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Food Is The Next Fashion

 
Chef Tory McPhail, Commander’s Palace, and Andy Ford, talk about The Food Channel Gulf Tour, enjoying an Abita, a local beer brand.

There’s a very enlightening article you might want to read on fashion that sets out just how quickly the lines are disappearing between editorial content and paid advertising. The article states that as more branded fashion content appears on the web, “editorial is the new advertising.”

You can understand how fashion is leading the way. People have always loved fashion. They are fascinated by what’s in, what’s out, the international influences, the everyday sources of inspiration from the street up, and the excitement of the runways as the big fashion brands expose their latest creations. Now fashion is leading the way into transmedia by creating fashion content and telling stories that become part of the conversation in social media. The “sell” is more believable than advertising because the information is disseminated in a more entertaining and comfortable context—one the viewer chooses.

As brands unobtrusively become a natural part of the stories, the editorial takes over the selling job once dominated by advertising.

To my way of thinking, food fits this same formula—which explains how food is rapidly moving toward the same position fashion is pioneering. Like fashion, food is very much on the minds of people. Next to what they wear, what they eat is vitally important to people every day. Various foods become fashionable and then fall from grace, international influences create new categories, hot young chefs inspire consumer trends, and big brands introduce their creations at annual events.

Food is the ultimate social currency and connects naturally with the new social patterns, connections, and conversations.

You really don’t have to look very far to see how food is becoming the next fashion. Cable TV is highly populated with “chef” programs and competitions. Food magazines and travel books are filled with feature articles about food and food trends that give people much to try and even more to talk about.

Our own Food Channel is breaking new ground in transmedia branded editorial.

When banner ads stop, the advertising stops—but that’s not the case with branded editorial. It has a life of its own. The story travels into the conversations of the people who find it interesting. It moves from branded to earned media. As the story gets passed along, the featured brand becomes part of the lives of the people it touches. They eat it up. As a food brand, isn’t that what you want?

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

Bob

Are You Willing to Explore Life and Exploit What You Find?

I’m talking about the digital life that explores the future needs of the marketplace. If you exploit those needs, you can create, sustain, and grow a business.

 

Sounds simple, right? Yes, it is simple—but absolutely not easy.

 

In life’s new digital age, digital agencies and traditional agencies alike are missing the mark.

 

The new digital agencies are great at overwhelming their clients with all the wonderful creative bells and whistles to dazzle and entertain. They will explore possibilities until you stop them. But they have difficulty making it all happen in a way that makes sense.

 

The traditional agencies, on the other hand, are not as good at exploring what can be done on the web—but, if a client has an idea or a direction, they are adept at exploiting it. They always have been. They did it with radio and television, and they are doing it with the web. Where they fall short is in pushing the boundaries of exploration.

 

I’m an explorer who likes to exploit. And I think the answer to the inadequacies both of digital and traditional agencies is to explore AND exploit.

 

It’s time to turn curiosity about what comes next into real action. Explore first, then make it happen. Clients are demanding leadership. They’re not quite sure of exactly what they need, but they do know for certain that they need something.

 

The solution, as I see it, is to help clients change their cultures.

 

If you can help them see why they need to make the transition from buying an audience to earning an audience, you’ll set them on the new course. They will soon learn that they need to give to get; that they need to go from monologue to dialogue; and that, in the new web and digital age, it’s all about becoming a publisher.

 

“Okay, that’s a great theory. Can you show me what you’ve done?”

 

That’s a question I’m very happy to answer. To see all this theory put into action, just click through to The Food Channel®.

 

We pioneered this site for the food industry, to give everyone an example of what I mean by being in the publishing business. It’s a site dedicated to “All things food.” It’s a living, instantly changing, extremely generous site that gives people a reason to come back to it several times a day. It’s a dialogue site that covers events, offers videos, provides recipes, gives people a virtual water cooler for hanging out, and even puts forth perspectives both on the consumer and the business sides of food. It’s an ongoing story that gets fed daily. It’s simple, transparent, and all about people and food; and, if you use a little imagination, it could be about cars, or home improvement, or travel, or just about anything.

 

New dialogue sites such as The Food Channel are the future—not only of communications, but also of business as a whole.

 

I don’t have to show you articles to spell this out for you, although I have them; you can find them in any major publication that is analyzing the advertising and communication industry. All signs are pointing to the way we’ve decided to go.

 

We’re exploring life like the new digital agencies, and exploiting it with a well-thought-out marketing plan like a traditional agency would.

