Like any good PR person, I spent the greater majority of my Labor Day weekend doing what anyone who knows anything about our high stress, never-ends, permanently on-call business would expect.
Sleep.
I didn’t shake off Morpheus til after 12 noon on Monday. I do find that I spend a great deal of my vacation time in snooze-mode. I’ve done a little math and have determined that when I’m on holiday, I average at least 10 hours of sleep per day.
One could say this is because I’m getting older (I turn 50 next year) or maybe I just have odd sleep patterns, but no. It’s definitely the work. With information constantly coming in, non-stop, via more avenues than ever before, it’s like the candy conveyor belt in that famed I LOVE LUCY episode. If you’re within hailing distance of my age, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re a teen-to-20something, well, get back to fingering your I-Pad or X-Box or whatever Single-Letter-Gizmo that’s come out of nowhere to forever change all human life as we know it.
However, in between the sleeping, I did do a few things. Attended the Maryland State Fair and wondered how so little has changed since I attended this thing when I was a kid. You got the same games, same stuffed animals, same guy trying to guess your weight or your birth month. You’ve got the 4-H displays of everything from sunflowers to needlepoint to German chocolate cakes, adorned with red first place ribbons, blue second place ribbons, all the way down to brown 8th place ribbons. Yes, you get a ribbon for EIGHTH PLACE.
Still, something must be working here as the place was MOBBED. Who would have thought a 1,000 pound sleeping boar, a bunch of goats and less-than-delightfully-fragrant cows could garner so much attention? So, my PR brain working, I decided, “These guys don’t need any help.” Whatever you’re doing here, it’s working…
…though I was disappointed to see how the state of racing has fallen in Maryland. The “Big T,” Timonium, which once had its own meet, is now reduced to a handful of days during the State Fair—the horses don’t even run for the entire fair! I wondered, “Why bother?” I still think the politicos are missing the boat here—install night racing in Maryland and have it at the Big T…just like Charlestown, two similar one-mile tracks.
But I’m on vacation, right? Got to turn off that PR brain. Easier said than done.
I also spent part of my weekend checking out the new Gino’s in Towson. First of all, it’s not every “fast food joint” that has a “maitre d,” standing guard outside the restaurant entrance, letting us know we’d have a “30 minute wait from the time that you order.”
Inside, there were plenty of reminders of Gino’s past, delivered in 21st century style via high definition flat screens. My girlfriend learned that Gino’s once had a relationship with Kentucky Fried Chicken, long before it was known as just “KFC.”
There have been an influx of stories about Gino’s resurfacing in Towson after a nearly 30 year absence, typically featuring some 22-year-old female reporter with that “I have no clue what’s going on” look topped by “you expect me to eat this? Didn’t you see SUPERSIZE ME and FOOD INC?” when confronted with the mighty Gino Giant…and then smashing it into her face because, afterall, that’s a good visual, get tight on that secret sauce mussing her lipstick.
The lesson I learned here is, that no matter how good the marketing, how many stories you land in the paper or on TV or on YOUTUBE, well, you just can’t go home again.
The Gino Giant was nothing like I remembered it; this was markedly better, with a lot more sesame seeds on the bun, and whatever they used to put in the sauce that made it physically impossible to eat an entire Giant without craving a Bromo, it’s gone now—no queasy after shocks to the stomach!
I also don’t remember the Gino’s fries having some of the skin still on them. That’s an improvement, the skin is the healthiest part of the potato. And they sure as heck didn’t have milkshakes courtesy of Edy’s Ice Cream. In the old days, we just called them “shakes” because “milk” had very little to do with them.
So the burgers were better, the milkshakes were actually true to their name and the fries were good…oh, and did I mention the onion rings? In the “Before Time,” there weren’t any onion rings on the menu, only Burger King offered those.
Still, I felt something was missing. Which, of course, there was…When I was a kid, to eat a whole Giant was a rite of passage…A trip to Gino’s was a statement that I AM A BALTIMOREAN! I support anything with Baltimore roots, and Gino’s, steeped in all things COLTS, definitely was that. Sure, the prices were a lot lower as well, but it’s about re-living those memories. ..in a time WAY before high definition flat screens.
The challenge, from a marketing/PR standpoint will be, how will one keep folks coming to Gino’s once “the novelty has worn off,” when it is clear the memory and the reality just don’t jive. When that happens, it comes down to product…Will people want to pay nearly $6 for a burger? Hey, didn’t they used to be 15 cents?
What about FREE? No, not burgers. In this case, ART. This past weekend I also visited the Baltimore Museum of Art which declares via color banners that admission is FREE-FREE-FREE.
Ya can’t beat free. Of course, items in the gift shop are another matter. But still, a chance to peruse all manner of art, from the famed “THE THINKER” bronze sculpture to works of Monet, at no cost is a nice deal. But that’s not what I remember the most from my visit.
It was a sign. It said, “Exciting Renovations Underway…Contemporary Art Galleries Under Construction…Reopening Fall 2011.”
There seemed something…well…odd…about this bit of “color commentary” regards the museum construction project.
Can renovations really be “exciting”? Exciting to whom? Unless it’s free multi-million dollar home renovations being done by one of these ubiquitous reality shows, chances are, construction just isn’t that exciting.
I’m just reminded of an old PR axiom—Don’t Over Sell. The one thing the media (and by and the large the increasingly cynical general public) hates is fluff…We’re the world’s leading…We’re have fantastic prices…We offer excellent…You get the idea.
Why is this wrong? Well, it’s presumptuous. Who are you to say what’s fantastic or excellent or exciting for that matter. I’LL be the judge of that!
Exciting was a better word for my meal at Gertrude’s which, marketing wise, couldn’t be better situated—a top flight restaurant in a museum! Like the realtors say, it’s location, location, location.
Gertrude’s, like many restaurants nowadays, will slip in a fact-gathering sheet, the ol’ “give us your opinion about the service” card, along with your bill.
I’m not sure whether I like this idea or not. I tend to look at restaurants a lot like movie theaters. These are places to ESCAPE, realms apart from the noise and bustle of everyday life where we are constantly bombarded with marketing messages, sales pitches, and other attempts to gain our attention.
First, movie houses started running ads on the big screen before the movie would start. Then product placement became big in the movies themselves. Yes, no movie is so artistic as to be devoid of an occasional commercial, i.e. Robert DeNiro, put down that Coke can!
Restaurants, same thing. I want to eat a meal and not be reminded that there’s a world out there filled with opinion surveys, focus groups and marketing plans. It just seems nowadays there’s no escaping the PR. So what’s the alternative? Perhaps restaurants can seek comment through more modern means like FACEBOOK; book a reservation via FACEBOOK and TWITTER and post your comments on what you thought of the meal.
There are already sites like OPEN TABLE which will send you emails after your date at the diner to find out what you thought, how you’d judge the experience. This way, you have time to at least digest before you’re asked for your studied input, even before you’ve had an after dinner mint!
Comments