15 Food Stories to Pitch to the Media Right Now

Summertime is here and with it comes a lot of opportunities to pitch stories to the media about your food and wine. So what kind of stories would appeal to them?

First, we need to know the development time-frame of the various media outlets.

• TV: 2-3 weeks
• Radio: 2-4 weeks
• Newspapers: 2-4 weeks.
• Magazines: 4-6 months.

So what stories are they looking for now?


TV, Radio, Newspapers, stories such as…..

• Grilling and outdoor dining.
• Lighter wines for hot summer days (think “July”)
• Wines that go well with gourmet hot dogs (or burgers or BBQ chicken).
• New types of refreshing non-alcoholic drinks
• Grilling “secrets” for tastier foods
• Reviews of new types of outdoor cooking equipment
• How to pack a romantic picnic for two.

Magazines:
Thanksgiving and Christmas (really). Stories such as….

• Cooking the perfect turkey
• Side dishes that can be made the night before
• 11 tasty dishes that use leftover turkey
• Christmas breakfasts
• How to cook a turkey faster
• Meals that DON’T use turkey that your family will love
• Basting with wine: should you use red or white?
• 7 wines to serve AFTER Thanksgiving dinner

The possibilities are endless. Think of the experiments you do in the kitchen or new ideas you try in your restaurant…that can be the basis of a good story.

I have several friends who are chefs, and they’re always thinking of new flavor combinations or they’re trying out new equipment and techniques. If you do that sort of thing, announce it to the media!

The culinary media is always interested in new ideas, so send them yours. And when you tie it into the time of year, your chances of getting covered are that much greater.

How to Get Regular Predictable Publicity

How a Well-Known Company Gets Dependable Publicity

As you know, I’m a big advocate of using the “National XXXX Day” to get publicity (National Hamburger Day, National Ice Cream Day, etc.) There is a well-known company that takes advantage of a special “Day”, and they reap a lot of publicity for it every year. The company is Dunkin’ Donuts, and the day is National Doughnut Day.

The first Friday of June is “National Doughnut Day”. Every year Dunkin’ Donuts has a special promotion: when you buy a cup of DD’s coffee, you’ll get a free doughnut. This always gets them publicity because it’s tied into a specific day and it’s a benefit to the readers of newspapers and online news.

Dunkin’ Donuts sends out press releases to all of the major periodicals, and they also send them out to the trade magazines. In the screenshot below you’ll see how Dunkin’ Donuts has gotten free press from a number of periodicals, including National Restaurant News, the biggest food trade magazine in the industry. This is particularly telling because Dunkin’ Donuts has been doing this promo for years, but it’s still good enough to get an article in NRN. (Sorry the pic below is blurry...I don't know why.)

How YOU can take advantage of the National “Days”:

1. Create a list of your menu items.
2. Create a list of the ingredients you use. Especially any specialty ingredients.
3. Search the internet by typing the words “National (your ingredient/Menu Item)” into Google.
4. When you find a day that fits an ingredient or menu item, write down the date.
5. Create a promotion around it.
6. Put together a press release and send it out to the local media.

For example, let’s say you own an Italian restaurant and your lasagna is beyond compare. You type “National lasagna” into Google and the first listing is for National Lasagna Day, July 29. Plenty of time to create a promo! Put something together, put out a press release, and invite all the media down to your place of business to take part in the lasagna festivities.

It’s really that easy. And with all the different “days” that exist, you have a lot of opportunities to create promos and announce them to the press.

There are at least 416 food-related “days” that you can take advantage of, so it’s to your advantage to look for ways to exploit them. Yes, it takes some work, but it’s worth it in terms of getting publicity. (And, to be honest, this is why some restaurants will hire a marketing/PR person to do this for them. We creative and way-too-driven types are always thinking up promos like this, and we don’t mind doing the work).

Even if you don’t hire someone to help with this, I highly recommend that you invest the time to select the top five most profitable items on your menu and do a search to see if there’s a national “day” set aside for any of them. Because if there is a “day”, you could be following in Dunkin’ Donuts’ footsteps and getting regular publicity for your specialties. And that’s a good path to follow.

Gordon

Good Days in June for Publicity

Get Publicity in June Using Food-Related Days

June is here, and with it comes summer! Grilling, barbecue, and lots of outdoor foods and activities. With a little creativity, you can position your foods with the media so that they’ll produce stories about you.

Now’s the time because with the warm weather there are a lot of barbecues, etc., and people are looking for something new and different for their outdoor dining.

Food Related Days in June 2010:

June is:
• Dairy Month
• Turkey Lovers Month
• Iced Tea Month
• Beef Steak Month
• Frozen Yogurt Month (!!)

Select Days in June:
June 3: Rocky Road Day
June 4: Frozen Yogurt Day
June 9: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie Day
June 13: Lobster Day
June 14: Strawberry Shortcake Day
June 19: Martini Day (!)
June 20: Vanilla Milkshake Day
June 25: Strawberry Parfait Day
June 30: Ice Cream Soda Day

Need some ideas?
Here are a few headlines from past June issues of food magazines.
• Best grilled BLT sandwich
• Desserts cooked on a grill
• Ice cream sundaes for lazy days
• Great wines for grilled food
• 20 fast sauces and salsas
• 10 smart tips for easy grilling

Be creative with your recipes: Showing a TV audience how to make a sundae using praline ice cream and nectarine-red wine sauce will get plenty of attention on June 24, Creamy Pralines Day.

So come up with some interesting food or wine ideas for the “days” of June. It can get you a lot of publicity.

