Tocquigny

The How We Love Food series celebrates the iPad launch of How We Love Food, an annual collection of recipes from Yvonne Tocquigny, founder and CEO of Tocquigny, and focuses on the convergence of food, marketing, and technology. Download the app now for just $1.99, and all proceeds will be donated to nonprofit Urban Roots.

Growing up, I can remember the abundance of cooking magazines my mom subscribed to and her impulsive purchases of Cooking Light in the grocery store checkout line. After she would scour several magazines to find just the right recipe, she would only tear out one-or-two recipes per magazine that our family would even consider tasting (my sisters and I was quite the picky bunch). At the time, I just figured that this sort of behavior was normal.

Looking back on these childhood memories, I realize what a waste purchasing all of those magazines was. Of the 30+ recipes found in a single issue, my mom only saved one or two for her go-to recipe collection, and three if it was a REALLY good issue loaded with Italian recipes. Speaking with my mom recently regarding this topic, I found that she no longer subscribes to or purchases cooking magazines. When asked why, I found her response rather interesting: “Why would I pay around $30/month in cooking magazine subscription fees, when I can search thousands of cooking blogs for free recipes whenever I want?” Hate to say it, but she’s got a point.

This made me think about how the rise of social sharing has impacted our purchasing behavior. When we have unlimited, free resources at our fingertips, why not take advantage of that? These days there are thousands of cooking blogs, inexpensive iPhone apps, and friends who post their favorite recipes via Facebook for free.  It seems that if cooking magazines want to continue to be competitive, they will need to find a way to compete with my favorite cooking blog. Rather than Mom planning out her family meals for the week, technology and social sharing has allowed her to quickly browse hundreds of recipes to find the best fit for dinner. Like everything else, technology and sharing have changed the way we traditionally search for recipes.

The How We Love Food series celebrates the iPad launch of How We Love Food, an annual collection of recipes from Yvonne Tocquigny, founder and CEO of Tocquigny, and focuses on the convergence of food, marketing, and technology. Download the app now for just $1.99, and all proceeds will be donated to nonprofit Urban Roots.

No, not that Farmville. I’m talking about the new visibility of family farms in our responsible eating marketplace and how social media can be a great solution for keen farmers looking to seize this unique opportunity and build brand equity.

Picture the last time you were at a restaurant. Did the menu note that the food was fresh or organic? Maybe you saw a sign, trumpeting the restaurant’s locally sourced produce. These future artifacts are signs of the time. More and more consumers care about what they consume: Where did it come from? How was it made? Were the people who made it treated fairly How did it get to my plate?

Sustainability and social responsibility are no longer buzz terms - but market demands. According to a Deloitte study [PDF], 54% of consumers now enter stores actively considering sustainability attributes in their purchase decision. That said, only 22% actually buy based upon those attributes alone. For some reason, the 32% lost have changed their minds at the point of purchase.


For restaurants, that means selling the sustainability value proposition at their point of purchase: the table, check-out counter, or drive-thru. Consumers expect transparency, and that’s why restaurants (especially in Austin) are starting to list the local farms where they purchase their meat and produce.

In today’s digital world, it’s almost expected behavior to pick up our mobile devices and Google after being exposed to something of interest. Then, it’s no wonder why I’ve been perusing many a family farm website over the past year while nibbling on my non-GMO, grass-fed bison hamburger.

 
But, really - farm websites are admittedly a bit behind the times. And, that’s understandable: Farmers probably prefer to do what they do best - farm - and probably have very few resources to actually invest in such a labor-intensive communications medium. So, how can we save the family farm?

Easy: Social media! These websites clearly have great content: Stories about the family, why pastured eggs are better than factory eggs, pictures of the well-kept livestock, and more.

What better way to easily share that content than through Facebook photo albums or regular status updates? Or a quick Flipcam-produced YouTube video? Or check-ins on Foursquare at the Farmers’ Market?

Some farms are already catching on. And, while their audience may be small now, they’ll be well-positioned as the responsible eating marketplace continues to expand and this sort of restaurant transparency becomes an insurmountable barrier to entry.

Then, social media really will be dominated by Farmville. No, not that Farmville. 

