One more thing about sampling and the new new thing

I forgot to include a section on "restaurant weeks" and similar promotions in the previous entry. As a hospitality person, I don't like "Restaurant Week" promotions because in large part they are about discounts, and I hate discounts, because focusing on price promotions doesn't allow you to build a loyal customer base.

I've probably mentioned the Entertainment passbooks (buy one get one free) and the guy I saw who had one--it looked like a moth had eaten through it. He wasn't going to any place more than once.

How to deal with this:

1. It might be worth doing for slow nights and weeks, when you need incremental business and it doesn't negatively impact your customer base; especially because
2. People who don't have minds of their own and/or are afraid to visit your center city community are attracted by these kinds of promotions; but
3. For this to be worthwhile, you need to think through why you are doing this, why you are participating, and figure out how to make the conquest and convert the people who come in as first-time samplers into regular customers.
4. To do that, you have to have a plan. For me, I would only let people buy a "restaurant week" promotional meal if they gave me contact information. For example, Grillfish has an excellent loyalty club--e-newsletter and special promotions--which builds frequency of patronage and increases customer check average amongst their customer list.

Only by doing something like this would I be willing to participate in this kind of promotion. Customers, not samplers, is what I am looking to create.

DC's next Restaurant Week is August 14-20.

This section was inspired by the article "Bargain whets appetites," from the Baltimore Sun about Baltimore's first-ever Restaurant Week promotion. (Of course, I have a bad taste in my mouth from working in places that have participated in this in DC. For a 40% increase in business, they doubled the staff, making it almost not worth it for waiters...)
Image from the American Originals promotional website from the Washington Convention and Tourism Corporation. (Note: this website section is reasonably decent in execution unlike the broader WCTC website.)

So I just don't know if I think the latest WCTC promotion for Washington cuts the mustard, at least as recounted in this article, "New York urged to get taste of D.C. ," from the Washington Times. From the article:

Washington hit the streets of New York this weekend to drop hints about visiting the nation's capital. The Washington, DC Convention & Tourism Corp. (WCTC) released 10,000 $1 bills with a sticker that read "He's better in color" and an arrow pointing to George Washington. The group also hired artists to paint Washington landscapes on street corners in an attempt to bring visitors here. The guerrilla marketing tactic is part of its summer tourism campaign, "Washington, DC Celebrates American Originals," which revolves around the July 1 reopening of the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum.

"Consumers have so many media options and are bombarded with things to read," said Rebecca Pawlowski, a spokeswoman for the WCTC. "This is a different way to get people's attention to think about visiting Washington in a fun, creative way." RedPeg Marketing, the Alexandria company that developed the campaign that is being implemented by New York City marketing firm GoGorilla Media, says getting people to participate in an activity rather than simply viewing an advertisement is more likely to be effective because it draws the participant into the activity.

About 11 percent of Washington's leisure travelers come from New York City -- the most of any one city. The WCTC is spending about $60,000 on this New York leg of the campaign.

Cute, fun maybe. But does it have impact? That is the question.

Index Keywords: urban-revitalization; tourism