A Moment With… Elizabeth Stancombe

A self-professed ‘foodie’, Elizabeth Stancombe, a Marketing Consultant specialising in hospitality, has always had a passion for everything food. It is this passion that has seen her work her marketing magic for some of the top hospitality companies in the country, from South Place Hotel to London-based restaurant group and Spanish foods supplier, Brindisa. Elizabeth shares her insights into the power of brand, reveals how you don’t need a big budget to make a statement and shares her top advice on how the hospitality sector can navigate the current global pandemic.

How did you get into hospitality and what does your job involve?

I hate the word, but I have always been a ‘foodie’. My entire memory is prompted by food, it seems I can only recall things when there was a tasty memorable morsale involved. Do you remember the meeting where we look at the project snagging list? Yes, the one where we had that insane pistachio gelato… And then once the edible association has been made it all comes rushing back.

This is something I inherited from my family, a passionate bunch of chefs, enthusiastic eaters (that’s not code for fat) and damn good hosts. My job, wanky marketing terminology aside, is simply to help facilitate, attract and communicate the makings of those memorable hospitality moments for our guests. To help form positive associations with the brand. Then to celebrate and support all the wonderful people and amazing spaces that make those memories happen.

I don’t have a traditional Marketing background, which helps and hinders at times, but I have found it hugely beneficial that I have actually worked in hospitality. I believe this has made me more effective as a communicator as I like to be at the coal face and not just orchestrating it from a desk. My experience so far has been with fairly small size operators, so my day-to-day can be anything from optimizing our key search phrases to running an event. This is what I love, the variety and flexibility.

How important is design to the hospitality industry?

It is arguably THE most important thing. At its core design is behavioural manipulation. Well orchestrated triggers or touchpoints in your online and offline environment can be crafted to influence the way in which you want people to interact and engage with your brand. In hospitality we need to be architects of this as we arguably have one of the biggest scope of interaction. Our customers literally eat, drink, meet, socialize and sleep within the domain of our brands.

You can manipulate your spend per head by the layout of your menu, control the dwell time of your diners with the interiors, or craft meaningful family connection by enhancing the HR section of your website. Every step of your customer’s journey from the first click on the website to the goodbye at the door is an opportunity for you to form an impression, make an experience and to convert these to habit, so first time diner becomes beloved regular. As a marketer you have to think about every step in that journey and embellish it with a creative design solution. If you are a pizza place and your going to give me an order bleeper – why not look at the design and encourage people to post the #waitingforpizzaface on Instagram to win a free pizza upon your next visit?

What are the current key trends driving innovation in the restaurant arena?

Innovation is an interesting one in terms of hospitality. As an industry we have been lazy sods compared to our retail counterparts. More and more, especially in the face of an overwhelming flood of new openings and the growing pile of dead restaurant groups, there is a shift happening to meet the consumer’s expectations through innovation. ‘Sustainability’, ‘ethical eating’ etc. are no longer just buzzwords, and we are seeing this drive everyone from singular operators to big chains. Technological advancements, the need for personalization and the responsibility to communicate consciously in the digital sphere has forced a more mindful approach in the way we have to communicate. As Generation Z steps up to become paying customers, enhancing the experiential, getting clever with the delivery of content and game-ifying loyalty are things everyone will eventually have to embrace. However, I believe you should only innovate in terms of the way you communicate and operator but keep your brand true, authentic and uncomplicated.

How do these trends affect how creative you have to be on a day to day basis?

Innovation demands creativity and adaptability from marketers every day. You don’t need huge budgets to do so, as the tools are incredibly accessible. So even if you’re a deli in the arse end of nowhere, you have no excuse not to raise its profile. All you need is a bit of elbow grease and some mental glitter.

Take social for example, more and more people are rapidly retreating from ‘traditional’ feeds where they are being bombarded by advertisers, back to the small safe circles of personal chat. Think where are you communicating and sharing content with your friends and family. WhatsApp, right? Many early marketing adopters have binned the inbox fodder and opted to create WhatsApp broadcast groups to join in the conversations already there. Every day you need to ask, ‘what happens in reality?’ and shift your marketing efforts accordingly. I’d react to a WhatsApp ping about the new Christmas cheese list more than an 8-page newsletter that ends up in my spam.

Day-to-day, you need to strive to stay up to date. Listen to tech podcasts, read the Campaign Live 18:05 reports, follow inspirational people and brands on social and stay in tune with wins outside of your industry.

How important is it for the hospitality sector to make their product offering relevant in today’s responsible and transparent society?

Oh, transparency is my jam at the moment; brace yourself! It’s something that I’ve been chomping at the bit to put into practice. I would urge hospitality businesses to become more transparent as a matter of urgency. Now more than ever people are craving honesty, for good or for bad. We are all sick to the back teeth with these glossy marketing masks and everyone is becoming far better at recognising falsehoods in messaging and brands.

Why don’t we talk about our food wastage? Why are booking terms still hidden in the small print? Why don’t we publish our figures and show how we reward our team? Why don’t we open up the payroll to show how we have closed the gender pay gap? Why do we try and hide online complaints rather the resolve them openly?

The answer is because communicating the above can be uncomfortable. I think we need to make the uncomfortable a necessity to achieve progress in a society that demands it. Broadcasting what is behind the closed doors can create a better sense of fairness and collaboration inside and outside your business. I think this is a responsibility we all need to embrace. If every answer was a negative to the above questions, then you have to make them a positive or soon your brand, your offering, your business will become irrelevant. There are a lot of great operators championing this.

How important is storytelling in hospitality?

