The Foodie Tribe

I have just completed a research project investigating the effect of electronic word-of-mouth (on social media) in influencing the consumer's choice of restaurant. What it has shown is that marketers need to wake up and smell the coffee. The old style of marketing is not working and a new age of marketing has been born where the real influencers are consumers.  For decades marketers have actively targeted audiences with monologue-style communications whose sole purpose was to interrupt people with messages they may not be interested in hearing. Now, the best brands on the planet sell to people who really care about what they have to say and get them to tell their friends. And they tell their friends. And so on, until the brand has a loyal following of advocates or, as Seth Godin calls them, a tribe. What is a tribe? A tribe is “a social division in a traditional society consisting of families or communities linked by social, economic, religious, or blood ties, with a common culture and dialect, typically having a recognized leader” (Oxford Dictionary). Marketing is now about leading tribes. The Apple tribe. The Red Bull tribe. The Starbucks tribe. The One Direction tribe. The 50 Shades of Grey tribe.

The leader of one particular tribe in Ireland is www.dineindublin.ie (a website owned by Dublin City BID). This is a website, supported by social media interaction that includes a loyal following of almost 8,000 on Facebook, whose purpose is to lead the foodies, the epicures, the gourmet explorers who love the refined sensuous enjoyment of food and drink. This is a small tribe in number but their influence on other consumers is powerful and now, through online communications, wide-reaching. To this tribe, food and drink is more than an act, it is an experience, probably the greatest experience in life. They are passionate about the taste, the history, the texture, the science (and the art) and the production of unique and special eating occasions. 

As a general rule, members of this particular tribe are amateurs, as opposed to professionals; they are self-taught. And they are, as Malcolm Gladwell would call them mavens, food mavens. They are socially driven to tell others about their experiences. They are epicurean evangelists who are devoted to talking about great food. And, as a result of their infectious passion, they are incredibly influential. To them, eating is serious business and others should make informed decisions. To those outside the tribe it doesn’t really matter all that much. This might make members of the tribe branded by some as ‘food snobs’, but they don’t care. To them, food and drink is their passion and, if you are not a member of the tribe, you wouldn’t understand. 

I can report that, if you are a restaurant marketer, you should be interested in getting these influencers talking about your restaurant, especially through social media. Restaurant marketing is now about forming and leading a tribe, starting a movement, creating an army of brand evangelists who care so much they will communicate your message in way that will be many times more influential than any communications you could create yourself. So, the process should look like this; find the influencers, organise them, get them talking. Simple, right?

What do Cheryl Cole and Peppa Pig Have in Common?

Cheryl Cole's
New Bum

Firstly, sincere apologies to all of you out there who have missed hearing my marketing meanderings over the past few months. I have been crazy busy (no excuse I know), but I am back on the blog now and those queuing outside my door can head off home and start reading.  So, what do Cheryl Cole and Peppa Pig have in common then? No, they do not both share the same bum tattoo artist. The answer is they both get paid obscene amounts of money to promote brands to a target consumer audience. 

We all know that celebrity endorsement works, right? Certain consumers, whether they admit it or not, will be influenced when they see Brad Pitt endorsing Channel No. 5, David Beckham sporting the latest Armani budgie smugglers or Cheryl Cole uttering the words “because you’re worth it”. (I wonder would there be any room left on Cheryl's bum for a L'Oréal logo tattoo?)

Well this week, while doing the grocery shopping, I came across a real-life example proving celebrity endorsements are alive and kicking in marketing to four-year-olds as well as those a little older. This eureka moment occurred when we got to the TESCO aisle containing the spaghetti hoops (one of their 5-a-day apparently). My little genius didn’t rationally say; “It doesn’t matter to me mammy if I have the TESCO own-brand or the Heinz product, sure they’re all the same”. No, he incessantly requested the Heinz product until he sufficiently influenced us 'decision-makers' into making the right purchase. What was the difference between the two near identical products?  The difference was my four year old son's feelings for a young farrow with a cute little snout and strange squeaky accent (no, not Cheryl, the other one).  Peppa Pig. And that got me thinking; apart from the obvious ‘parental yielding’ that was taking place (in other words, anything for a quiet life), from a consumer behaviour theoretical viewpoint, what was going on here?

Well, the clever marketers at Heinz have obviously heard of Heider’s Balance Theory (developed in 1958, believe it-or-not, well before Peppa was even born), which considers relations among elements a person might perceive as belonging together. The perspective (the perceiver’s subjective point-of-view) involves relations between three elements resulting in an attitude structure called a triad.  Each triad contains (1) a person and their perceptions, (2) an attitude objective, and (3) some other person or object. The perceptions between each can be positive or negative, but the theory specifies that the triad must be balanced to be effective in formulating consumer attitudes. So, what would my little fella's triad have looked like for the two alternative products? Because of his positive perception of spaghetti hoops and his positive perception of Peppa Pig, the product that featured both resulted in his positive perception of it, meaning the Heinz product won. 

And so it is, for four year old and forty-four year old consumers, celebrity endorsement works. You just have to find out who your target consumer is into or who they aspire to be like. Not that my little genius aspires to be like Peppa Pig (at least I hope not), but you know what I mean.