Why Every Restaurant Needs a Communications Strategy Before a Marketing Strategy

Speaker A: Some homes do.

Speaker B: No, the new ones don't.

Speaker A: There's neighborhoods in Calgary that have laneways at least. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, are they called a laneway or a light?

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah, well, they're called a laneway or a back alley or like a back alley. Well, there was a famous bar in Calgary called the Back Alley. You remember that?

Speaker B: I remember it quite well.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: I also remember what's a laneway.

Speaker A: A laneway is the same as a back alley, except more elegant and refined.

Speaker B: Well, why do you know this?

Speaker A: Probably my age.

Speaker B: Can you explain more what a lingway is? Do you want to say, Chester, do you know what chesterfield is?

Speaker A: I know what a chesterfield. You know what? And here's the cool thing, Jay. In the States, there was a cigarette called the Chesterfield cigarette.

Speaker B: Serious?

Speaker A: It was. Yeah.

Speaker B: Did it burn Chesterfields?

Speaker A: Probably many a, uh, chesterfield got burned by those cigarettes. I think chesterfield's an English term from the uk.

Speaker B: Yeah. My grandma used to call the hide a bed chesterfield all the time. Is that because that's what it is, right?

Speaker A: I think that's another name for hide a bed. No, not for hide a bed. For a sofa.

Speaker B: Sofa, really? Okay. Yeah, we'll have to look to. We'll have to get our team to discover what that is. Our research team or at Ashton Media. Her research team's working hard. Anyways, welcome. Uh, over late night restaurant show. We have a. This is a really interesting topic. I've learned. Um, it is really interesting. I think it's important. You should have. You should hire him. You should walk around with you.

Speaker A: Well, we. You know, that's why I was asking those questions because I like. At what point do you. I think everybody needs somebody doing what they do. Do you need that?

Speaker B: Especially communication, Dom.

Speaker A: Yeah, for many a place.

Speaker B: I could use him myself.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: On the show. Joshua, can we hire you for the show every show and just maybe coach us on how to talk?

Speaker A: Yeah. It's headed up to be a passion project though, because you can't pay. Yeah.

Speaker B: I'll give you a. You know what, maybe you can join us, give us tips once in a while. But not to say I, uh, upload. Usually about five minutes.

Speaker A: Well, what not to say. It's just. It would be easier to give you the stuff to say.

Speaker B: I got this hair thing going. So people do watch us on YouTube and stuff like this. You do see us with my hair. But I have to say I'm sporting the, uh, something about Mary haircut right now.

Speaker A: You don't want to be saying that on air, Jay, because you you don't, you don't understand the reference there that you just made, Jay. It's really, really bad.

Speaker B: This is why you need a communications. Right, Right. There's an example.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Ah, I know, but it's just, it just won't go down. I don't know what that is.

Speaker A: Anyways, gotta get Joshua in here really quick. Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, he'll be leaving us.

Speaker A: I'm here, Jay.

Speaker B: I don't think he messes around either. He'll leave. Uh, anyway, so we got a great show tonight. We're going to talk about this before we get started as everyone's listening. We're doing a little spickle here about spickle. It's another word. English.

Speaker A: Never heard that one.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's English. Italians. Didn't hear that one. Um, is that, uh, 13th and 14th at the BMO center in California? September.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. You never said that. Nothing.

Speaker B: I think I got a cold. I think I'm getting a cold.

Speaker A: The month is critical. When you say date, it does help.

Speaker B: Does help. We don't like people just showing up all the time to the BMO.

Speaker A: From now, every 15th and 14th they're saying, well, hey, we're here for next year one, you know.

Speaker B: Um, anyways, huge food show, trade show expo. Everything in there. Dom's going to be hanging out there signing autographs. I, I. Like I told you earlier, Dom, I looked at that sign again because I was like, probably was a bad idea. It was a horrible idea. So I'm not even going to tell you about that idea that I was going to buy for our space at the show. But yeah, won't go there. Uh, so that's coming up also. We have a few other things happening. The Alberta. We haven't. Have we announced on our show about the Alberta hall of Fame Restaurant hall of Fame awards that ash. And we're putting on with next the

Speaker A: food service hospitality hall of Fame.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Are you going to get up there? You going to wear a little tie?

Speaker A: Yeah, black tie.

Speaker B: Black. You going to put squishing. I mean, put it into a small tie.

Speaker A: Well, or I'm gonna get one of those T shirts. Like the tuxedo T shirt. So it's like, you know.

Speaker B: No, no, you have to wear the real thing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So anyways, you can check out the website. I think is up now. By the way, I think Barry's got that, uh, set up.

Speaker A: Is it really?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's on.

Speaker A: I think the acronym is Jay, so I can't say it. I don't Know.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, don't worry. That was your idea. Acrona meant I was looking for the big long sentence.

Speaker A: Easier to spell right. A few letters versus 250 words.

Speaker B: Yeah, probably a good idea. That's probably why we need a communications guy like we have on tonight. Yeah, we'll ask him. Maybe he's got a better idea. Probably does. Are you, you okay?