And to prove it, in the next blog post I’m going to tell you about a recurring “day” in June that one well-known food company takes advantage of and gets tons of publicity AND tons of new business every year. So come back and learn!

See you at the next post!

The one time you don't want to give out food samples

Handing out samples of your food and wine is a great way to get customers - once they try your foods, they're very likely to come to your place of business.

But there's one time when you should NOT give out samples of your food or wine. When's that? When you’re trying to get the attention of a media reporter. Sending food or wine samples could potentially put the reporters in a delicate position that might conflict with their code of ethics.

All media outlets have strict codes of ethics because the media strives to maintain its objectivity and avoid giving any impression of conflict of interest. (As a really obvious example of conflict, in the political arena this can be seen as favorable articles about a politician shortly after the politician gives a job to a family member of a newspaper editor).

But what about food writing? Surely conflict of interest can’t happen there, can it? It’s possible! Any perception of special preferences could possibly raise questions about objectivity. And any kind of “gift” to a specific reporter -even a food sample - could be potentially perceived as creating a conflict of interest.

Most media outlets deal with it in the same manner: they don’t allow accepting ANY food samples. Samples that are sent to a reporter are usually taken to a central location in the building and then donated to a charity (if possible) or thrown out. This includes cookbooks or other food-related books.

What CAN you do?
Can you invite a reporter to your restaurant? Absolutely! Can you offer them a discount if they eat at your restaurant? Only if the discount is offered to everyone at the restaurant. So if Tuesday night is always “half-price” night at your restaurant, it’s perfectly acceptable to tell them about it because everyone who comes to your restaurant gets the half-price special. Whether or not the reporter takes advantage of it is their choice. And the reporter will discuss the situation with their editor to determine if that’s acceptable behavior. But it’s NOT acceptable to tell the reporter “Come on down to my restaurant and I’ll give you your dinner for free”.

What about giving out samples when you’re booked as a guest on a TV program? That’s acceptable in the studio because you’re already a guest – you’re not trying to influence them. It’s only natural to bring in food, so take in lots of food and make sure everyone can get to it.

Radio programs are the same way. If you’re already a guest it’s acceptable to bring in lots of food for everyone to try. Just make sure EVERYONE can get to the samples. That way there’s no perceived favoritism.

If you’re not sure of the code of ethics of a media outlet, check their website. Most media outlets will post their code for everyone to read. If they don’t, you can always call and ask.

What about bloggers and social media?
What about the “new” media, specifically, bloggers? They’ve come under the watchful eye of the government as well. In 2009 the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) created clear guidelines for businesses looking to establish relationships with online publishers.

According to the FTC’s updated stance, bloggers, Twitterers, and other online reviewers are now required to disclose their “material connection” with corporate sponsors or advertisers. As of December 1, 2009, businesses are now legally required to disclose gifts or payments to bloggers and other online writers used to subsidize posts dedicated to their product(s). The FTC also updated its endorsement and testimonial rules, now holding celebrity endorsers liable for false statements about a product. Each infringement of these rules will cost the guilty party (i.e. the business) $11,000.

Be aware and you'll be fine
What this all means is: be aware of possible ethics conflicts whenever you’re thinking of offering a sample to a reporter. Make sure that you don’t put a reporter or their office into a possible uncomfortable or questionable situation. Remember – you want to build a relationship with the reporter and the media outlet. Knowing their code of ethics and abiding by it shows that you care about them and thereby makes you more desirable as a source of information for their stories.

“How large should my press kit be?”

I'm asked that question every now and then when I’m working with a client.

The answer is: “Not very big”.

Save some serious money:
For some reason many people feel that when they first approach the media they should send a huge press kit with glossy photos of themselves and their food or wine, a lengthy bio, and copies of everything they’ve ever written in their lives, and then put all that into colorful embossed 9x12 folder. And then add a copy of their book (if they’ve written one).

You don’t need all that. Save yourself the money.

Why don’t you need it? Because it may not get read. Why? Two reasons:

1. Media people are really, really busy and just don’t have the time to go through something lengthy.
2. They get a lot of them every day. Large-city publications can get up to 100 press kits per day!
   

Many times, big fancy press kits are thrown away. The unsolicited kits are almost always thrown away. Sure, it’s a waste, but when the media folks are buried with work, it just isn't gotten to. Never send unsolicited press kits. They won’t do you any good.

What to do when the reporter says “Send me something”:
Send them enough information to support the story that you suggested in your press release (or your phone pitch). Don’t bury them with a lot of extra material.

For example, when I got Lisa Reinhardt the chocolatier onto a local TV station, I first sent a press release suggesting the story that the antioxidants in dark chocolate helps prevent heart disease. That got attention.

When I was asked to “send some information”, I sent:

1. Two photos of Lisa’s chocolates.
2. Short excerpts of clinical research that showed how dark chocolate had, indeed, helped prevent heart problems (One page, six paragraphs, important points highlighted).
3. A short (one page, two paragraphs) bio of Lisa.
4. A list of suggested questions for Lisa. (One page).

Notice the “theme” that runs through that? All of it was laid out so that the reporter would get the gist of the message by quickly scanning the pages.

So what should YOU send?
First, remember that it has to support the story you suggested to them. So (for example) if you’re a winery and you’ve gotten interest in a story about your Chardonnay that pairs well with ice cream, you would send:

1. A short bio of yourself and your winery. (Your name, the winery’s name, and what makes you unique. Don’t tell them about your vast history and all your kids’ names, etc.)
2. One or two photos of JUST the Chardonnay that you’re talking about.
3. A one-page description of how you know the wine pairs with ice cream, any testimonials from people who’ve tasted it, the type of ice cream, and why you think it pairs so well.
4. Any questions you can answer that might give some interesting insights.

