to heap praise (or crap) on every remarkable experience.
I’ve done this a dozen times - rewarded a truly wonderful experience with praise, and been critical of a bad experience. Within an hour yesterday, Donna and I had two remarkably contrasting experiences:
- A good chat with the guy that owns Plonk around boutique Ciders (he is knowledgeable and genuinely interested in customer experiences) - and we’re happy to recommend his shop to friends (and we know several people who are happy to do the same). We bought a mixed half-dozen Montieth’s beers, a Trappistes Rochefort No 10 ‘heavy’ for after-dinner enjoyment, and we plan to return.
- A disinterested and contradictory set of serving staff at the Belgian Beer Cafe in Kingston. Their all-day menu shows that the Moules Moutarde (mussels in mustard) have bacon with them - when no bacon appeared in our Moules, we asked the waitress if we had the right dish, and she checked with the kitchen who told her that there was no bacon in this dish. What we had tasted good, but it wasn’t what we ordered - and we would never have noticed at all if we hadn’t had to wait so long for it to turn up. We didn’t make a fuss, but we won’t be going back, and we won’t be recommending it to friends.
Can you see the difference between the two experiences? Both were remarkable - in one, the service provider cared and the beer seemed to taste better for it - in the other, there was a notable lack of care, and it cheapened the experience for us. No big deal either way, but we both have blogs, and both of us are happy to talk about it.
If you run a business, read Meatball Sundae. If you take nothing else away from it but this then it is time and money well invested - that there are thousands of Joannes out there just waiting for you to do something truly great for them (or screw them around). Either way, they will talk about it.
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