Speaker A: I'm okay. Jay.

Speaker B: Not gassy tonight.

Speaker A: I'm not gassy.

Speaker C: J.

Speaker B: My daughter's like, you gotta stop talking, uh, about dog and gassy.

Speaker A: Yeah, not a good thing. And then now we gotta add, you know, don't. Don't tell us how your haircut gelled. We don't want to know that either.

Speaker B: Apparently, that kind of stu. All right, let's have our guest in here and let's, let's, uh, let's not ruin his life too much. No, here he goes.

Speaker A: Hi, uh, Joshua.

Speaker B: Joshua, welcome. Yes, yes, Joshua. Can we bring you on the show every day and just tell us about every day.

Speaker C: But we do the coaching ahead of time.

Speaker B: Do you want to give us a tip? Okay, thank you.

Speaker A: To give me one of those, those bleep, uh, beep buttons. Buttons. Probably. Joshua's like, yeah, we need, we need, we need both. We need coaching ahead. We need during. And then we probably need help with the editing too, because, you know, the, the show, the. The 30 or 45 minute show might be in about two minutes of use. Useful information.

Speaker B: It's usually the other way.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Okay, we'll try useful today.

Speaker B: Exactly. Well, Joshua, tell us more about Beltway Media and what you do over there and what you guys all do and all the cool stuff you do. I think this is a great topic. I think it's one. It's probably fairly new and, uh, that I have heard and trust me, I really know that there's a need for it. Um, and definitely, as we get more, I guess, concern on what we say and what we don't say in public, and I think that's going to be really a good conversation tonight. Uh, so thank you, Hyen, for joining us.

Speaker C: We're fractional chief communications officers. We work with small businesses across any industry. We focus on businesses who are big enough where they need full time communications or part time communications. But a full time chief communications officer doing 40 hours a week of work is not in their budget, not in their need. A lot of times you've thought about this. If you opened up your restaurant, if you opened up any business, you've thought, we need the website, we need the social Media accounts. You're probably running through a list of, uh, all the different things you need to do just to get the information out there. Now you start running your restaurant and the last thing you want to still be doing is running the communications for it because you have a restaurant to run. And both are full time things to do. And we take that function off of those founders, off of those chefs, off of those owners with two big focuses. The first is we shape perception. The second is we build and maintain trust.

Speaker A: The first issue shaped what? Perception.

Speaker B: Perception. Perception. Yeah.

Speaker A: Tell us about that.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker C: That goes directly into trust. It's how people see you, how people think about you, that feeds into and informs. Do they trust you?

Speaker A: And tell us, I know this, but tell, tell, tell everybody that's listening. That is the number one thing. Well, safety. But trust is like that with safety, right? Why is trust important?

Speaker C: Trust and safely go hand in hand, especially in a food service establishment. But no one's walking in your door if they don't trust what you're cooking is going to not hurt them that you are, um, meeting all those food safety requirements, that your kitchen is clean, that, that your staff washes their hands. Like all these basic things that we just assume when we walk into a food service establishment, we're putting a lot of trust in those people. If they don't trust you, you're not going to get those people in the door.

Speaker A: So you establish perception of the business. So if my, if my, if the perception of my business is damaged, how do you fix that?

Speaker C: There are different ways to do it. It can be fixed. Sometimes it's a rebrand. That might be the way to do it. If that name, if that look is no longer going to be sustainable for people, it might really be a full rebrand. Usually it's not that drastic. Usually you have one or two points that need to be addressed that might be having very large impact and, uh, might feel outsized. But people might think of you as more casual when you are really fine dining, when you are something much more higher ed. People might think of you as a place to bring kids when that's not really what you're going for. And that completely changes the environment and the restaurant and the menu and the expectations people have walking in there. Those are things that don't require a rebrand to do, to address, but they do require constant and focused, uh, attention.

Speaker B: So how, Joshua, how many companies and especially restaurants like this think that they're doing what they're doing is right? Like you're missing it like is, do you find that a lot of the times you're like, whoa, we have to go in here. But if they're thinking that they're doing what's right, like the best they can do you find that often a lot.

Speaker C: Do a lot think that, especially to the best we can. Because again, a lot of the people who might be doing this, especially in a small restaurant or a small restaurant group, might be a founder, an owner, the chef. And they're thinking, I'm doing the best I can with this. While also running a kitchen. That person's job is running a kitchen. Not making sure the website is findable, not making sure that the pictures they have are enticing to people. Their job is to run a kitchen, which is a tough job, as I'm sure your audience knows and does not leave time for taking Instagram worthy photos of all the food. Those are two different things. But people come to us generally because they know they need to do something. They're doing what they are doing as well as they can, but they know that's not ideal and they need to do more.

Speaker B: It's gotta be now. When you look, how do you determine? Do you do an audit on their Q comms?