That’s all you have to send. If they want more they’ll ask for it.

What if you’ve written a book? Send it after the reporter has requested it. If you’ve gotten a call from a reporter about the suggested story that’s contained in the book, then send the book, and bookmark/highlight the pertinent paragraphs. DON’T make the reporter search for the relevant information. In other words, make it really, really easy for the reporter to do their job. Trust me…they’ll love you for it.

So before you put together a huge press kit so send out to every reporter in the world, stop yourself. Send out press releases first, and then, when asked, send a simple packet of story-supporting information and a couple of photos. The reporter will be much happier and you’ll save a bundle of money.

Five steps to get your summer menu into the media right now

Spring is here and people are thinking of being outdoors and eating lightly. Your local media, knowing full well that their audience members are thinking that, are now looking for stories that will help them enjoy their summers.

You’ve just come out with your summer menu and you’d like it to get some coverage. Here’s how you can get the media’s attention.

1. DON’T start your press release with “Good Food Restaurant Announces Their New Summer Menu!” The media gets hundreds of releases like that every day. Remember, they’re looking for a story, so give them one.

2. Select a specific item from your summer menu that is particularly tasty and/or artful that is a favorite of your diners.

3. Create a list of tips based around that item in your summer menu that will help the audience enjoy their outdoor cooking more. For example:

• “Five creamy yet fat-free sauces for BBQ Chicken Wings”
• “Five burgers that go well with a light red wine”.
• “Five light wines that pair well with burgers”
• “Six strange-yet-effective grilling tips for large crowds”

4. Create an email to your list of media contacts. Put the name of the tip list in the subject line, and include the tips as bullet points.

5. That same day, snail-mail the press release and the tip list to your media contacts (use a 9x12 envelope). Put the name of the tip list on the outside of the envelope (“Inside: Six Strange-Yet-Effective Grilling Tips for Large Crowds”). (Why? This will pique the media person’s curiosity about what those tips are. Like a true foodie, they’ll read the list. When that happens, your chances for coverage have improved.)

Foodies and wine-drinkers LOVE new tips and ideas for more enjoyment of their outdoor dining. And the media knows this. So when you provide new and unusual tips and ideas, the media will give it some consideration.

Here are some tips lists that have been in the grilling issues of magazines like Food & Wine and Bon Appetit’, and online newspapers:

• 5 summer wines to try right now
• 3 sauces for grilled chicken
• 30 top pinot noirs
• 8 grilled steak marinades that don’t use Worcestershire sauce
• The 4 most unique barbecue tools available

Those sound interesting, don’t they? Kinda makes you want to find out what those BBQ tools are, doesn’t it? (One of them is the "turkey cannon" (!)) That’s what I mean about the power of lists.

When you get your media appearance, make sure that you (subtly, of course) let the audience know that yes, you make that chicken/steak/wine at your place of business. Don’t make it a sales pitch, just tell them that you have it in an “Oh, by the way…” manner. The result: you’ll get customers because most people would rather have the food or wine prepared by an expert (you) than to do it themselves.

So give it a try. Get out those summer recipes, make up a tip list, and let the media know that you have the Five Best Creamy but Fat-Free Sauces for Grilled Chicken in town, and you’ll get noticed.

Good Days in May for Publicity

Get Publicity in May Using Food-Related Days

May is here, and with it comes a lot of food-related days that you can use to get publicity.

Food Related Days in May 2010:

May is:

• National Barbecue Month
• National Hamburger Month
• National Salad Month
• National Strawberry Month
• National Egg Month
  

Select Days in May:
May 4: National Orange Juice Day
May 4: National Homebrew Day (Make wine at Su Vino Winery.)
May 6: National Crepes Suzette Day
May 11: National Eat-What-You-Want Day (!)
May 13: National Apple Pie Day
May 20: National Quiche Lorraine Day
May 25: National Wine Day!
May 28: National Hamburger Day

Let’s get creative and come up with some ideas for these special days. As we talked about in the last post, the reason Sedona Pies was a guest on Into the Soup on KFNX AM 1100 was because her pies were tied into National Blueberry Pie Day in April.

So think of how you can tie your food or wine into a particular day of the month and then submit a press release to your local TV stations and newspapers. You'll find that many of them will be interested in your story when it's tied into an interesting day of the month.

How to get a Radio Offer in One Hour (or less)

Placing the Pie Princess onto the Into the Soup Radio Program.

If you want to get onto a radio program, have a good story that helps the radio host connect with their audience.

Mari-Lyn Harris, the owner and chief pie-maker of Sedona Pies in Sedona AZ, creates all kinds of pies that contain “adult" ingredients; wine, beer, and liqueurs. Some of her masterpieces include Cabernet-Blueberry, Merlot and Mixed Berries, and Amaretto and Chocolate. They’re delicious!

When I heard of her pies, I realized that there was the possibility of a good story. We met and discussed her products as well as how she creates such interesting pies. During our meeting I remembered that April 28th is National Blueberry Pie Day. That’s perfect: A national day about blueberry pie, and a blueberry pie that contains Cabernet wine – it’s unusual and it ties into a specific day.

