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?