 

It takes wild creativity and sound discipline to make it in the new communication world. It’s what life is telling us it needs.

 

That’s it, from the edge of the world,

 

Bob

 

Note: this entry is a response to the article “Why Digital Agencies Aren’t Ready to Lead,” published in Advertising Age® and written by Ana Andjelic. In the article, Ana Andjelic comments on organizational theorist James March’s exploration vs. exploitation dichotomy. Her article was originally published on her blog, i [love] marketing.

 

 

Image: Lewis and Clark West to the Pacific by Frank R. "Bob" Davenport. Photo and copyright held by the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, Inc.

Watch the CultureWaves™!

Each culture wave is the result of sifting through ever-changing patterns of life and linking them together in unexpected ways. Because it reflects the changing nature of life, a culture wave is never static. It lives, matures, or dies based on the cultural behavior it represents. That is why it is so important to watch how each wave changes over time.

We’ve been tracking our own take on what’s happening in the culture for almost three years now and currently are monitoring more than 34 different waves. It’s fascinating to me to see that some of what’s showing up as mainstream CultureWaves™ today surfaced back then as subtle shifts in cultural behavior. 

I thought you might like to take a peak at a sample of our mainstreaming, growing, and emerging CultureWaves. Each wave is accompanied by a quote illustrating the human truth that it represents. If these CultureWaves give you ideas, well, they should.  Mainstreaming and growing waves tell you what’s happening now; but the new ones, the emerging waves, have the potential of giving you a glimpse into the future. And that’s always worth a look.

These waves have tremendous societal impact on culture in the marketplace. If you see something that intrigues you, or want to know more, contact me. I’d love to hear which waves catch your attention.

1. CLOCKLESS

Hyper-life consumers find 24-hour solutions.

You respond when your body calls out, especially when it’s hungry, wants entertainment, or desires to buy. Our 24/7 society is subject to spur-of-the moment gratifications that can be satisfied instantly. And it’s made possible because of cell phones, pagers, computers, and other mobile devices that get us what we want even as we run to our next commitment.

“I want what I want when I want it!”

2. SENSORY APPEAL

Targeting the senses with new textures, colors, tastes, and sounds.

Activating the senses is becoming more and more ubiquitous. Our bodies create emotions based on reaction to sensory stimulus and seek enjoyment in the results. As a result, we are constantly looking for new ways to be stimulated.

“I’ll take the one that appeals to all my senses.”

3. BODY WARRANTY

Pushing our body beyond its limits.

Where’s a Fountain of Youth when you need one? If we can’t get it through magic, we get it through technology. When you connect the desire for immortality with the pervasive ability of technology to improve the body’s performance, you can see why people are demanding more out of their bodies.

“I want more out of my body than ever before.”

4. GREEN HOT

The return to nature by force.

Environmentalism isn’t just for tree huggers anymore. Large numbers of people are rallying to influence the good health of the planet. Their passion drives them to embrace perceptual concepts such as Healthy, Organic, Whole, and Sourced. This “green is good” ethos is shifting how companies are acting and investing.

“I’m not asking you to go green; I’m telling you.”

The Flip That Will Fuel the Future

The world is being rocked today by a seismic shift created by life forces all converging into a new way of looking at things.

Design, technology, entertainment, and well-being are all converging at record speeds to influence our culture, our markets, our businesses, and our lives in ways we’ve never experienced before. And it’s all happening in real time, from moment-to-moment from person-to-person, with intimacy never before possible.

The fact that communities can be formed on the Web overnight to react either to world events or simply to a new product introduction is an amazing phenomenon. This and other radical cultural evolutions must be harnessed if a company hopes to survive with any consistent measure of future success.

Right now, today, most companies have their eyes trained on exactly the wrong thing. They are fixated on their equity when they should be focused on the insights that will drive their futures.

Clash? or Cash?

Ever since someone decided to buy a loaf of bread rather than raising the wheat and baking it, culture and marketing have been giving each other clues to success. But anyone who’s ever launched a new product knows, if you’re not in tune with the culture, if you clash—you lose. Nothing is more of a moving target than American culture. Of course when you catch a wave, the payoff can be big.

I see our culture as a shape-shifting steady ebb and flow of old and new, established tradition and rebellion, facts and new facts, emotional ties and passionate breaks from the past.

In today’s marketing world it is vitally important to constantly be updated on what’s happening in the world—to make sure what you’re doing is going to catch that next big wave. With the need for speed in creating multimedia plans, including mass, B2B, and one-to-one communications, there’s no such thing as a slow build. You must be able to grab an emerging trend, figure out how it connects to your consumer, and then ride the build in the culture and the marketplace. When it reaches the mainstream the gold rush is over. You don’t want to be the last miner in the mine.