At 12:05pm on April 9th I sent a press release to our local media pitching a story about Cabernet-Blueberry pie for National Blueberry Pie Day. At 1:00 pm that same day I heard back from Heidi Lee, the host of Into the Soup, a food and cooking program on KFNX AM-1100 in Phoenix. She thought that the Cabernet pies were a great idea and wanted to have Mari-Lyn do a segment on her show on April 24th.

The response from Heidi Lee took about an hour. Why did it happen so fast? Here’s what we did:

1. April 28th is National Blueberry Pie Day. It’s a specific date on the calendar. Remember how I keep talking about the “days of the month that will get you publicity”? That’s what I mean by “leverage the ‘National Food Days’”. I personally know of 416 days, 52 weeks, and 12 months of the year that celebrate some sort of food (yes, I know…I’m weird). So whenever I hear of an unusual food, I check to see if there’s a day that fits it.
2. Cabernet-Blueberry pie is very unusual. A little research revealed that there is NO other Cabernet-Blueberry pie anywhere. Remember how I keep suggesting that you find an unusual twist to your story? This is a perfect example.

We had a story that the media would find very interesting for their audience. We provided expertise and a good timely topic. Therefore, Into the Soup was interested.

Again, we made sure that it was a good story before we sent it to the media – we didn’t just slap something together and throw it at them. Always remember: Radio people want compelling stories that their audiences want to hear. So we put together a story that would (hopefully) make the audience tell their friends “Wow! Guess what I heard about on Into the Soup!!!”

So if you’d like that kind of coverage, then do what we did with Mari-Lyn. It’s really that easy. (Well, there’s a little more to it, like how I wrote the press release, my discussions with Heidi, and how Mari-Lyn and I discussed how to be a good guest for Heidi, but I can’t reveal ALL my secrets!)

Here’s the link to Into the Soup. Look for the April 24th broadcast and click on it. It’ll play on your computer’s media player. http://intothesoup.com/soup-radio-april-24-2010

To summarize:

1. Have an unusual and interesting story.
2. Tie it into something that makes it timely.
3. Make sure you have a good story: something that will help the media connect with their audience even more.

Do that, and you’ll get coverage.

If you’d like some excellent "naughty" pies, contact Mari-Lyn Harris at Sedona Pies. Her website: www.sedonapies.com.

And if you want to listen to a great radio program about food and cooking that has great guests every week and is delivered with lots of fun and energy, listen to Into the Soup on KFNX AM-1100 every Saturday afternoon at 2:00pm Arizona time.
http://intothesoup.com/
http://www.1100kfnx.com

Thanks Heidi, for a great show!

And thanks Mari-Lyn, for great pies!

Tips for Better Festival Marketing, Part Two

Marketing lessons made obvious at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival’s “Great American Picnic”:

Last Saturday, 4/17/10, I attended the Great American Picnic (GAP) in Scottsdale AZ, and came back with more than just a sunburn …I came back with a couple of festival marketing truths that were really obvious that day. (Yes I know, these come under the heading of “yeah, of course!”, but it’s always good to remind ourselves). Besides, if someone as big as Bacardi (as you’ll read) forgets it, then maybe it’s not as obvious as we might think.

Lesson #2: Select your booth’s location very carefully.

There are two parts to this one:
1. Select where you booth will be.
2. Carefully examine the surrounding area for anything detrimental.

This was demonstrated very well by two different spirits vendors: Bacardi Rum and Absolut Vodka. Both had set up areas where the event visitors could congregate, purchase cocktails, and have some good times with their friends. Both of the areas were on main walkways, so the visitors had to pass by them while walking around the event.

The two pavilions were vastly different.

• Absolut had roped off an area, put up some open-air booth covers, a couple of tables and no place to sit. Nothing special.
• Bacardi had set up an area called “Bacardi Beach”. It had water fountains, beach balls, umbrellas, and thatched-roof booth-covers to give it that “beach party” theme.
  

Which area had more people? Absolut! The place was packed! People were spilling onto the sidewalk in front, and there was a line to get in (see the photo below).


Bacardi, on the other hand, was surprisingly empty (see the photo below).

Why? You would think that Bacardi would be getting more people. After all, it had water and fun and chairs and tables. Why wasn’t it crowded?

Here’s why: Directly across from Bacardi Beach (20 feet away, maximum) was a really LOUD band, with the speakers pointing directly at Bacardi Beach. It was so loud that it made your ears hurt. They were a good band, (they really knew their stuff), and I’m a fan of rock music, but man alive! You literally couldn’t hear yourself think. It was really, really LOUD.


And that probably drove the people away from Bacardi Beach. People were attending the Great American Picnic for some fun with their friends. That means talking and interacting. At Bacardi Beach, you would have had to shout loudly to be heard above the din from the band. At Absolut, there was normal noise, but no louder than anything at a crowded bar.

When Bacardi selected the location of Bacardi Beach, it would have been wise for them to check the surroundings and ask specifically what else was there. A quick check of the layout of the event showed the location of the band pavilion. That would have been a red flag because bands at events tend to play loudly.


I’ve experienced something similar. When I worked for a high tech company back in 2001, our event planner decided to position our booth “close to a door” so we could get more traffic. The planner, however, didn’t ask what the door was *for* - it was assumed to be an entrance, so the planner didn’t look at the building layout. The door wasn’t an entrance. It was a door to the kitchen area where only the convention center employees went in and out. So our booth was stuck off in a corner where nobody went. We had to come up with some clever methods of drawing people over to the booth to get some decent traffic.


