Olive Garden Review a Rorschach Test for Marketers, Journalists

A small-town restaurant review went viral and promptly became a national Rorschach Test for marketers and journalists.

If you’re a card-carrying member of the MSM, Digerati, Technorati or just a Flack or a Huckster, you’ve read or heard about the quaint review of a local Olive Garden and how Gawker’s Emma Carmichael featured it in a snarky post. Clearly, Carmichael found it amusing that an octogenarian prairie journalist reviewed a chain restaurant.

The comments section under the Gawker piece is the Rorschach Test for marketers and journalists. Some say Gawker gave us a “rude, spiteful” example of Big City superiority complex. Others claim the review was laughable even if you hail from Grand Forks, North Dakota. It’s a lively discussion.

3 Reasons Marketers Should Really Care

We all stopped to look, just like passing an accident on the highway. But what’s the significance? Why should we care?

1. We’re living in our own little world. OK, I’m not really going out on a limb with that statement. We can smirk all we want about what the Grand Forks Herald publishes, but much of it would be alien to many of us. That’s troubling because we’re selling to an audience we don’t understand. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We need to get out more. It’s worth noting that Gawker gleefully “reported” on a provincial Olive Garden review in 2008. (Is the idea file really that empty?)

2. Journalism has gone Pro-Am. It may seem naïve to review a chain restaurant, but Olive Garden in Grand Forks lies at the intersection of It Matters To People There and Newspapers Have To Fill Editorial Space. Media owners aren’t in the media business, they’re in the advertising business – content aids and abets the process of selling ad space.

3. What Viral Is. Marilyn Hegarty has been writing restaurant reviews for 30 years and this month the Internet finally caught up with her. Gawker essentially re-ran an article from four years ago and it took off….in our own little world. This was a popular story among marketers and journalists but Grand Forks and Sioux City may not have noticed.

Putting snark on top of snark, the Atlantic concluded “The Secret to Food-Writing Success: Review the Olive Garden.” My conclusion is different. Someone who doesn’t get out much decided to run a story that her publication had done before, featuring a sincere personal account that went viral on that someone’s ability to imbue it with irony. The audience in which it went viral was really just people like Emma Carmichael. Marilyn Hegarty by all accounts took it in stride.

This confounds those of us who work in modern communications, but it shouldn’t. For every Subservient Chicken there’s a Grand Forks Olive Garden that nobody in a black turtleneck could have created. Come on, colleagues. We’re smelling our own exhaust. Let’s get out a little.

Book Review: The Shallows

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains
By Nicholas Carr
W. W. Norton & Co., 276 pages

Nicholas Carr’s new book, The Shallows, explains his theory that the Internet, like all forms of media before it, affects our brains by changing how we think and communicate. In the specific case of the Internet, this effect is to shorten our attention span.

Casting all irony aside, I will now blog about it, in hopes you will have the patience to read an entire book review. Ready? Here goes.

While Carr does believe Internet use reduces the attention span, he actually has a more elaborate thesis: Throughout history, humankind has created many tools, measures and media, all of which literally changed the way we live, usually bringing some advancement to civilization. The human brain adapts to each of these advancements. Neurologists have proven the brain to be plastic in nature, operating according to the routines by which we live. This principle explains muscle memory, addiction, and how we communicate.

The Shallows lasts ten chapters, with the charming irony that Carr interrupts some of the chapter transitions with “a digression”, perhaps to underline his overall point that few of us can stay on track anymore. Nevertheless he stays on track, starting with a personal perspective, then plunging deep into the science of neurology, followed by the history of communication media, and finally tying the two together to show that the Internet, like all media before it, influences our ways of thinking. It’s a compelling case.

This book is thick with science and history, all presented as the engaging story of our journey through oral traditions, cuneiform, papyrus, paper, books and the Internet. Carr sees the benefits of all these media. He embraces the Internet, pointing out how it not only stores information efficiently, but has developed our skills at locating the right information. We may not remember the Dewey Decimal System, because we don’t have to -- and that’s the danger. Carr quotes more than once a caution expressed by Socrates that writing down texts, instead of memorizing them, was “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.”