Speaker C: We do. We have a couple ways we do it. We have a, uh, full system AIs in every business. We have something that we wrote in house to apply our auditing frameworks to a business and. But that is only going to be as good as what they've published and what it can find, which isn't everything.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: In fact, in some cases it's not most things. So it's only as good as that. One really significant limitation. The first thing we do with any new project is we're going to take you through our two corners, core frameworks, and we're going to figure out where you are, where you stand and what you need to do. The first one is our story, narrative and brand framework. Most people call us at the brand stage. They need to be thinking about story and they need to be thinking about narrative. Story is, it's stuff, uh, it's what happened. It's how you tell your friends a series of events that were funny that happened to you at the bar. That is the story. Narrative is what answers questions. It connects the dots, it tells people what we want to think about that story. And brand is the swag. It's all the stuff people interact with for your business. So anything a stakeholder sees, touch points all of it, from a billboard to the first thing, when they sit down at a table, that is all part of the brand. And we're going to take you through that. And this is something you listeners, viewers can do on your own very simply is literally just take a piece of paper, divide it into thirds. Story, narrative and brand and answer. Story is the characters, the setting, the beginning, the middle are uh, present narrative. What is trying to get people to know what answers these questions, what connects the dots and brand. Just start listing all the things people interact with. And that's a really good quick way to use that framework. It's like a self audit. And you could do this. I'd recommend a full size piece of paper, but the back of a bar napkin would work. It would be really small. You might want to get three or six of them to really do this fully. The other one uses our four languages model and that's read, see here and experience. And that's how people are, uh, interacting with your content.

Speaker A: Can you repeat that?

Speaker C: Read, see, hear and experience.

Speaker B: Read, read, see, hear.

Speaker C: And the last one is experience.

Speaker A: I, um, missed the first two.

Speaker C: The first one, Read, read.

Speaker B: What do you read, see, hear, experience.

Speaker C: Yes. And experience encompasses a lot. But reading, that's kind of the easy one people most intuitively get. It's what you read. It's everything that is words. You take it in. See encompasses a lot more. Yes. What you're. A lot of what you're reading, you're seeing. But also pictures, visuals, Instagram, pictures of the food. All of that is stuff you're seeing.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: Hearing this is a great example. Podcasts are things you listen to. Yeah. Those radio ads for a restaurant are things you listen to. One thing they're doing a lot, some companies are doing a lot of work on right now is in store or in restaurant audio. So what music is playing. And some big chains with hundreds of locations think multiple aisle grocery stores are really experimenting with putting different music in different sections of the same store. And it'll be customized to each store in different parts of town to really encourage the actions they want people to take. It's becoming much more personalized. People kind of think, oh, we'll put on that Spotify playlist. You need a little more.

Speaker B: Really?

Speaker C: Yeah, really think about that. Because it's setting the stage for especially in a restaurant experience.

Speaker B: You know what I Joshua, I think I remember reading about the importance of that music. That is. It is missed so much on what's playing in that background. And now what I've been in restaurants too, that had no music Is that, is that a bad thing to do?

Speaker C: No. It depends on your restaurant and uh, your clientele and the uh, environment and experience you want to set for people. Sometimes you might really want that music. You might have it earlier in the night, but not later. It could change. You have your weekday music, you have your Friday Saturday night music. You have different things, which is all contributing to the experience. It's experiences like what you guys were talking about before those conferences, those trade shows, awards, all of that things you experience, but also how people experience what they read, see and hear. So getting the same restaurant via uh, you know, app takeout is going to be a very different experience. And sitting down at a table in the restaurant and having a uh, full immersive experience there. It's the same food basically, but is a very different experience. And I know, you know, chefs and owners and restaurateurs put a lot of time into thinking what is the experience from the time someone walks into the time they leave and every little thing counts. And we put a lot of focus on experience. It includes things that you touch, it includes those menus, it includes um, that's part of how you engage.

Speaker B: Where would you say most places drop the ball? Like, is there one more heavier that you're like everyone just misses this one. Um, is it the, is it, is it the here, the sea?

Speaker A: No.

Speaker C: People probably think about experience only as experiential events like pop ups, the conferences. And they don't think about how experience connects. What you read, see and hear a really kind of basic example of two different experiences with the same content. Besides, you know that takeout is. We're doing it right now. Podcasts, people listen to them. I'm a person who listens to podcasts. I listen while I drive, I listen while I walk the dog. Those are my uh, two big podcasting listen times. Other people are going to sit and watch this live. Those, they're getting the same content, they're getting the same stuff from us. But it is a two very different experiences that they're having. So people.

Speaker B: Well actually I think third because Dom's different than I am. So Don, you're getting a different experience if you just focus on Dom.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Then you, me.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So there's kind of that. Well, I don't know who's got a better experience that we're giving.

Speaker C: Pull your audience, Dom. Yeah,

Speaker B: well, no, when you talk about baking, I'm in all the time.

Speaker A: Well that um, so we self audit. We call you we, we, we know most, most businesses to, to your point earlier, big or small, they need to think about this first off, but then they need to do it when, you know, Jay said, hey, can you help us? Because we, we suffer from all of these things.

Speaker C: Right?

