Food Makes Meetings

 The conference room is stale. The restaurant meeting venue keeps us from sharing what’s really on our mind. Meeting up at the cubicle space is…well, just lame. Where you meet is just as important as what you’re meeting about. Space can inspire creativity and candid talks.  So, why have we gotten it all wrong?

I may be crazy, but I believe more business needs to done in the kitchen, around the goodness of food. If you can cook with someone, you can do business with them.

In various Eastern and Middle Eastern cultures, meeting with others is all about the food. Heaps of it.  And not just your 45-minute power lunch either. I’m talking courses, buckets of wine, and hours of pure togetherness. I’m not saying that every meeting needs to be a Thanksgiving extravaganza, but there is something to food. Cooking it together. Tasting it, experimenting with it, learning about it together, working together with it. I may be biased because I love food, but isn’t working on homemade pasta together, talking about business and life, better than sitting around the conference room’s behemoth, awkward table?  Let’s not forget that families are the ones that cook together.

I get it; some may think food and meetings is just a gimmick. But, if a company can authentically pull off the cooking meet up, wouldn’t you like them better?  Think they’re more fun and creative?  Feel that they care about you more?

So, what if the kitchen became more of a meeting destination? What if there were kitchens instead of corporate cafeterias? What if clients and prospects sat on the other side of your kitchen island on bar stools while you made homemade soup for them?  What if your company had an afternoon tea time where mentors and mentees paired up to share a spot of tea and bake some biscuits? What if your company hosted cooking classes as part of its corporate training program? What if staff meetings were held around communal tables?  Better yet, what if they were held around your community garden? What if Joe was simply making some of his banana bread, and the aroma invited others to a much-needed break to joke around and get reenergized?

I wish companies would make kitchens their central nervous system.  I think it would help us decompress, get inspired, and do better business. 

Brand Gimmicks: Hit or Miss

A tale of two cookies and the impact of brand swag.

Cookie story #1

Last week, I stayed at a DoubleTree Hotel (client choice), and they offer free cookies when you check in.  Gimmicky, but cool enough.  Certainly unique, with the potential for being memorable and creating brand connection. The problem was that the cookies were super bad; it was like trying to chew your way through a door. Good intention, bad execution.

No big deal, right?  Wrong.  What this tells me is that if you’re not putting effort into your swag, the rest of your brand experience must be weak or half ass as well, which it was. In other words, it means everything. Consumers remember everything bad and are ruthlessly unforgiving, even with little things like cookies.  After all, every touch point creates an impression, for better or for worse. And this created a negative brand impression for me and the thousands of others staying there.

Cookie story #2

We went to R+D Kitchen in Santa Monica over the weekend.  Free cookies at the end of our meal!  These cookies were insanely good, everything you could possible want in a round bundle of joy. And they were free. Surprise and delight, check.

A few observations as result of these cookies: 

(1) If you are going to go the swag route, it should be an extension of your core offering, not out of left field like the Double Tree cookies. A restaurant offering free cookies makes much more sense than a hotel.

(2) Deliver the swag at the end of the experience so consumers leave with a good taste (literally in this case).

(3)  Don’t skimp on the swag. The negative effects outweigh the cost saving, so do it first class. 

(4) Surprise and delight with your swag, which can offer more opportunities for surprise and delight – R+D could’ve pointed to a feature dessert to pair with the cookies, they could have offered a dozen to purchase in branded collateral to take home, they could have made this product the one recipe they share, they could’ve shared a story on how these cookies bring their brand’s essence to life, they could’ve gamified it and offered more cookies if I offered my opinion on the dining experience.  Leveraging the experience more could have created a deeper connection and been less random.

At end of the day, swag is swag.  A bit gimmicky, but a microcosm of your brand experience nonetheless.  So, just be sure you don’t suck at your swag. 

From Fear to Courage

So here’s a message to all of those, including me, who have been afraid to try something new. For all of us who fear failure.  For all of us who are reluctant to try because it’s hard. Public speaking. A new hobby. A new skill at work. Shoot, even asking that girl out. The message is simple: go for it. Seriously, go for it.

In the context of innovation and business practice, this message involves risk for sure. But creative and business success is often less about raw talent and more about how much and how often we are willing to fail. Take it from Thomas Edison: “The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into twenty-four hours.”  The point is that the more we fail, the more we learn. The more we learn, the greater the likelihood that we reach successful outcomes. Kinda like the old adage of try, try again from school. Basically, if we get really good at failing, chances are we’ll eventually reach our goal. 

To that end, don’t just blindly say yes.  Be smart about it.  Do your homework.  In business, look outside of your day to day for inspiration.  Talk with your users, brainstorm a zillion possibilities and narrow down your choices, then test and iterate like crazy.  In other words, go for it, but go for it by failing smartly. 

All of us have some level of desire to do something big. Not all of us have the courage to try.  Fewer still have the courage to try with a well thought out plan. Even fewer of us have the courage and perseverance to continue to try upon failure. Do you? I say eff getting an F.