The How We Love Food series celebrates the iPad launch of How We Love Food, an annual collection of recipes from Yvonne Tocquigny, founder and CEO of Tocquigny, and focuses on the convergence of food, marketing, and technology. Download the appnow for just $1.99, and all proceeds will be donated to nonprofit Urban Roots.

In looking at the evolution of user-generated content and the power and influence of social media, it is interesting to note the effect it has on restaurants, large and small. In fact, eating establishments now look to social media as one of the primary sources to learn what today’s restaurant goers want.

On Facebook, chefs post pictures of new creations to share with friends, and more importantly, learn what the public likes and how to improve upon their already existing menus. In turn, this generates substantial buzz for the restaurant. And this isn’t just happening on restaurant Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. It’s all over chef profiles, as their personal pages become more intertwined with where they work and their networks become brand advocates, posting and sharing the content as well. According to the McKinsey Quarterly, word-of-mouth marketing and reviews can have a profound influence on consumers, as they are actively seeking the required information to finalize their decision to use a product or service.

From reviews in the newspaper, to Yelp and UrbanSpoon, to social media, the evolution of what is a restaurant review has blurred. And that’s ok with me. Honestly, I think the more involvement the public can have in the creative and marketing process of restaurants, the better. 

On Sunday, during the dramatic end to the women’s world cup final in Germany, as Japan tied with the U.S. with three minutes remaining and went on to win on penalties, an all-time Twitter record of 7,196 tweets per second (TPS) was set. This moment surpassed the previous record, set on New Years Eve in Japan in 2010, which hit 6,939 TPS, the earthquake and tsunami which hit Japan in March (5,530 TPS), the death of Osama bin laden (5,106 TPS), the 2011 Super Bowl (4,064 TPS) and the Royal Wedding in April (3,966 TPS).

The record-breaking numbers on Sunday, of course, reflect a rise in Twitter usage. Currently, Twitter users send 200 million tweets per day, compared to 10 million two years ago. What’s more, 600,000 new users are signing up daily. We should all expect upcoming noteworthy events are clearly going to lead to a greater number of tweets as well as new record breakers, but what else can we take away from this?

While the record is arbitrary and will most certainly be broken sooner than later, it is a small indication that there are more ways to judge the worthiness of cultural events beyond the traditional measuring sticks like television ratings. In the past, television ratings were always the single barometer for measuring the significance and popularity of current events. All the common-man chatter and hype that was built up around big events happened strictly in private conversations. Today, people have their entertainment attention divided, the individual has the power to choose how and when they consume their entertainment and events, and everyone has a voice that is very public and available worldwide in real-time. Decidedly, tweets-per-second isn’t a perfect gage for establishing cultural significance, and it is not going to take the place of TV ratings altogether, but it is like seeing the water cooler chatter on a worldwide level as it happens, not just what our personal friends and colleagues think. I predict, pretty soon, we will be inventing all sorts of new metrics, outside of TV ratings, to determine social impact and status.

Insperity, formerly Administaff, now has “Business Performance Advisors” (BPAs) instead of “Sales Representatives.” So why change the title of the front-line sales force?

Their 25 years of experience tells them that words matter. They’ve also re-named the industry a few times — in the 1990’s from Employee Leasing to “Professional Employer Organization” (PEO).  Then within the last year from PEO to “Workforce Optimization.” No one else in the industry can quite seem to catch up with this kind of thought leadership. The competition seems to just follow suit and adopt the terms that Insperity defines with its evolving solutions.

Of course, for long-term success, there must be truthful substance behind a clever title. “Business Performance Advisor” demonstrates Insperity’s sharp focus on “being there” for their clients, more like a partner. It also serves as an effective conversation starter/reminder that the BPAs can use to tell their story and articulate the benefits they bring to the table.

Thought leadership yields other benefits for Insperity as well. Because they are living the concept of ”trusted advisor” with their own clients, they also understand how to partner with their vendors in the same way. Insperity valued Tocquigny’s advice to invest a significant amount of time, energy and budget as we lead them through best-practice strategic planning of their forthcoming social media communities. 

Allowing us in as a partner — instead of seeing us only as a vendor or marketing firm — led to more effective planning that will be instrumental in developing high-impact online communities and tools. This ultimately plays back into their main mission and helps the BPAs “be there” for their clients.