Introduction

In today’s video, we’re going to talk about your 5 restaurant brand commandments. The five that you must adhere to for your brand to build trust in the marketplace and with your consumers.

Last week, I was a guest on a webinar that Procter & Gamble professionals hosted. The webinar taught restaurant owners how to open up again after COVID-19, how to build trust in their community, and how to bring customers back into their restaurants. I was honored to be invited as the restaurant expert on this webinar.

Anytime I’m with others who are the best in the world at what they do, it’s such a great opportunity to learn. Even though I was a guest on this webinar, I was taking notes because the Vice President of global brands for P&G presented right after me and I have a lot to learn from someone like that. I did learn something and I’m going to share with you here today.

The Five Brand Commandments

The five brand commandments are the five things that your brand needs to adhere to. Whenever P&G creates marketing pieces and advertisements for any of their brands, they always run it through a test of 5 core values. I want to share these with you and how they can apply to your restaurant brand.

1) Be reliable. Promise only what you can deliver, then deliver more than you promised. There’s a quote that I want to share with you that relates to reliability: “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break and forever to repair.” Your restaurant brand must be reliable. In some of my past videos,  talk about promises. I talk about customer, employee and investor promises. These promises are statements that you promise to deliver to your guests. If they trust you with their money and their time, you better deliver on that promise. When you think about your brand, how reliable is it? Are people coming to your brand and they know what they’re going to get or is a little uncertain? Remember, promise only what you can deliver, then deliver more than you promised.

2) Be delightful. This is described as ‘consumer understanding’ versus ‘consumer obsession’. Meaning do you understand your guests or are you obsessed with them? Do you understand their needs, wants, and desires? Or are you obsessed with them? When you are delighting your guests, you have to be obsessed with exactly what it is that your guests want. Are you having a conversation with them and asking questions and finding out things about them? Are you completely obsessed with the entire experience that your guests are having? I often say, in today’s world people eat at your restaurant twice: Eat out the first time and the second time when they pay the credit card bill 10-30 days later. So be delightful. But in order to be delightful, you have to be obsessed with your customers.

3) Be familiar. This was described as maniacal consistency. A brand that is maniacally consistent is Coke. When you look at images – whether it’s from a Diet Coke, flavored Coke, even a coffee or energy Coke – you easily see how no matter what they are doing the brand is so consistent, it’s so understandably Coke. In everything you do and serve, in pictures that are taken of your food and posted on Instagram, are others going to instantly know it’s your brand? Are you maniacal about consistency across the board so people know it’s coming from you?

4) Be popular. This is the herd mentality. Think about a club, even though it’s empty inside, there’s a line outside and everybody wants to get in. Are you advertising your popularity? Are you showing people how popular you are? Maybe you’re not as busy as you want to be right now but there are things that are popular. There are things that people like about your restaurant. Put it out on Facebook, Instagram, use testimonials, etc. If someone leaves a 5-star review on Yelp about your restaurant, repost that on your social media page. Now double-check with all the different websites, social media, and review sites to make sure you’re allowed to do that. But most of the time when someone puts a review out into the public like that, you can now do whatever you want with it because it’s in the public space. Don’t make this your everyday marketing strategy but create that popularity, people want to hang out with the cool kids. Find the things that make you cool and let other people know, create that herd mentality.

5) Be good. Support what you love with authenticity. Create events around a charity, and get that charity involved. They can invite their people and you can invite yours; you can get media and press. Oftentimes I say, “If you want to get press, do something press-worthy.” Create your own hashtag or movement, empower people in your community. But do it because it’s authentic to you, not just because I’m telling you to do it.

Summing it up

The gentleman from P&G explained these points over a period of 20 or 30 minutes and got way more in-depth than I’m able to here. But it was unbelievable and I really wanted to share that with you. I hope that this helps you narrow your brand a little bit more, to really focus on what it takes to build a giant global brand, and what you need to be thinking about. You need to be reliable, you need to be delightful because you’re obsessed with your customers, you need to be maniacally consistent in your familiarity, show people how popular you are of course be a brand that stands for something good in your community. I hope you enjoy this week’s video and I look forward to bringing you another one just like it next week, have a wonderful day.