Bonus! Good Marketing Technique by Bacardi:
On the positive side, though, Bacardi Beach did do something that was smart. They had a person handing out coupons for the cantina/grill that was sponsoring Bacardi Beach. The coupon is very clever: the holder has 1.5 months to redeem it, and they get 2-for-1 Bacardi drinks plus a free taco. This is clever because:

1. You get a chance to taste the food. This can create upsell.
2. 2-for-1 drinks means most people will bring a friend.
   

Even though they may not have gotten as many people to their booth as they would have liked, they still had a plan to get people to the cantina/grill later. And the beauty of it is: nobody else was handing out coupons - so the visitors went home with a reason to return to only one place: Barrio Cantina, which serves Bacardi. That helps people remember your business.


So let’s remember these lessons the next time we’re selecting a booth for an event.

1. Know the demographics of the people who will be attending.
2. Know the location of your booth and what’s surrounding it.

Again, yes, we all should know this, but it’s always good to remind ourselves. Because every step we take toward improving our position, no matter how small, is still a positive step that leads to more sales.

Tips for Better Festival Marketing, Part One

Marketing lessons made obvious at the Scottsdale Culinary Festival’s “Great American Picnic”:

Last Saturday, 4/17/10, I attended the Great American Picnic in Scottsdale AZ. (A quick overview: The Great American Picnic (GAP) is the culmination of the annual Scottsdale Culinary Festival. Six days of food and specialized food/wine events. The GAP is their two-day outdoor event which features booths by restaurants and spirits vendors.)

The GAP also includes the Southwest Beer Festival in which visitors can pay a cover charge and enter a roped-off area where they have their selection of 200 beers to sample.So I went, camera in hand, looking for interesting food and liquid refreshment. I came back, as usual, with an observation of the marketing techniques we can learn from this. Yes, I’m boring. I admit it.

Every event like this gives us an opportunity to observe what’s working and what isn’t. Putting up a booth at an event is a very expensive proposition in both time and money. So we want to make sure we've made a good decision BEFORE we book space at the event. We want to ask pertinent questions that will determine (roughly) the response we’ll get from our presence.

Lesson #1: Learn the demographics of the people who are expected to attend.

This is HUGE, and often overlooked. This is probably the MOST IMPORTANT question to ask before you register for an event. If the right people are there, you’ll do well. If not, you won’t. It’s that simple. Make sure the demographics of the attendees are within your target market. If they’re not, don’t go. Save yourself the time and money.

Audience demographics observed at the culinary festival:

• Average age: Early 30’s. Most people 21 – 35. Yes, a few people 40+, but fewer.
• Average income (at a guess): $40k/yr.
  

The attendees were "beer-drinkin’, cocktail-swiggin', listen-to-rock-music while hanging out with your pals” type of people. Not trouble makers. Just good casual people. There were some higher-income people, but the majority of them were the well-drinks-and-rock-music crowd. And while that’s good for spirits vendors, that’s NOT good for wine and specialty foods.

Evidence:

Most popular vendor of alcohol: The Southwest Beer Festival:
The place was packed and the line to get in was at least 60 feet long (see the photo below). The cover charge was $15 on top of the $10 to get into the festival. But that didn’t stop people from lining up.




Least popular vendor of alcohol: Robert Mondavi wine.
Despite the easily recognized name and the comfortable surroundings of Mondavi’s pavilion, there were only a few people trying the wines (see the photo below). Why? Because the majority of the people at the GAP were in the younger age bracket: they were there for the beer and pizza, not for the tasting and discussions that tend to accompany wine.

• Most popular food booth: BBQ Pork sandwiches (notice the long line in the photo below).
• Least popular food booths: specialty foods like artisan cookies and rum cakes.
  

The lesson we can remind ourselves of is: know the audience. Who will be there? What’s their average age, income, marital status, etc.? If the vendor renting the booth space can’t tell you, you might want to reconsider buying a space.

Despite the large crowd at the GAP, several specialty food vendors (and one big wine company) looked like they were not doing well because people weren’t at their booths during the event. So take the time to learn who’s in the audience. That one simple question can make (or save) a whole lot of money.



Lesson #2 is coming in a couple of days. This would have been too long if I tried to cram them all into one post.

Loyal Customers: Essential in this Economy

Let’s talk about customer loyalty for a moment. This is an important area of business that we always want to be working on. Even more so now that the economy is slow and people might be considering trimming their budgets. We want to make sure that some of the discretionary dollars that they’re going to spend on themselves will still be headed in our direction.

A study done by the Direct Marketing Association showed that current customers are 20 times more likely to buy something else than a new prospect who hasn’t purchased anything from you before. In other words, you have to spend 20 times the money (or time) to get a new customer than to have a current customer purchase something else. So we want to focus a lot of our attention on current customers because that’s where we get the most bang for our marketing buck.

Plus…current customers give you referrals. There’s nothing better than a new person buying your products because a friend referred them.

In every industry I’ve worked, maintaining customer loyalty was essential. So here are a few techniques that will help maintain a base of solid customers.

1. Know your customers personally. Remember their names and recognize them on sight. Be genuinely interested in them and their lives.

2. Give your customers something special for being in your wine club.
* Go above-and-beyond what other wine clubs are offering.
* Example: Special shirts, wine glasses, etc. Make the item tangible. Something that can be shown to other people. Of course, a discount on wine is a good thing (and keeps the customer happy), but a solid item that the customer can show off will tend to bring in more new members because they can physically see one of the benefits.

