Since moving to Minneapolis, I have come to love our independent restaurants that use local ingredients. But last month as I was walking around Portland, Oregon for the first time and looking for something to eat to avoid the dreaded-but-forthcoming focus-group sandwich (do focus-group food caterers also supply food for the nation’s prison system?), some of the best smells I have ever experienced came wafting from a posse of food carts in a parking lot close to the hotel.  With them came a lesson on having a brand “experience.”

I asked our cabbie and local foodie Tracy about the Food Carts (yes, cabbie and local foodie – he and his wife even have a website), and he mentioned that the carts are ingrained into Portland’s food culture.  While some vendors cannot afford to run a stand-alone restaurant, many others also have traditional restaurants but use carts to reach out new people and offer new experiences. (Tracy also recommended doughnuts at Voodoo, which we wolfed down at 7 am in his cab on the way to the airport. Try the Bacon Maple Bar with a whole piece of cooked bacon on top -- as an ex-pat Canadian I am still very  partial to Tim Horton’s, but I digress…) 

Now that the Minneapolis City Council has recently relaxed some of the municipal food street codes we should hopefully see more food carts here.  I was excited to read on the local food blog Heavy Table highlights about some local food-vending carts. I found most interesting, though, that like Portland, at least five of the carts mentioned -- Meritage, 128 Café, The Brothers Deli, Cruzn Café, and Sonny’s Ice Cream -- also have stand-alone restaurants to accompany their new meals on wheels.

So what does this all have to do with an agency blog beyond an excuse to talk about my love for doughnuts and good cheap eats? First, here’s a shout out to these restaurateurs and others who are out there serving up great street food; let’s support them. But secondly, these chefs and cooks know something intuitively about marketing that many CPG clients don’t:  how important it is to provide customers with new ways to experience your brand.

As Christopher Stuzman a principal analyst at Forrester Research recently argued on the World Advertising Research Center Site (WARC), winning companies today have moved beyond the tried and true marketing techniques to create genuine product experiences: ‘‘While consumers are tuning out marketing messages, they are actually seeking out more product experiences.’’  While this might sound like heresy to read on an agency blog, I agree with his comment that marketers today are relying too much on communications to build their brands.

Just recently an old brand I used to work on, Pop-Tarts, was all over the news for opening up a store in Times Square. I honestly can’t remember when one of our old Pop-Tarts :30 TV ads got any kind of coverage no matter how high our ASI/Millward Brown test  scores might have been. But here it was mentioned from coast-to-coast in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS, Howard Stern (guilty pleasure) and many other media outlets. The Pop-Tarts store is now serving customized and unique food offerings (including Pop-Tarts sushi, which is not as scary as it sounds). They have joined M&M’s and Hershey’s in providing new ways to experience the brand.

If you want to go back to the old research-testing methodologies, as wrong as they are, I would bet lunch (at any local food cart) that the day–after-recall among those visiting Pop-Tarts World is higher than that among viewers of any of their TV spots. The recall does not even measure how people talk about and see the brand as more fun, contemporary and creative. But beyond putting all of your money into pop-up stores and less in our own media department, Christopher back at Forrester argues winning brands today are also baking marketing into their product as well. From Method to Dyson’s new bladeless fans, they are building in product experiences at the design level.  For more on this subject read Alex Bogusky and John Winser’s book called “Baked In’’ -- the premise is essentially that your product, not your marketing, is your most effective tool. Put another way the message is not the product, the product is the message.

Never mind the obvious and cliché example of pointing out the product experience of Apple products; but  have you ever opened a new Apple package? The packaging is designed as well as the product. I left my Apple TV inside the package for about an hour after I opened it, as I did not want to disturb it -- it was like cutting into a beautiful cake.

In regards to building or baking in a product experience, last week while in Toronto and shopping in a men’s store called Got Style, I was given a free Stella Artois beer-experience kit, which highlighted the special nine-step pouring ritual for having a great glass of Stella. (Yes, it is a lot more than just popping off the cap and quaffing.) Apparently Stella gave the kits to the store to give to their best customers – not me, but if you are friendly and nice sometimes you are rewarded. So guess what is chilling in my fridge? The brand with an experience -- in this case, a “pouring ritual.” As good as Stella’s TV ads are, they weren’t what won me over. (An aside: if you are ever in Toronto, pop into Got Style. It’s part men’s store and part spa/lounge with cool chairs for reading or watching sports. In other words, it’s an “experience.”)

To all the local chefs out there on the streets trying to reach new consumers and bring the mountain to Mohammed, all the best. I hope your customer lines are around the block. I especially look forward to lining up at the Smack Shack at 4^th St N and 1^st Ave for a lobster roll sandwich. To everyone else who’s still using the old 1960’s CPG textbook, time to write a new chapter.

-- Lance Saunders, EVP/Director of Account Planning, planner of good eats