What Happens When Trying To Not Cheapen Your Brand Kills It?

I was reviewing old sales notes today and doing follow ups when I came across a place that is no longer open.

In my notes it said they did not want to do contests because they felt it would cheapen the brand. They have a valid point, doing contests puts you into a category of brands that do contests. Which, when you think about it, includes every billion dollar company out there. 

However high fashion and luxury brands tend to not throw contests.

Tiffanys & Co is not going to be offering you a discount. 

In the restaurant world, there are brands that want to be the baddies that only the finest of clientele frequent.

Some of them pull it off and others become dead Instagram pages on a Google Sheets document.

It’s important for your brand to speak to your audience

If you want to be a fine dining establishment, chances are contests are not for you.

Places that are high volume and constantly full also do not need contests. This is a point of pride for certain owners. The people who love their food, love it when people are there without gimmicks

This ranges from the random restaurant that’s been around 35 years on some random corner that lives on legacy and regulars to the fancy places that legit have 3 month waiting lists. Here and there you’ll find no reservations, first come first serve spots that seats like 16 people in total.

There is a market for all these approaches and they will attract clientele appropriately.

Creating a sense of scarcity is important for some strategies. I don’t think throwing a contest fully negates that. I can see how for a certain type of person the idea of needing to throw a contest is not the kind of business they want to be. 

It’s the same line of thinking that says that people willing to pay 150$ a person aren’t incentivized by contests.

Contests are an advertising play that shows either strength or weakness

Couche Tard has this crazy rock, paper, scissors themed contest going on where someone is going to win 2000$ in gas. 

Nobody considers Couche Tard to be fancy, but this move isn’t from a place of weakness. They have the power and ability to throw a fancy contest, one that other depanneurs cannot, and they are doing this to flex. I had to start recommending certain restaurant owners be vague in the prizes they offer because a 20$ gift certificate and a meal for two valued at 300$ are just not in the same weight class.

When you are doing really well, a contest is a way to keep the momentum going. You can probably afford a lit prize, and this strategy would strengthen even the most elitist brand if implemented correctly.

Like there’s a way to spin letting a couple of plebs come eat and share with the world their experience. 

It really comes down to context and implementation. There are ways to do cool contests that engage people. Then there’s the standard IG contest format, which works, don't get me wrong, that many of us use.

At the end of the day if the original idea doesn’t work you need to pivot or let it die.

A lot of restaurant owners are okay letting brands die instead of compromising the vision

Something I see happen here and there is a page I talked to last year has a new name this year.

I’ll scroll up and see me say hi to some restaurant on my tracker that is closed now. Then realize the people opened up a new name/concept and decided to not start with 0 followers. It’s not the most common practice, but I definitely see it enough to recognize to a lot of these owners this is all a game.

They are rich enough to have multiple properties and some are wildly successful. Others are not. They are throwing shit at the wall and would honestly rather let a brand that doesn’t click people die, than cheapen the quality of what they do.

As an artist I have a lot of respect for that.

While some restaurants are trying to be the real-life version of keyword stuffing, others are sincerely trying to be experiences people have where food is served.

End of the day, the place that inspired it died, as did many others. 

I doubt doing a contest with us would have saved it.

But maybe being open to different kinds of collaborations would have done more for getting people in the door.

Live Long and Prosper Everyone