(NOTE: A really good way to get more non-member customers to join your wine club is to provide members with their special shirt or wine glass and ask the member to display it at wine events. The non-members, upon seeing that, will rush over to sign up for your wine club. [When I worked in the high-tech world, this was a favorite technique at trade shows]).

3. No customer hand-offs. When a customer calls with a question, don’t shuttle them around to various departments until they get an answering machine. Take ownership of the customer’s situation and make sure their needs are met.

4. Communicate regularly. Emails, postcards, birthday greetings, special invitations to wine events – keep the communication lines open. Don’t just quickly write about what the weather is like at your winery. Give them solid useful information.

* This is especially effective when you write a personal note specifically to them and about them on your communication (see #1, above). Even just writing “Hi Robert! How was your vacation in Hawaii?” on the card will build the relationship.

5. Give them more than they expect. In other words, throw a little extra something into their usual purchases/shipments.
* We used to call this the “Cracker Jack Prize”. People like the popcorn and peanuts of Cracker Jack, but they really buy it for the prize inside. When one of your better wine-club members visits to pick up his monthly shipment, take him aside and “sneak” him a bottle of your port or something else you make that you know he likes. This works wonders. I once worked with a salesperson who built a small account into a $2 Million/year account by regularly outfitting his kids with T-shirts. “Cracker Jack Prizes” work every time. And they don't need to be expensive either.


6. Always be asking for their input. When they stop by, ask them for their opinion. If you’re working on a new wine, ask them to try it and give you their thoughts. If you’re a chef, ask your regular customers to do some taste-testing and provide some feedback. We talked about this in the last post (here). Fez Restaurant holds monthly “You be the judge” menu-item tastings, and they always have sellout crowds. People LOVE to give their opinions. When you ask for it, you’re building loyalty.


Give these techniques a try. Every time you give extra-special recognition to your customers you build stronger ties which will keep them coming back to you.

How to Rivet your Customers' Attention

“Coffee News” is a weekly publication here in Phoenix that is filled with good news: trivia, interesting news items, and events around town. It’s a one-page 11” x 17” “newspaper” that’s an easy read while having a cup of your favorite beverage. The good news is in the center column of the paper and the two outer columns contain ads.

Marketing Genius:
Coffee News is a brilliant piece of marketing because it incorporates a clever idea that compels people to read the ads. Every issue of Coffee News has a contest in which readers are encouraged to “find the hidden coffee cup” within one of the ads (see the picture below). If the reader finds the coffee cup, they can enter a contest by mailing (or entering online) their contact information and where the cup was found. Prize: $20, plus an additional gift.

Here’s what’s great about it: the hidden coffee cup is really small. There’s no telling where it might be hidden within a particular ad, and it can’t be found with a quick glance. What this means is…you have to read each ad really carefully to find the hidden coffee cup. You have to read everything: the headline, the bullet points, the phone number – everything. (See below…the coffee cup is hidden within the contractor’s license number). Coffee News can tell their advertisers "Your ad WILL get read. Look at all these cards we get every week from people who read them."


Do they get results? You bet they do! I talked with Coffee News and they get hundreds of entries every week. Not bad for a simple little contest.

How This Applies to You:
First we answer this question: What is Coffee News collecting with this technique? Answer: the contact information of their readers. Through a simple contest, they’re getting information about their readers that they can use to contact them later.

So, what are YOU doing to collect the contact information of your clients or prospects? A large mailing list is the most valuable marketing tool you can have. When you have a list of people that you can contact regularly, you have the ability to stimulate increased sales repeatedly.

Do you have a contest or prize giveaway of some form that will compel people to give you their contact information? If not, why not start one? People LOVE contests! They enjoy getting involved, and if they think they’ll win a prize, they’ll jump right in!

Anything in your business can be used to create a contest that will get your customers involved.

• Are you creating a new wine blend? Why not ask your customers to come up with a name for it?
• If you’re ready to announce your summer wines, ask your customers to send a photo of themselves enjoying your wine in an exotic location and the best photo wins a prize.
• Do you own a restaurant? How about if you hold monthly taste-testings of your newest creations, and ask your customers to attend and/or make suggestions as to the ingredients to use?
  

This works. Fez Restaurant on Central Ave in Phoenix has a monthly “You be the judge of our newest dishes” day (last Sunday of the month) where people can sign up to be evaluators. They always get an overflow crowd.

So give contests a try. The prize doesn’t have to be big…what’s important is that it involves the prospect/customer in such a way that they try your product. When you do that you’ll find that you’re getting a lot more customers who will keep coming back.

Arizona Wine and Chocolate!

Today is Easter Sunday. Rather than indulging in too many marshmallow Peeps, perhaps you'd like to try a more sophisticated sweet treat: pairing Arizona Wine with Chocolate.

I took some chocolate to the Arizona Wine Festival in Tempe last week, and paired the wines I tasted with the chocolate. Yes, I know this is an unscientific survey and yes, I know it’s personal preference, but still….AZ wines are delicious, and I was really curious to see how they paired with chocolate.

Here’s how I did it.
I took three types of chocolate to the Festival:
• Hershey’s milk chocolate
• Hershey’s special dark chocolate
• Chocolove organic dark chocolate, 55% cocoa.

At each booth I asked the person there to recommend a red wine that goes well with chocolate. I then tasted all three chocolates with that particular wine. Here’s how they matched, sorted in alphabetical order by winery name:

Alcantera Vineyards Merlot: Dark Chocolate
Jerome Winery Charbono: Dark Chocolate
Kief Joshua Vineyards Cabernet Franc: Milk Chocolate
Kokopelli Winery Cabernet Reserve: Milk Chocolate
Page Springs Vineyard Vino de la Familia: Dark Chocolate
Pillsbury Wine Co “Diva” Red: Chocolove Organic Dark Chocolate

(Yes, I know there were more than six wineries at the festival, but I was driving, so I figured that it would be best to stop at that time.)