Speaker A: Yeah, we know what our, what our limits are. Um, I got 10, 10 locations. We've been bootstrapping our, our communications, including our menus. But now, now, you know, we've coordinated our menus. All our menus are good. We've got training first to, uh, have, but we're not, I think our, our communication out to the world is not good. Is that what we call you in normal?

Speaker C: That's what you would call us.

Speaker B: That's normal.

Speaker C: We do internal stuff as well. And a lot of times you kind of need to fix one before the other. It's not just a process. It is a forever iterative experience. It is something that is always happening and always going to be changing because people's expectations change. Also, if you have, you know, from just making a menu, people get bored of the same dishes 100% of the time. You're going to change up. And especially if you maybe, uh, you're a farm to table restaurant, which we all know is something very popular right now and has been for a while, you're going to have a very different restaurant in the spring than you do in the fall. You're going to have a different menu because what you could get from that farm to that table is going to be very different seasonally, which means your communications are going to have to change. So it always evolves. And starting internal is really great because it gave you a place where you could see and test a lot of things without putting them out into the world. Although sometimes the only way to know just like if you're testing a new recipe, a new dish, is to put it out into the world and see what the customer thinks. You could do all the test kitchens you want. New Coke will tell us this. We all know you could test it as much as you want, but until it's in the hands of real customers, you don't know the actual outcome yet.

Speaker A: What'd you say? New Coke will tell us this.

Speaker C: Yeah, you're right.

Speaker A: Everybody said, yeah, New Coke's the best thing since sliced bread. And everybody.

Speaker C: Then we all got New Coke.

Speaker A: Is New Coke even out there anymore? It's not.

Speaker C: And they slowly no, it, uh, maybe once in a while. I've heard maybe a special, but it is not the standard recipe anymore. It was pulled.

Speaker A: Oh, it is.

Speaker C: Once it went into real odd. Once it went to Real people, they did not like it the same that the test audience.

Speaker B: It's not wild though. But how, like, how many restaurants are testing communications in a way? I really don't think they're testing.

Speaker A: They're testing their food, but they, I

Speaker B: think, I think they're not testing this,

Speaker A: but I know that's what's so important for sure. And then I think the problem is part of.

Speaker B: So m. Interesting.

Speaker A: Part of the testing part is, is that the communication, if, if you're, if you're behind it, the communication often lacks and, and sucks around what the change is. Right. So, yeah, you, I think you see that happening all the time, Jay. I do, I do.

Speaker B: Well, I, uh, we, we have, you know, a lot of restaurants will call and they'll be like, okay, you know, we're almost like in a critical stage. We go and we correct certain things, but it's not enough. Like you talked about, like the rebranding and everything else, a lot of them don't want to go to that stage, but a lot of them need to go to that stage to go where they want to go with their business. Because usually they're going to. Like, if they're already in that unfortunate way of not returning to success, they're. They're going to, they need to do something dramatic. And it's usually into the rebranding stage. Like, you have to go back into that.

Speaker C: The answer to that is rebranding isn't bad.

Speaker B: No, it's not.

Speaker C: No. It means you've made a pivot. You recognized it, you had a natural progression. Our business, we've pivoted and rebranded over our lifetime like other businesses do because we recognize a need.

Speaker B: Yeah. Joshua, is there a. Sorry, I'm interrupting you. Is that, uh, I'm so excited about this shit. Because this is where I think you see maturity of businesses is when they go into that.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Rebranding model. Right. Because I'm a big. Been marketing forever and all these rebranding and brand building brands is. I find when you, what is the, let's say, the ideal timeframe to go? Like, do you go five years, hey, guys, it's time to shift the brand a little? Or do you go every two, three. Is there a rule or is that just judged differently?

Speaker C: It's judged differently. A new company.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: If you're a new restaurant, you might do, uh, interior redesign. You might do a new look or a new name or combine those things maybe after a few years because. And you see this a lot with, you know, startups with tech Firms with other businesses.

Speaker B: Well, beverage companies. Beverage companies. We saw that with Poppy recently. See, does Poppy change? They got bought out on their rebrand. Right.

Speaker C: Part of it when you see that is things were taking off. Maybe they got an investor that wanted to change. It could have been a chef owner who's now no longer an owner and the name goes. Uh, there are lots of reasons that it could happen, but you might see it relatively early and then they stay fairly consistent for decades. And they're where families go and know for a long time. Or if they're bought, if they're part of a restaurant group, they might pivot and do a rebrand as part of the whole group. And when the group becomes more coherent, that's a good time to do it. But anything, especially in communications, if you say we need to do this change or do this post every two years or five years, you're kind of locking yourself in. There's no marketing police, there's no communications police, there's no social media police. These aren't the laws of nature. These are not bound by physics. You can do what seems right for your business at that.

Speaker B: Uh, ah, it's also going to be economic. Great. Like if you sales starting to slide. Hey, it's time to change a logo or change a brand again.

Speaker C: Logo. It might be some social media. It might be reviews, it might be, you need new photos. It could be a special new menu items. There are lots of ways you can do it. A rebrand is not cheap. A rebrand is not a short process. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of money. Especially if you're going to be redoing the physical interior of one or more locations. That isn't something you can take on lightly. So trial things first and assess if that's feasible. You know, the one that jump to we're redecorating an entire restaurant.

