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Like breathing ...

Last week, Michele Miller and Future Now's Holly Buchanan taught "Wonder Branding ... Marketing to Women" at the Wizard Academy's Tuscan Hall.  Fellow Wizard of Ads partners Dave Young, Mike Dandridge, Michele, Holly and I went to dinner at Fonda San Miguel (one of the owners is from Dave's hometown of Sydney, Nebraska).

The restaurant is hidden away in a north-Austin neighborhood.  The earth-tone exterior of the hacienda is subtle; at night the lighting and landscape are elegant. 

Dinner was "artful."  The service, the presentation, the food -- all were shared arts by the chefs and staff.  All that was left for us to do was bask in the setting and enjoy each other. 

Inside Fonda San Miguel is one of Austin's most famous art collections.  I talked to Tom Gilliland, one of the restaurant's founding partners about the collection. 

I asked Tom about the vision for the collection at Fonda San Miguel.

He said, "The 'vision' such as it was, was at first to fill empty wall space and I happened to find the first piece, the surreal portrait of Emiliano Zapata.

After that, I guess the bug had bitten and I was on the lookout for paintings that would be interesting and right for Fonda San Miguel.

After hearing the wife of the former San Antonio Museum of Art Executive Director say to me, 'When you look at a piece and if it sings to you, then you'll know.'  Before, I'd just think if something was 'good,' that was enough.

Building this collection is like breathing, it's something that is a part of me."   

This year marks the restaurant's thirtieth anniversary and the release of Fonda San Miguel: Thirty years of Food and Art -- a book that showcases just two of the magical elements ... the food and the art of the restaurant.

The Writing on the Wall

When people think they might want to integrate arts programs into their marketing plan there are several misconceptions.

• What do I get when I donate to the Symphony? 
• (That's not art as a tool of marketing.)
• It'll be expensive.
• I don't know know enough about art and I'll look stupid.

Let me take the symphony donation comment back - it's good community relations to donate and support your local symphony.  And, since community relations does fall under "marketing" ... that's OK.  (Local cultural institutions do need to get better at designing sponsorship programs that better serve their corporate community.)

Second, one of the best (and longest lasting) "art as a tool of Marketing" programs in America was started because a restaurant in New York didn't even have the money to decorate their walls.  (This isn't too hard to figure out, is it?)

In the 1920s two Italians, Pio Bozzi and John Ganzi, decided to open a restaurant on Second Avenue in New York and name it after the region that was home to them in their motherland ... The Parma region of Italy.  The name was heard by the filing clerk as The Palm ... and it was never changed.

They opened on a shoestring.  Their restaurant was close to the King Features Syndicate and many of the cartoonists employed there would pay for their spaghetti lunches with a cartoon drawing on the wall.   So. Popeye, Beetle Bailey, Hagar the Horrible and Batman made appearances on the walls of The Palm.  Later, the King Features artists who became regulars would draw caricatures of the famous and infamous diners of The Palm (to the delight of the diners).

 Each of the walls in the flagship New York restaurant is insured for half a million dollars.  And, the American Cartoon Association wouldn't hold their annual dinners anywhere else.

They realized much later what a brilliant marketing strategy it had become ... all of their 30 U.S. and two international locations open with 200-300 local notables drawn on its walls.  New caricatures are added regularly.  These new walls become a "living mural" of the celebrities of the city ... new and old.

Pio and John didn't know much about art, but they knew what they liked: Happy customers who were having a great time at their place.

The Palm Restaurant Cookbook:

Recipes and Stories from the Classic American Steak House

by Brigit Légère Binns.

The Peninsula Hotels

I'm a big fan of The Peninsula Hotels.

What made me a fan was their 2005 presentation, and extension, of the "Portraits of Peninsula."

According to the CEO, they believe the heart and soul of the Peninsula are the people who humbly, and sometimes secretly, serve there.  And, rather than hiring any photographer to focus on these unknown celebrities, they hired Annie Leibovitz to travel to the far corners of the world and introduce us to these people through the magic of simple black and white photography.

The presentation of her art, on their website, is captivating.  She introduced these quiet celebrities by name, by their art within Peninsula and showed us their families.

One of the Photos By Annie Leibovitz,  Children of the Staff Pose as Peninsula Pages

But there's more -- to extend the campaign Annie worked with inner-city students in the Hunts Point community of South Bronx to help them see and capture their world through photography.  Then, there was a special exhibition last October at the Peninsula New York to showcase their work and raise funds for the center at which they learned -- ICP at The Point, an arts-based community center in New York.