Carr is neither Luddite nor Cassandra. Most of the books’ press coverage pursued a “bad Internet” storyline, but in reality Carr sees “the Net” (as he calls it) as simply another invention that’s not only a product of our brains but an influencer of how we use them. In that way the story is a bleak one for bibliophiles. A key finding is that just a decade and a half of Internet usage has reduced our ability to digest long-form literature such as an essay or a book. More than that, Carr laments in a personal observation, “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away at my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” There’s a kind of resistance-is-futile feel to this and other passages of the book.

Carr also captures a debate between Determinists, who say out technology affects our history, and Instrumentalists, who say our history affects our technology. Carr seems to side with the Determinists, based on his analysis of science and history. Science tells us the brain is “plastic”, forming neural pathways based on how we employ it most frequently. History tells us that we have always molded our brains with each new technology, including the map, the clock and the printing press. It’s worth remembering how revolutionary books were as the Renaissance dawned: “To read a book was to practice an unnatural process of thought, one that demanded sustained, unbroken attention to a single, static object.”

Pursuing the Determinist angle, Carr's examination of the Internet focuses on linked text and its cascading cross-references. Reading a page in a physical book leads merely to the next page. Reading a page on the Internet can lead to hundreds of other pages with just one or two clicks. Chapter 7, “The Juggler’s Brain”, explores how Internet multitasking erodes comprehension. You can access all sorts of data but not all at one time. The software you’re using to read this review isn’t called a “browser” for nothing.

Google comes in for some criticism in The Shallows for its über-quantitative culture. Google’s very business model is based on the number of choices people make, so the more links we click, the more data we feed to the beast. It occurred to me while reading this passage that SEM is like direct marketing on Red Bull. Instead of sending in a single BRC, the consumer votes early and often, every time they click.

Why this matters to Marketers

How does The Shallows matter to marketers? I see two implications.

The first implication is how we train ourselves as professionals. The Internet isn’t detrimental unless it becomes our exclusive way of working. The antidote to Carr’s dystopian view is a balanced use of various media, with a return to more contemplative experiences. Reading is solitary and the Internet is interconnected – you’re never alone with your thoughts. We need balance.

The second implication is that we are marketing to a consumer population that increasingly lacks this kind of balance. The advent of social media will drive short attention spans. How can we engage consumers in an environment like this? It won’t be easy. We can only do so much to influence society, but just going with the flow doesn’t do much good. Balance your messages.

I’m glad you stayed with me to the end of this book review. You probably realize that I recommend reading The Shallows, preferably the physical book. You may not have realized that in tribute to the book, this review contained no hypertext links whatsoever.

"Net Neutrality"

Following Wednesday's post about the role of government at the intersection of Marketing and the Internet comes the latest news about "net neutrality".

Net Neutrality

The actual term is "network neutrality", a concept where all Internet access would be treated equally. All access to all content would be available at the same speed. There's a complete article on Wikipedia describing it fully. In any case, it sounds like an appealing concept, doesn't it?

Not so fast...

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission tried to enforce net neutrality last year, but the courts ruled that the Internet falls outside their jurisdiction. The FCC regulates broadcast communications only, not even cable television, while the Internet counts as an "information service".

You get what you pay for

The opposite of net neutrality is a tiered system, where Internet users would pay their service providers a premium to access certain content faster. This would depend on an arrangement among Internet service providers such as Verizon, content providers and users willing to pay more.

The latest news

Since the FCC is powerless (for now) to enforce net neutrality, those who own the networks are starting to arrange tiered systems. This week the New York Times reported that Google and Verizon are close to such a deal; today Google and Verizon denied it, saying they were continuing to talk to the government. The FCC says that the talks are on hold for the moment.

What's my position on net neutrality?

No one can say how this will play out. The starry-eyed idealist in me wants to believe in net neutrality because it sounds fair and equal. Yet the Internet is not a government program, it's a commercial enterprise. Said differently, it's publishing.