Speaker B: Well, here I want to talk a little bit about this because I think it's important. Dom. Recently Subway went through a rebranding and a remodel of their stores. And I, I'll be honest, because I used to do some consulting with them way back in the day is we were. They were getting into a point of going like, what are we starting to see? You know, the overall brand, you know, be concerned about what was happening with sales. We are starting to we with this new bread fresh, the new look, the new design of their businesses. I starting to see them busy again. I'm starting to see that uptick again. I'm starting to see people Talk about them again. But that doesn't happen overnight, and that is a big critical decision. I think they did a great rebrand of what they're doing right now. Right. Don, you must love the bread smell, by the way.

Speaker A: Is that, uh, that's the iconic thing. Right. That's like when you're in the airport, like we fly up to Toronto and you smell the bread and it's like you instantly want to sell.

Speaker B: Well, that goes back to. Back to the four things. Right. And I think that's important because it does talk a little bit about the experience that you get when you go to Subway. But I think they did a phenomenal job of their rebranding. And it's still recognizable, but it's fresh, it's new, it's exciting, it's uplifting. It's got, uh, more health feel to it. They've done a phenomenal job on that. But, uh, I can only imagine how

Speaker C: long that takes, especially with a chain that size. You can't replace the entire restaurant chain overnight. You're going to be doing interiors regionally. You're going to be do. You're going to pick the priority locations. You're going to be. Have to do it in a rollout. It's not. We're taking a weekend and gutting and remodeling every subway. It can't, uh. It wouldn't work that way.

Speaker A: No, it won't work exactly. Because they just the logistics of getting those printed materials. Yeah. It's just. Yeah.

Speaker C: Also, if it doesn't work, you can't go back once you've done them all. You could try out in a few, like we were talking about before, put it in front of, um, some real audiences in some, you know, known test markets?

Speaker A: Do you help find out. Joshua, would you help somebody with that to say, okay, we've. We've done X, Y and Z. We've done an audit. Um, here's some of the things we think you should change. How do you. How do you help a restaurant, let's say in this case, or a group of restaurants do that? Test pilot, um, a new menu or new, uh, new visuals in the store, whatever it is. How do you help them do that?

Speaker C: What's the.

Speaker A: What's the process around that?

Speaker C: It's going to depend a lot on the budget and where that group is. So if you have a restaurant group of, say, 10 restaurants, are those 10 of the same restaurants serving basically the same thing? Are they 10 functionally unique restaurants that just happen to be under one ownership that will really change how that you go about doing that. If you basically have 10 of, uh, mostly the same restaurant, pick one or two, do those first. And don't roll everything out at once. Don't say, here's our whole new menu. Uh, start with one or two items. Also you have. Remember you have to train your kitchen on a new menu. If you do that, starting with one or two items will be a lot easier than an entire new menu all at once.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Especially if it doesn't work.

Speaker A: Everyone, Right? Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. So start with a couple of items, see what's working. Hype those up, get people in, make sure people are really able to try those. You know, if it's the new, you know, beef dish. If you're a Mexican place, it's the new beef quesadilla.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Uh, make sure. Or it's a sandwich. If you're Subway, put that on the ads. And you don't necessarily need TV or broadcast. Put that on your social media ads. Make sure people find out about it. You could do things that cost you a very, uh, little to find out, which is offer catering to offices for their meetings. You could find out pretty quickly. If they want. They'll not. They'll take the free food, they'll take the catering, but you'll find out how basically a random group of people respond. Because it's just a random group of 20 people in an office. Yeah. You know, other than literally assembling a random group, this is as good a sample you could get. You'll learn something from it and just ask them, like, hey, you like it?

Speaker B: Yeah. They'll tell you it's gotta be an interesting career. Joshua, for yourself, in a sense of where, uh, my nose is leaking, by the way, Dom, is that, uh, is, um, it's gotta be interesting of what you see out there because there's such a gap within this space. Cause no one taught anyone this stuff.

Speaker C: No.

Speaker B: Like, unless you went to school. Like, could you learn this at school? Or is this more or less not studied as much as maybe it should be?

Speaker C: It's studied. There are marketing schools, there are business schools that have MBAs in marketing. I personally, I went to journalism school. Then I did a master's in something called communication, Culture and Technology, which neither of those teach marketing, restaurants particularly. But, uh, a lot of it is, you learn it from experience, like cooking, like most skills and ah, it is a skill, you kind of learn it from doing it. And you could go to school and study public relations and study marketing. And those are good programs that you Learn a lot. But just like with any other industry, you really don't know a lot of it until you get in and you know, get your hands in the kitchen.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Uh, it's like that for a baker, right Dom very much looked at you, right. You just as soon as you get in there baking, you don't know until you bake. No, because it's a lot of processes of learning stuff over time.

Speaker A: That's right. That's why you measure twice and you cut once.

Speaker C: Jay, one thing I always remind every project is ultimately we are dealing with people and human behavior. I wish we could control it. That would make our job, it would make your guys job.