Excellent wines! Great pairings, too!

Have a Happy Easter Sunday, everyone! And if you're going to have wine with dinner, sneak in a little chocolate as well!

Good Days in April for Publicity

Get Publicity in April Using Food-Related Days

April starts in two days, and with it comes a lot of food-related days that you can use to get some publicity.

Food Related Days in April 2010:

April is:
• National Bacon-Lettuce-Tomato Sandwich Month
• National Food Month
• National Pecan Month
• International Soyfoods Month

Select Days in April:
April 2: National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day
April 11: National Cheese Fondue Day
April 13: National Peach Cobbler Day (Yum!)
April 19: National Garlic Day
April 23: National Picnic Day (!)
April 28: National Blueberry Pie Day
April 29: National Shrimp Scampi Day

Submitting story ideas to the media based on food-related days can have good results. For example I got Lisa Reinhardt, a chocolatier, onto Channel 15 by using National Heart Health Month (because dark chocolate can be good for your heart). You can read how we did it here:
How to Get a TV Offer in 45 Minutes.

If we had just said “chocolate”, we might not have gotten any coverage. By tying it into Heart Health Month we got the attention of Channel 15.

And that's not the only example. Here's an article entitled "Wine suggestions for your Easter dinner" . Notice that the writer mentions specific wines by name? She had to get that information from *someone*. If you send story ideas like "best wines for a picnic" or "wines that go with blueberry pie", the wines listed in a future newspaper story could be YOUR wines.

So let’s put our thinking caps on again, and come up with some ideas for these special days. Then, submit a press release to your local TV stations and newspapers. You'll find that many of them will be interested in your story and your business.

Good Marketing Practices at AZ Wine Festival

Today I attended the AZ Wine Festival in Tempe. I tasted some great wines and had great conversations with the wine-makers at their booths. It was a lot of fun, and as usual, all the wines were excellent. (And they pair well with chocolate...I tested them. More on that later).

First off, great job everyone! The place was packed! Lots of people attended and tasted.


I also took a moment to look for some interesting methods for generating business. Here are a few that I liked that I thought I'd share.

• Good on-site promotion: Jerome Winery had an A-frame sign pointing to their booth. http://www.jeromewinery.com/

• Good generator of follow-up business: Jerome Winery handed out business cards and said: “Bring it to the winery, get a free gift”.(Notice: it's written on the card. Makes it easy to remember). http://www.jeromewinery.com/

• Item that's easy-to-keep: Desert Rose B&B handed out refrigerator magnets. http://www.desertrosebandb.com/

• Good joint venture idea: Kokopelli Winery had a handout: Sphinx Ranch Gourmet Gift Market offering 10% off Kokopelli wines. http://www.kokopelliwinery.net/

• Fun and memorable: Kief-Joshua Vineyards and their vino-hound Dizzy Gillespie. http://kiefjoshuavineyards.com/.
  

Great job everyone! The festival was jam-packed!

And for good reason, too....all of the wines are excellent. I really like Arizona wines because they run the gambit from light-bodied-easy-to-sip-on-a-summer-day to full-bodied-goes-great-with-grilled-steak, which means no matter what I'm eating or doing, I can grab the perfect bottle of wine. It's diversity like that that's putting AZ wines on the map.

Domestic Wine Sales Increased in 2009

From this month’s issue of Wine Business Monthly:

Off-premise wine sales data for the second half of the holiday sales season saw a healthy boost with value increasing 6.3 percent and volume increasing 5.6 percent from the same period a year earlier, according to Nielsen Company-tracked data.

Domestic wine sales increased 120% over imported wines during that period, and Sauvignon Blanc and Cabernet Sauvignon showed the largest growth among the varietals.

Below are the numbers (sorry about the layout. Blogger doesn't draw tables well)

Wine Source & Year-on-year Sales Growth:
Domestic Wine Sales: 7.5%
Imported Wine Sales: 3.4%

Varietal & Case Volume Growth:
Chardonnay: 2.6%
Pinot Grigio: 3.8%
Sauvignon Blanc: 6.7%
Cabernet Sauvignon: 5.1%


Also in an interesting note: Volume sales in the over-$20-per-bottle sales were up nearly 10% in that same time period.

This is good news for everyone in the wine industry. Increases like this could be indicative of a rebound in wine sales, meaning, a better 2010!


Here's Wine Business online.

How to Get Customers to an Outdoor Festival Booth

AZ Wineries will be at the Tempe Festival of the Arts
The Tempe Festival of the Arts is next weekend (3/26 - 3/28), and the Arizona wineries have a pavilion where happy visitors can go taste their great wines.

Naturally, the wineries want to sell as much wine as possible, so I’d like to give some suggestions for attracting more customers to your booth and selling more wine.

There’s a saying in marketing: “Give ‘em a reason to come see you, and then give ‘em a reason to come back”. Here are a few techniques to do that very thing.


Techniques to Get People to Your Wine Booth:
1. Send an email to your current list inviting them to stop by your booth. Even if you’ve done it earlier, do it again. People need to see any type of lead-generation communication at least three times before it registers. So send one last reminder.

2. In the email, give them a reason to come by. Offer a discount, or a special gift, or something inexpensive-yet-perceived-high-value that would entice them to come by your booth. It can be something as simple as a compilation of recipes for your wines.