Whittling the Challenge Down to Size

You would have to be oblivious to the daily business news not to be aware of China’s explosive economic growth. The relaxation of investment laws, the insatiable desire for technology, inexpensive labor, and an urban market with developing Western tastes are fueling great demand for multinational brands, which now compete with local brands throughout China.

Doing business in China may seem like a daunting challenge, like the proverbial task of trying to eat an elephant—doable only if you take it one bite at a time. The reality is that China is now becoming susceptible to the same kind of marketing “bites” deployed in the U.S.A., where each planned effort targets a particular consumer group with specific needs.

Marketing in China is a matter of understanding the market. China is no longer a one-size-fits-all market. Differentiation and market segmentation are taking hold in what used to be a very monolithic market. What people eat, wear, and drive differ greatly from north to south, east to west, rich to poor, young to old, city to countryside.

Buzz Is the Buzz

In the last 30 days both Adweek and Advertising Age presented special sections featuring Word-Of-Mouth (WOM) or Buzz Marketing. This pollination of prospective buyers through swarms of paid citizen agents is taking on more and more importance and getting more organized all the time.

There is even a Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) with hundreds of marketers, agencies, and research companies as members. And, according to the Ad Age article on November 28, the member marketers are big. The list includes DuPont, Best Buy Co., and SC Johnson. Dell, the article states, has created a position for its own “word-of-mouth marketing manager.”

Unlike the happy circumstance in the mid-eighties that created buzz around Michael Jordon’s refusal to stop wearing his NBA-league-banned Nike’s, this new wave of buzz is organized down to staging events, giving products to people who agree to promote them, and paying people to mention or push products on their personal blogs. (DuPont? Best Buy? Nike? Are you getting the hint here?) This formalizing of the process is a way of making happen what used to happen naturally.

Hairball Management

As the CEO of an independent advertising agency, the toughest corporate malady I fight every year is the organization’s hairball. It just seems that no matter what we do, the agency body starts to sputter and cough if we don’t apply some preventative medicine. It has to be done. Because as any cat owner will tell you, if the hairball gets big enough the cat will suffer.

By “hairball” I mean structural tangle—all the balled-up process confusion that can occur naturally in the course of a year or sometimes during a phase the company is going through.

In our agency, the problem, as I’ve observed it, usually occurs because of growth. We, like most businesses, outgrow our structure and then get bogged down in trying to live in the past—something I believe is unhealthy and downright detrimental.

Someone once put the need to manage healthy growth this way: “How big do you have to be before you get bad?” I’ve asked myself that many times about our place; but for 2006 I think the following question is more appropriate: “If we’re so good how come we’re not growing?”

I think it’s a hairball problem.

The Great Ice Age of Mainline Media

It took thousands of years for The Great Ice Age to crush mountains in its path, gouge out huge valleys of solid rock, and totally resurface one-third of the earth. According to information published by eMarketer, Inc., the use of broadband has moved from 35% to 42% to 53% in less than 2 years! That’s an Internet ice age that’s overtaking mainline media in rapid fashion.  It’s only a matter of time before the new medium becomes THE medium. But there’s still some life in the old woolly media mammoths.

An article on the September 28 front page of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) spells out how “Big Media Firms Dig Into War Chests for Latest Assault on the Internet.” It’s not surprising that companies such as Viacom International Inc., News Corporation and Time Warner Inc. are buying up Internet properties as fast as they can. With broadband access now reaching more than half of the 73 million cable television homes, the Internet is a substantial competitor for distributing movies, TV, and even TV-like webivision commercials.

They Have the Control and They’ll Never Let Go

It started with the remote control.  Now it’s out of control.  Consumers, viewers, kids, ethnic groups, women, men, gays, baby boomers—everybody, it seems, has taken control of the marketplace.  We have gone from media control, to manufacturer control, to consumer control.  From the networks, to big box retailers, to online ordering.  And everything you read tells you consumers hate, yes hate, being sold the old-fashioned way.

The days of running ads on the networks to carpet bomb your target audience into buying submission are on a farewell tour.  Even the networks are admitting it.  In an ABC online article by Eric Noe he states, “For years, marketing and advertising has been based on ‘share of voice,’ but with a fragmented consumer base that now actively dodges advertising, more ads do not guarantee more resonance.”  That, from ABC!