Speaker B: There it is.

Speaker C: If we could control human behavior. But that's not how things work.

Speaker B: No, it's. I was going to say that's gotta be a positive.

Speaker C: Try and influence it as best we can. We can, yeah. We can push people one way or the other. We can influence. But actually controlling human behavior, that.

Speaker A: Yeah. Is it, is it now like in today's age is influencing their behavior harder? Because of the amount of media and media outlets that we have available to us. We have podcasts, we have um, TikTok, we have Facebook, we have Instagram, we have Twitter. You know, we, you've got 200 things. Whereas in the past you had sort of the radio, tv, you know, the newspapers maybe, I don't know what else. There was magazines, you know, and, and books and that was it. Now you've got all those plus a thousand, um, different social, uh, media things. You've got YouTube that has, I don't know what the stats are, you know, a million minutes, A million minutes of stuff uploaded every minute. Like there's billions and billions of things to look and see. So getting that message out is, is critical now that it's unified and it's, it's the right message because it's, it's going to get lost amongst all that stuff unless we're doing all of that.

Speaker C: True. Well, even if you're doing a good job, it could still get lost.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And what you. There used to be a statistic if it was ever true, I don't know, but it was. It takes seven to 14 touch points for someone to make a decision to buy to not whatever it was. I think that number is these days a lot higher. 21, 28, 30 plus touch points for someone to their decision.

Speaker B: Why is that increased?

Speaker C: Josh, think about how many more touch points you have each day. You scroll through your, your phone, you see posts, native posts, you See ads, you see all these different things. You're scrolling. It could be mindless. You're not really paying attention. You might catch that it was, you know, Chef Joe's restaurant, but you're not really paying attention. So all you have now is some borderline name recognition of the place. You don't know what it is, you don't know who it is. You couldn't tell you where it is, if it's even in your city or not. All you know is that you saw some post that could have been reposted by a friend of yours who lives a thousand, two thousand miles away. So you get so much more in now that you need to cut through it, but also take more to cut through it and for people to take an action.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's really good. I think it's so interesting. Joshua and, um, I just. Where's AI fall in this? Because that's gonna be the next question. I have the next big one.

Speaker C: AI is huge in this. We use it all the time. It's a great resource. It's a tool, but it's just a tool. It is not going to solve your communications problems. If you say AI, I have this bakery we sell. These are our big items. These are lesser sold items. Help me develop a marketing plan for it. It will do it. But if you don't know communications and marketing, you have no way to know if it's telling you something that's right. And I put things into AI all the time because we use it to do a lot of research. And, uh, it comes out with things that I know are factually wrong. It told me, in addition to going to journalism school, I was a history major as well. It told me historical facts that were blatantly wrong. Things that you could look up and know. This is not right. And it said, well, this is right. It said, you tell no. And it says, yes, it is. M. Okay. No. Oh, um, wow. If you don't know that if a marketing plan that's giving you is good or feasible or well timed, you don't know to make edits to it. What I told you. You also don't know if you should just throw it out and you start with something new. But it is a great tool. It's great for research. It's great for, for outlines.

Speaker B: Do you think a lot of places, like a lot of businesses now are using it as the communicate, like saying, you know what, I'm gonna. This is what I want to put out. Uh, I've heard it. Everything from training manuals. To you name it. We've had on the show talking about AI and they integrated in there. How? How? Like are we going to lose a point where AI is just really controlling the narrative all the time on everything?

Speaker C: Possibly we're not there. I could predict the future. I don't know if I'd be right. My guess would probably be as good as anyone else's.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Well I just. Because I read an article the other day just about the lack of what we read today is so influenced by AI. It's not really the true thought of the humans in the content that we're reading now because it's overlapping. Everyone's using it so much to become the communication support for them. Like everyone's using it and they may not use it fully but everyone's being influenced by it that it does shift over the overall spectrum of how we read or comprehend or even consume the content or the articles or the.

Speaker C: Yeah, because we create content for companies, we do it for ourselves very specifically with you know that answer engine optimization with AI answers because people will put in where should we have dinner tonight? That'll be a question they ask AI and we're putting in content optimized to get your restaurant to be the answer. Of course. How does it know where you should eat? Eat tonight?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: It doesn't know what you want. Uh, but it'll ask you questions. But we are feeding it the information very specifically structured on the front end and the back end for how these systems claim again this is all proprietary stuff claim that we should be doing it and the understood best practices for publishing like that. But what you see, uh, that's why we don't use it for anything really beyond an outline because it's really good for that. But once you get to even drafting sometimes for simple things that could do a passable first draft. But beyond that and beyond the super simple, it's not going to create something that we wouldn't call AI fluff and that people have now very quickly, much faster than I thought we would learned to tune out humanizers to prevent that.

