What if the MICHELIN Guide reviewed marketing?

The MICHELIN Guide does not typically send its incognito inspectors to assess run-of-the-mill restaurants (a notable exception being when Burger King’s Belgium arm campaigned for the honour; I’ll come back to that at the close).

MICHELIN’s mysterious tastemakers are more likely to turn up when there’s a buzz about a place. But why do people suddenly start raving about a new restaurant? Why the surge in popularity?

Arguably, it’s because they strive to be different or even defiant. Such haloed restaurants tend to be brave with their creative choices, whether that’s taking a single, specialist dish to its zenith or experimenting with new flavours and textures.

Above all, they demand attention by going (far) beyond the expected, by being the best at what they do — all while intentionally or unintentionally tackling MICHELIN’s score card for quality, harmony, mastery, personality, and consistency.

If marketing campaigns were reviewed by a MICHELIN critic, would your efforts be worthy of judgement? And if so, would you receive any stars?

What’s on your plate?

Thought experiment:

If you asked valued colleagues to anonymously select a single campaign or project that should receive triple the budget, would the answers surprise you? Would the result change your approach or priorities?

And if you asked your colleagues to ditch one campaign or project that they believed was a needless waste of time, would consensus in the result impact your operations or perspective? Would you even be shocked?

It’s never easy to analyse your individual or collective efforts with an outsider’s (critic’s) perspective; however, it can be empowering to whip off your chef’s hat and don a black scarf to channel your inner Anton Ego.

And you could always ask for a second opinion from an actual outsider: “Talk Is Free” with either one or both of us.

Turning critics into customers

Everyone starts out a critic, including your potential customers. And though an overzealous sales team, a poor-performing product or an inexperienced delivery team can mistakenly and sometimes swiftly turn customers into vocal critics, marketing has the much more enjoyable task of turning critics into customers.

Taking a leaf out of the MICHELIN menu of success, here are a few starters:

• Be bold with your creative ambition and thinking; your critics (potential customers) are almost certainly looking for something different. Personality counts.

• That said, don’t throw good taste out the window. Quality must be the number one priority.

• Understand that innovative concepts can happily dine with proven approaches and within guidelines. Harmony tends to be valued both internally and externally.

• Hire an experienced sous chef to help with consistency and/or mastery…

Back to Burger King

I promised I would return to Burger King. Though the Master Angus burger was not bold enough to earn BK a coveted MICHELIN star, it was certainly a brave master stroke of marketing — as proven by press coverage at the time and in articles that discussed the audacity in the years that followed. And as for MICHELIN? Well, it didn’t hurt that it was promoting its presence in the Benelux region around the same time…

Thanks for reading. We’d love to hear your thoughts. Hit reply or reach out on LinkedIn (profile links below).

Richard & Rich

Richard Hodson & Rich Whitworth are the Founding Partners at Mondo Create.

Human intelligence (Hi) is a series of thoughts, talks, essays and events for the changing world of science marketing and communication.

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