Many folks that know me know that in the aftermath of the 2001 dot-com crash, I opened a restaurant in NYC's West Village with the belief that there was no long-term future in running a digital agency. After working 2 jobs for 3 years I (thankfully) figured out that my future actually was in digital marketing but that's not really the point of this post...
Believe it or not, my involvement in the food biz somewhat naturally led to a broader interest in food, cooking, restaurants, etc. that persists to this day. So, yesterday, when reading a blog post from outgoing NY Times food critic Frank Bruni, I was struck for the first time by parallels in the process of creating great digital experiences and creating a great restaurant. (In many ways, this is sort of an extension of my last blog post.)
In a companion piece to his 4-star review of Eleven Madison Park, Bruni explained how and why a restaurant that merited a mere 2-stars five years ago, could elevate itself to the rarefied world of 4-star dining.
1. According to Bruni, Eleven Madison Park was a restaurant that insisted on improving. How? Discipline, perfectionism, and impeccably high standards. Similarly, without these kind of aspirations in digital marketing, it’s impossible to achieve 4-star results.
In digital marketing, there’s an also an understanding that a key component of achieving these type of standards is to meet data-driven key performance indicators. And that rigorous, on-going testing, measurement and optimization is the logical, rational path to success.
2. “Restaurants do improve in fundamental, noteworthy ways, taking customer feedback and reviewers’ comments to heart.” This is a great parallel for embracing customer insights accrued within social media campaigns, via usability testing or through other feedback mechanisms.
3. Desire To Share: In the same way that most of today’s most successful digital marketing campaigns harness consumers’ desire to share experiences via Twitter, Facebook and other social networking channels, Bruni factors his eagerness to tell people about the dishes he’d had and the pleasure he’d experienced into his measures of success.
4. Gut Feeling: Bruni explains that at the end of the day, the difference between a 3 and 4 star rating isn’t necessarily scientific. His years of experience give him valuable criteria for analysis, in the same way that a deep track record in digital marketing provide great insights into the success or failure of specific campaigns or components therof.
Restaurants have been around forever but digital marketing is still a relatively new field. (At Flightpath we often reference our “constantly evolving skillset”.) So, I think we’re fortunate to be able to derive good ideas and best practices from examples of excellence that are all around us – even if they’re decidedly un-digital.