Speaker B: Well I want to ask you that because I'm hearing this more and more about social media, is that we're starting to tune out on social media because of the AI, uh coming into that more and more. For restaurants it's concerning because a lot of restaurants used AI or not AI used social media to share their brand story or get their word out there or market themselves because it's free ideally. But now they're like people are like, well, I'm not gonna go on TikTok as long, or I don't. Like you're, you're cutting through the noise maybe, or you're not really trusting the content or those stories on there because of AI is really, you know, scattered all over now. It's, it's the biggest questions we hear a, are not AI or not, Is it or isn't on every post? So I think that's going to, I think it's going to erode social media in the future. I think we're going to be questioning social media in the future.

Speaker C: I think we should already be questioning it because so much stuff has been either fake or farm or disingenuous or just people trolling for the fun of trolling. We see that all the time. And that's not new with AI. But the better question isn't, is this AI or is this not AI? It's what role did the human play in it? Because AI in some way is going to touch almost everything. If you use Grammarly, which is a proofreading tool, they use an AI, they're using that tool. But it's a proofreading tool. It might make suggestions, but it's just using whatever you put in. If you do a graphic, if you want to, you know, design a new menu, you could ask AI, is this an optimal layout? It could say yes and be completely wrong. It could say, you need to make these few changes. And, uh, it could be trained on tens of thousands of menus that have been used this year in restaurants across the world. But if you want to know what the people in Toronto or where I AM in the D.C. metro area think about using a menu, then you don't need to know what the people in Los Angeles were doing. You need to test it against a very narrow focus. So the better question is always what role did the human play? Because if you go back a decade, two decades, three decades, we would ask, well, was this computerized or not? Of course we used a computer for it. That's how we did things. So now it's are we using the current tools in a responsible way for our business that actually helps draw people in M. And that requires a lot more human involvement than simply writing a pretty good

Speaker A: Joshua.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker C: Our website is Beltway Media no dot com.

Speaker B: You know, Josh, I want to thank you for spending time with us. This is so fascinating. Bob. Um, I'm a marketing branding guy. I could listen to Joshua talk about this all night. It's so interesting because it's so dynamic Today than the old, like, let's say the old days.

Speaker A: There's so many things to consider, right. That you never used to like before. It used to be in my. The yellow pages. And is it, uh, you know, is it right?

Speaker C: And is, is.

Speaker B: Oh, it's writing. Writing a thing in the news.

Speaker A: Marketing.

Speaker C: That used to be marketing for restaurants.

Speaker A: The very high end restaurants were in a magazine maybe, but everybody else, you were lying.

Speaker B: Well, that or you got the little corner in the newspaper and it was an ad. Right. Or you know, like it's so dynamic now and it makes me think more and more about the importance of working with companies like yourself, Joshua. Because not like we were worried about how to do an ad right in a newspaper or even just from a social perspective. Like how do you do the right post on social media? Or what should you say and what shouldn't you say? Like that's stressful enough. When we get into this level of comms, it is so complex. It is insane though, Josh. That's incredible.

Speaker C: The key is always be authentic. If you take, uh, if you do nothing else, be authentic. That is what people are create. We talk about this in our newsletter almost every week, if not every week in some form.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Be authentic with people. We are over. We are just as skeptical now. Maybe over skeptical because we see so much AI and if something looks a little too polished, well, that must be AI generated. Something has no errors in it. That must be AI it looks too good. Which doesn't necessarily mean it is. It just means someone wrote a sentence without an error.

Speaker A: Wait a second. Let's be careful there because if we put out a, uh, post with the wrong dates to our shot.

Speaker B: Okay? One fucking date. One day.

Speaker C: I feel like I touched on a nerve here of some kind.

Speaker B: One day.

Speaker A: What I want to make sure is that the marketing people out there in the world don't take that as a pass because that's a, that's a big faux pas, right? That's a big no. But the uh. And don't plant. Don't plant mistakes on purpose to say

Speaker C: don't just plant the mistake.

Speaker B: No, no, no, no. It was planted.

Speaker A: I do agree with that 100%. And I think when you're authentic and you're real, the, the truth is the consumer that like your restaurant patron, um, they're forgiving of authenticity.

Speaker C: They are especially not just in restaurants, in any industry. In any industry, much more forgiving of a person being authentic. Another big key difference we see, and this is across all industries, people are much more responsive If a post, this is primarily for social media. If a post comes from a person and not from the business and we've done the exact same post from the personal account of an owner and the business, you know, the business is, you know, Acme Corp's account and the one from the person significantly better. It outperforms. It gets better engagement. We see more people want, we see tips to the website coming off of it, we see clicks, we get reactions to it. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. But they're reacting to it and people want to see the person that is authentic. And yeah, we know a person is behind both accounts and is probably a marketing team behind both accounts but you're connecting with a person so which is much better than the restaurant, you know.

Speaker B: But that's, that's the thing I've said that more is people love uh, people and businesses are businesses. It's really simple. But you know, I love that Joshua and I think it's a good thing too. I always say that with restaurants is when we want to talk to restaurants about getting out there and talking regularly through social about who you are and you know, bringing your personal brand or yourself to the, to you know, your content through your personal brand and yourself. I believe people engage more with it. They're, they're more truth like they're more trusting of that uh, content that through that person. And I, and I truly believe we're just at the beginning of it in our industry but I think overall in bigger industry. I saw that with Walmart when the president of Walmart got out there and started talking at his desk like a regular guy. I started looking at Walmart different, right? All these different Bezo and uh, all these other companies out there, the more that they're putting a face to the company, the more that we're trusting that company in a really unique way. And I find it so perfect and polished.