If net neutrality had been applied to newspapers and magazines, then every consumer would have paid the same price for each magazine they received, no matter how premium the content or how many pages it required.

You may perceive that I haven't decided what I think about this. Please use the comments section to sway me to one side or the other.

Copywriting versus Copypasting

In my morning e-mail summary from MediaBistro, the following two items appeared next to one another (click the above image to read for yourself).

1. New York Times item about how digital technology is redefining for young people the concepts of authorship and plagiarism.


2. Media Bistro class on Copywriting for the Web.

One was about Copywriting and the other was about Copypasting. Now that's product placement!

Bogusky wasn't the only interesting personnel news last week

Alex Bogusky’s resignation from MDC and CP+B last week created quite a stir in the ad industry. To be sure, it’s the end of an era. It wasn't a big surprise, though – Bogusky has increasingly worked on side projects to the point where it seemed his day job became a side project.

It might be an understatement to say his next moves will be closely watched by an industry hungry for heroes, prophets and high priests. There’s no doubt he will go on to pioneer some new ways to engage consumers on behalf of marketers.

Print and Digital at Condé Nast

Meanwhile, Condé Nast just promoted Scott Dadich, the creative director at Wired magazine, to the additional post of “executive director of digital magazine development.” According to some press reports, his mission is to replicate the success of such projects as Wired for the iPad at other Condé Nast titles.

With all due respect to Bogusky, this may turn out to be an even more interesting personnel move. Most of us have realized that Digital has affected Print media much more than it has affected Broadcast. Dadich is in a real position to leverage this shift for a big legacy print publisher.

Story, Content or Creative?

The other day the word "story" kept coming up.

The first mention of "story" came when a former colleague described his new startup, which writes content for brands that publish editorial related to what they sell, perhaps in a lifestyle magazine, social media app, or even simply a website. An agency that does this is actually called Story. It's fascinating when you think of all the content these initiatives require. Similar to what I posted about online media, content requires constant care and feeding.

Later the same day I interviewed a strategic planner candidate who, coincidentally, brought up "story" as the basis of all marketing communications. You hear this in advertising agencies. A great copy test researcher once told us his definition of great advertising: "A good story well told."

Lastly, someone tweeted about a book offering a "storytelling manifesto for change-makers and innovators".

This made me think about three overlapping words: story, content and creative. Are they the same thing?

Try this: story is strategy, creative is an idea, content is what we produce to put in all the appropriate media or channels.

How would you distinguish among these? Let me have your POV below.

A newspaper with business acumen -- and a sense of humor

You may have seen this video satire of integrated marketing award entries. It hilariously sends up the type of kitchen-sink, social-media laden program that seems to guarantee a trophy from any ad industry awards show jury.

The perpetrator in this case is a Swedish daily financial paper, Dagens Industri, published by Bonnier AB. After satirizing emerging media frenzy for a couple of minutes, they claim their newspaper is “Still the most effective way to reach your target audience”.

A friend and colleague in Sweden tells me the video is part of a larger print campaign from by Storåkers McCann, which continues the message that Dagens Industri is an effective way to reach business people.

Laughing all the way to the bank

There is a great deal of city-room concern these days about the business side of newspapers. Just this past weekend I met another unemployed editor for a great metropolitan newspaper. A lot of publishers are struggling.

In this case, however, prospects aren’t so dim. The Wikipedia entry for Dagens Industri describes it as “the most profitable daily newspaper in Sweden”. In any case, Bonnier entered the U.S. market three years ago by acquiring several magazine titles from Time Inc. They’re doing well.

Why? They are smart enough marketers to know that advertisers who want to reach their paper’s subscribers may be represented by agencies savvy enough to get the message via social media.

The other reason is very simple: they publish an excellent newspaper. As my colleague told me, “I read Dagens Industri everyday. It’s the best way to follow our business climate in Sweden. They are perceived as very trustworthy and professional.” U.S. publishers of daily fluff, take note.