3. Give them a reason to bring a friend. Offer yet another gift or discount if they bring one or more friends.

4. Get their email address. Have them drop their business card or a slip of paper with their name and email address on it into a fishbowl, with a drawing later to win one of 2-3 prizes. Hold a separate drawing every day of the festival.

5. Give them a reason to come back. After they’ve stopped by, give them a “preferred customer” card that they can use to get a gift or something the next time they visit you. Offer them something good enough that they’ll go out of their way to come by. For more tips, please refer to these previous posts:

• Best Marketing Techniques Seen at the AZ Wine Festival at the Farms
• Good Marketing Techniques Seen at the AZ Wine Festival in Tempe

Good luck to everyone at the festival! I’ll see you there!

Get Your Restaurant Noticed Quickly

What's New With You?

A couple of months ago I was approached by a pizza parlor owner who wanted to get some publicity for his store. So I asked some questions about his pizza to see if there was a story that we could use. The conversation went like this:

Me: "What's unique about your pizza?"
Him: "We use fresh ingredients every day."
Me: "That's good, but so does everyone. No restaurant is going to tell their customers "Fresh? Heck no! This fish we're serving must be at least (sniff, sniff) one week old!". So what else is different about you?"
Him: "We make our dough fresh every morning."
Me: "That's great, but so does every other pizza parlor in town. What else?"
Him: "Well...."
Me: "I noticed the business name relates to a city in Italy. Do you have a secret Italian recipe for your sauce?"
Him: "No. The previous owner gave it that name. It doesn't mean anything."
Me: "How about your pizzas? Do you have a specialty, like "All-Arizona Toppings" or "Super-Anti-Oxidant" or anything different and unusual?"
Him: "No."
Me: "Well....is there anything unusual about your employees? For example, are they all left-handed tennis players?"
Him: "Nope. Just local people."

...and on and on. Suffice it to say that we couldn't get any publicity. Why? Because he had nothing new or unusual about his food or his restaurant.

How to Get a Reporters Attention:
Reporters (and editors and producers) think like this:
1. Get a good story.
2. Other stuff.
If you want to get publicity, make sure you have an interesting story. The most interesting story is something that is new and/or unusual. In the world of marketing, we call this the Unique Selling Point: USP. So we need to ask: What's our USP???

Journalists spend four years in school learning how to locate and produce interesting stories, not how to read press releases. When you provide something new, they will be more interested than if you give them the same old stuff.

USP Examples:
New York Times: "99-cent Pizza Catches On": http://nyti.ms/9iZBiR
Chicago Tribune: "Guiness beer Pizza": http://bit.ly/ctUq7D
Sonoran Living, Ch 15: "Tea and Chocolate": http://bit.ly/9Kzk8S

To figure out your USP, think of what you do (or make) that's different. "Hand-crafted", "Fresh daily", and "great service" are all old news. If we look at the three examples above, we have:
1. Cheap pizza in an expensive city (NYC).
2. Pizza made with beer. (BTW: the photo above is the Guiness beer pizza).
3. TEA and chocolate, as opposed to wine and chocolate.

So take a moment and really look hard at your offerings to find that USP. If you can't think of any you can:
1. Review the newspaper food stories for examples of uniqueness.
2. Watch some local TV talk shows that have chefs on and check out their menus.
3. Or, ask someone creative (like a PR/marketing person) to give you some ideas.

Take a moment and do this. Really. It makes a big difference. I've gotten a lot of publicity by looking for that USP and then talking about it exclusively to journalists. For a small investment of time, you can get a huge ROI of publicity.

Days in March to Get Publicity

Use the Calendar to Promote your Food

The Oscar Awards came and went, but not before mixologists across the country created interesting Oscar-themed drinks to celebrate that special night. Drinks with names like "Avatar", "District 9", and "Julie and Julia" came into being and were enjoyed by movie-going fans everywhere.

How do I know this? Because there was an article in the Arizona Republic newspaper that talked about the Oscar cocktails. This article came out *before* the Oscars, so it gave patrons plenty of time to go try the drinks.

How You Can Use This:
The AZ Republic had to get this information from someone. Why not you? The media is always looking for an unusual twist on food stories, and every month is filled with special days and events that you can use to tie into your food or your wine (or both!). By thinking up interesting ideas and submitting them to the media, you have a good chance of getting some coverage.

(I know I've talked about this before, but it bears repeating over and over again). Before you spend a lot of time trying to come up with some fancy message or spectacular event, take a look at the calendar and see what day or event is coming up that you can take advantage of.

Food Related Days in March 2010:
March is:

• National Nutrition Month
• National Sauce Month
• National Noodle Month
• International Hamburger and Pickle Month (!)

Select Days in March:
March 15: National Pears Helene Day
March 20: National Ravioli Day
March 21: National French Bread Day (good for artisan bread-makers)
March 24: National Chocolate Covered Raisins Day (my favorite!)
March 29: National Lemon Chiffon Cake Day
March 30: National Hot Dog Day

C'mon gang...you should be able to think up some interesting foods for those days. After all, this is International Hamburger and Pickle Month! As an example, there's a place in Surprise AZ that makes an excellent Cabernet Burger, and they used it to get front-cover billing in Phoenix magazine!

So put your thinking caps on, come up with some ideas for these special days, and submit a press release to your local TV stations and newspapers. You'll be pleasantly surprised to find out that many of them will be happy to find out more about what you have to offer.