Speaker C: No Jeff Bezos's publicist team behind you making sure every little hair is perfect, making sure it's great. Be your authentic self. Do a little media training. We provide media training as well. Do it, be comfortable with it. But a little bit of awkwardness actually can have a net benefit. Even though it comes off to you as really awkward, it does come off as more genuine to a user because it is, it comes off the way it is. Which is more genuine I was going to say.

Speaker B: So when we put the late night restaurant show on Dom's top of his head there. So when he bends down looking at his phone, it's going to be our Advertising space. That's billboard opportunity there, Dom. Right there. Right there. We put it right there on you, right? We'll make it look like a hairpiece and when you bend over, it'll be our logo. No, not buying it. So, Joshua, I want to thank. I want to thank you. First of all, I, I am freaking love what you talk about. It's so interesting. I'm m. Like I said, I've always been a big, um, fan about marketing and branding and building content that really matters to people. And what you're talking about tonight is so valuable. Uh, do you do, uh, do you do newsletters? Do you share all this content on a frequent basis?

Speaker C: We do. We. We have a newsletter that comes out weekly. Sign up on our website, Beltway Media. There's a sign up.

Speaker B: Fascinating stuff, man.

Speaker C: Also, if you have questions you're looking to do this for your restaurant, we have a free, you know, book of time with us that's available. We have a lot of free resources on our website. We have quick guides, we have quizzes. Even if it says for startup, it'll replace startup with restaurant. And it's basically the core of communications. So if you are a restaurant, just take the startup one. Use it. Take our messaging quick guide. Use it. They're designed. If you look on the website, there are HTML versions that just look on the website, but there's a PDF version as well. If you use that and print it out, which I know I'm now getting back 20 years, and you know, the idea that we take PDF and we print it out, it's designed with a lot of white space for you to use it as a worksheet.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that.

Speaker C: Really benefit from answering the question and looking at it and self reflecting.

Speaker B: I didn't, I didn't see I'm being authentic.

Speaker C: Uh-huh.

Speaker B: Joshua, thank you again for spending time with us.

Speaker A: Thanks, Joshua.

Speaker B: Just phenomenal. I love the content. So fascinating. Uh, take care. All the best, Joshua.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker B: Fascinating. Dob, I'm dying, first of all, dying. Slow death here, but I have to say, I have to. This stuff is so good, Doc. It's so. I love it. It's my, it's my. It's my cup of tea, as we say.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Important. Lots of important messages. I like, I like the, uh, I like the stuff. I like the fact that he's even

Speaker B: got lots of resources on his website.

Speaker A: If you're considering it. It's Saltwee Media. Um, and, uh, it sounds like they do a free consultation. I think that's A good place to start, too. Right. So.

Speaker B: Well, I'm gonna do that for. For yourself, Brad.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Cause that's what I do.

Speaker A: Well, let's not take away from Josh.

Speaker B: Uh, but no, I think. I think you could have a phenomenal brand. Well, you kind of.

Speaker A: I need a rebrand.

Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're the go to podcasting.

Speaker A: You don't.

Speaker B: You don't shake that. You don't shake that away. Anyways, great topic, phenomenal content. I tell you, it's just. It's so. I just. Don't you find it interesting? I find it so interesting.

Speaker A: No, it is very interesting.

Speaker B: It's very interesting. It's so good. It was such a great

Speaker A: cal. September 13th and 14th. See, I start with the month Jade, because that's.

Speaker B: Well, I was gonna say. I was gonna say. I was just. Just before we end, you've been holding that, uh, 14th and 15th date on your show on your chest all night, but then you share it with our guest.

Speaker A: Well, I think we're just being authentic.

Speaker B: That was marketing 101. I was gonna tell you.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's what I thought. Yeah.

Speaker B: It's all. It's all. It's all fixed. It's all fixed, by the way. Just so you know. But.

Speaker A: No, I know it's fixed.

Speaker B: Keep bringing it up.

Speaker A: Like, bring it up is people might show up here the 15th, and the BMO center is going to say, oh, yeah, that was over in the 15th of 2025.

Speaker B: See, the thing also is, I think you're going to keep bringing this up. Like that one guest we had three years ago talking about the cell phone and serving.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think you got, uh, a.

Speaker A: And the one that we couldn't understand for anything. That person. Yes. That. That's one I won't forget either, Jay. And neither will she. So marketing. Marketing in Nepal is not something that's in our realm. I don't think so.

Speaker B: No, I don't think it was marketing either. I don't think it was.

Speaker A: Okay, see, I think you hooked her because they do something with goats there. I'm not sure what, but anyway. Jay, let's go.

Speaker B: That was you. That wasn't me.

Speaker A: Let's go, Jay.

Speaker B: Go, go. Goat. Goat.