I believe a great hotel lobby should feel as wonderful at 5 am as it does at 5 pm.  My favorite hotel memories, don't include the people who work there -- I can tell you how incredible our room was, how creative our meals were and tell you what core values I felt from the "sense of place."

Those things don't happen by themselves.  But in a great hotel -- it seems as though they do.

A great hotel experience isn't marred by a slow check-in, a quiet lobby, or a distant staff.  Even their best people have a bad day.  (But, more on this later.)

Was the "Portraits of Peninsula" effective?  Did it produce a remarkable ROI?  What did it do for employee morale?  What was the response to the Exhibition?  How did they measure success? 

They wouldn't tell me.

Then I remembered reading about Chris Maher's discussion with Raymond Yeh, the co-author of "The Art of Business." Raymond shared his four principles when looking at any innovation or business or endeavor.  Chris wrote them this way:

Will this add to the peace of the individual?

Will this create more harmony in the society?

Will this increase compassion among the wealthy?

Will this increase hope among the needy?

Then Chris said, "To those with a certain turn of mind, these questions will seem soft-headed, fuzzy and actually inappropriate for any serious businessperson to consider. But as a pragmatic businessperson who is blessed with a successful and growing business, I find each of these questions to be relevant to the choices I make." *

These questions must have been relevant to the people of Peninsula, too.

* Q&A With Chris Maher: Marketing and Our Souls, by Ann Handley, August 23, 2005, http://www.marketingprofs.com/5/handley2.asp

The Fried Calamari Conoco

There's a neighborhood Conoco in the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex city of Watauga, Texas where you'll notice the difference as soon as you walk in.  Your nose knows.  You won't smell the waft of fried chicken nuggets and corndogs ... you'll be smelling blackened rib eyes, smoked salmon over fettuccine pasta, crab cakes and grilled sea scallops with fresh vegetables.

For the couple, (Franson Nwaeze and Paula Merrell), who were unable to get bank financing to open a restaurant, the solution was to get financing to open a convenience store ... with a larger kitchen built-in.  So, they fit their dream in between, on the side, the Chef Point Cafe.

In an interview with Texas Country Reporter's Bob Phillips, Franson said that he doesn't believe location makes that much difference when you serve great food. 

Think about some of your favorite restaurants ... are they off the beaten path?  Or, are they on the path leading to all of the other restaurants?  For me it's the Salt Lick, the famous BBQ located south of Dripping Springs, Texas, or Emil-Lene's Sirloin House in an industrial area near the Denver Airport, or the famous Perini Ranch Steak House in Buffalo Gap, southwest of Abilene, Texas.  (George and Laura like Perini's flair for Texas favorites, too.) 

So, remember -- there are several alternatives in "place making."

• Become a destination, regardless of location, by using the power of the "unexpected."
  
• Be what people expect at the great "location." (yawn)
• Be the Unexpected at a great location.

What it Dreams of

"Along the way, we came to understand the power of art, live music and history to draw people -- sometimes from disparate backgrounds -- together under one roof, reinforcing a common sense of belonging."
- www.mcmenamins.com

In 1990, the McMenamin Brothers bought the Multnomah County Poor Farm, 15 miles from Portland, Oregon.  In the decades following 1911, it was a self contained community were residents farmed, ranched, operated a dairy, meat packing plant, worked in laundries and in their kitchens and hospitals.

Today it is a self-contained community again, "The World of Edgefield" where the old manor serves as a luxurious resort; there's a fine-dining restaurant, a classic pub, numerous small bars serving McMenamin's brand of handcrafted ales, wines, spirits and aromatic house-roasted coffees.  On the 38-acre site is a golf course, extensive gardens, on-site glass-blower, pottery maker, artwork, movie theater, live concert area and gift shop.

Michael and Brian McMenamin's "passions for art, history, food, drink and chat" have built their vision to 50 locations throughout Washington and Oregon.  2004 sales totaled $ 72 million. 

"Among their 1,700 employees are historians who research the properties and dig up stories about prior residents.  These often form the basis for a McMenamin restoration process that turns ramshackle real estate into historic theme parks.  Once an old structure is brought back, artists get to work, painting murals of old characters and logos of McMenamins-brewed beers."  (Forbes, August 15, 2005)   

Stephen King once said that the best way to learn about a new place is to know what it dreams of.  It's also the best way to learn about and share, an old place.

Just ask Michael and Brian.