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Five Great Ways to Stay Relevant

Dec 22, 2015

By Randy Lopez Marketing and Branding Strategy

 

Stay relevant. It’s a common phrase in the news, in articles like “How to Stay Relevant in the Rapidly Changing World of Work,” “How to Stay Relevant in an Age of Disruption,” “Millennials and Staying Relevant” and even “How to make sure your menus are relevant.” Today it’s a struggle to make sure you and your restaurant brand are relevant for today’s guests and trends, while always keeping an eye out for the future. The industry’s landscape is riddled with the corpses of once-famous brands that just couldn’t remain relevant for today’s tastes and consumer expectations.

 

This year, make it your New Year’s Resolution to stay relevant. Personally, I’ve always tried to understand trends and be able to see what’s coming down the road. As brand builders and marketers, people of my ilk tend to look forward, since forecasting is something we keep in our toolkit. Even so, most marketers might just look at their own industry’s marketing trends, strategies and tactics and in doing so, remain relevant… but only in their own world. Truly successful and innovative businesspeople stay relevant in all fields.

 

Take, for example, Richard Branson from Virgin, the perpetually “relevant” guy. He hangs out with celebs and influencers, is always doing something interesting, and is consistently attached to important and timely causes and global initiatives. Though his #1 job is to support the Virgin brand, he is always at the forefront of any given trend or issue, and pushes his organization to continuously stretch boundaries and to “do good.” Though we all wish we could be like Branson, chances are we’ll never have as many trips around the world or into space as this guy.

 

We can, however, push ourselves to “Stay Relevant.” As restaurateurs—whether owner, president, marketing manager, chef, COO, trainer… or whatever—we owe it to ourselves to stay on top of trends and to best understand the world of our current guests as well as understanding the motivators that will change our industry in the future.

 

Some simple resolutions to stay relevant this year might include the following:

 

1. Try new foods. Though we work in the restaurant industry, I still come across owner-operators and brand builders who don’t try ethnic foods, new flavor profiles or anything besides the menu items served in their own locations. Get out into your neighborhoods to sample new food experiences flavored by different cultures, or developed by hybrids of new tastes and takes on classics.

 

2. Think like a designer. Build a vocabulary of art styles, favorite fonts, colors, and interior designs. Collect cool ads and menus. Look at table tents and collateral and keep a record of things that resonate. Colors and design elements are as important to staying relevant as food is, and you need to have a basic understanding of this if the look of your brand is current rather than 20 years behind the times.

 

3. Use sites like Thrillist, The Cool Hunter, and Eater to see what’s going on in culture, design, food, business, and lifestyle and to have an understanding of what’s new and what can possibly have an application for your business in the future.

 

4. Get a Moleskine or other small journal. Though we’re all using our laptops and smartphones to communicate and document, there’s something about keeping a journal to jot down notes, ideas, brainstorms, and random thoughts that makes the process more engaging and creative. If it helps, think of your journal as a collection of “many napkins” (for those of us who made some of our best notes on a two-ply piece of paper found on a restaurant table).

5. Listen to podcasts or take an online class. Learn about something new in a completely different industry or area of responsibility. Think of a long drive as an opportunity to listen to TED Talks to be inspired and educated in minutes.

 

Life is moving faster than we ever thought possible. Embrace the notion that the “who” we are today is going to be different from the person we will be in the future. Change is good. Continue to learn, challenge yourself, and take ideas and values from other industries, people and cultures to grow yourself and your business. Heed the warning: Stay Relevant.

 

Closed photo credit: Bryan Mills license CC by 2.0