Hugely! I think a lot of brand failures in hospitality are down to the fact that they lose or complicate their narrative with their guests. People look to brands such as St. Johns, Barafina or Caravan, new and old institutions, and do a lot of head scratching trying to replicate their success.

I would steak all my Pokemon shinies on the fact that these institutions are institutions because they tell their story so well and so effortlessly. Fergus Henderson, the man in the pinstripe suit behind St. Johns, once said: ‘A restaurant should be like an old friend.’ Everything from their social media, their food, their service and their events encapsulates this. Fergus feels like an eccentric uncle you visit to eat Madeleines and drink Crème de menthe, and this image works cross-generationally. My dad knows him from when they opened, I know him through the cookbooks and my little cousin knows him through their social media. It’s a generational masterpiece of authenticity and myth-building, and their story will keep being told for decades to come.

We approached Brindisa’s 30th, along with TMC, fuelled by this notion, and we came up with the beautiful idea of telling their history through a series of illustrations. A picture book approach to cement their rightful authority over Spanish food in the UK. It’s a piece of work that resonates so loudly and clearly: ‘This is who we are, and this is how we got here, and this is where we are going.’ That is marketing for me in one sentence.

What is the relationship between good branding and a successful marketing campaign?

Brand and marketing have to be the two sides of the same coin. In a time where people are disengaging with traditional marketing methods, you really need to make big honest brand statements to pull interest. Not just shouting to everyone, but doing so in a hyper-localized and personal way. Arguably, the best campaign I have run was the local integration project for the Brindisa Battersea launch…

TMC helped design 1000 bespoke tote bags which my team of three and I packed by hand. Inside was an invite to our locals-only launch party, the recipe and ingredients for Brindisa’s famous orange Gordal olives, and a little ‘welcome neighbour’ message from the restaurant team. We then hand-delivered them to EVERY flat in the Battersea Power Station development! One epic party later, we became an instant local legend, with the tenants transformed into loyal customers. And I guarantee they order a portion of gordal olives every time they visit! Out of all the PR, the journalist press nights, the huge social media and digital advertising campaign, the promotions – this one smashed it in terms of revenue and brand awareness. Okay, my team and I developed a phobia of tote bags, but we had a simple message, beautifully branding and we targeted the most important audience there is; the locals.

Now when I sit in the Battersea Power Station development and have a drink on the terrace, I still see the Brindisa tote bags laden with residents’ shopping walk by and think ‘job well done’.

How have specialist diets affected the restaurant industry and how do you go about marketing it in a way that doesn’t exclude customers?

As previously mentioned, these can no longer be seen as just trend buzzwords. At this point, if you don’t have gluten free bread, a few vegan dishes and alternative milks, I honestly think you’re stupid.

As Marketers we should make more noise about this. At Brindisa we’ve always done a Calcotada, (a traditional Catalan onion feasting menu), that had a shed-load of meat on it. We had great sales for this since 2015. A few years back, we all agreed to do a vegan version of the menu. With one simple tweak, we saw a huge uplift in sales and got some pretty tasty media coverage in return.

Another example is Pho’s online menu – this marketing genius; an online food menu (not a PDF – we all need to stop that shit immediately!) that you could filter by clicking your allergy tags. Ok, it’s a little hard work inputting all your categories, but in two clicks a gluten free person can see exactly what they can eat. Chuck those dog-eared hideous allergy books in the bin; this does all that and more.

The bottom line is we are in hospitality. A good host accommodates. If a vegan, gluten free person rocks up to your house and you have made mac and cheese, you don’t just give them that one rogue fridge carrot and say ‘Bon Appetit’. You accommodate them – this should be no different in hospitality.

Which three hospitality brands do you think market themselves well? And why?

Pho – Data driven, brand strutting, digital masters of innovation. Marketing Director Libby Andrews is an actual wizard – I want to be her when I grow up!

Snackbar – They symbolise everything that is good and glorious about the industry. The ethically-conscience, community-driven, food-and-people-loving-centric way they communicate and operate is just dreamy. I think their Kickstarter campaign was the most honest and engaging I‘ve ever seen. Donate ‘x’ and get a rescue chicken named after you, support ‘y’ and create a dish on the menu. It was collaborative, fun – everyone should go to the restaurant and take marketing lessons from Freddie and her team! They are what we should all aspire to. And their food is off the wall!

The Old Nun’s Head Pub – They are the brand gold-standard of transparency and giving zero fucks. Their response to a Time Out review when dubbed ‘run by elite hipsters’ was brilliant. When I am feeling a little down I always head to their instagram for a cheer up! I mean, look at how they celebrate regulars birthdays

Who is your current favourite brand and why?

So, for those of you who don’t know me personally, I am a sucker for marketing. I see something and I am hooked! At the moment, I am slightly obsessed with (on a nerdy, nerdy level – I warn you this is a very white, middle-class response!) Ocado. The way they adopted an Alexa voice-control app, then got super creative with campaigns around it is like, hats off, round of applause, standing ovation level of epicness!

You ask Alexa once a day ‘’Hey Alexa, ask Ocado if I’m a winner’ and you could win a £10 voucher. Then, Alexa follows up by super-casually asking you ‘Hey, do you want to add anything to your shopping?’ and yes, you always do, ‘cos you always forget something. So many times, myself and my Mum have fallen for it we will keep doing so, so long as they dangle the carrot of the £10 reward. And when you do win, it reinforces you to keep playing.

Now they have launched ‘Hey Alexa, ask Ocado trick or treat’. You will win either a sweetie treat or a piece of fruit trick, with the same premise to get you to open and add to your basket. It’s perfect behaviour manipulation, textbook behavioural psychology. I ring a bell, I get a reward. I keep ringing the bell, I occasionally get a reward. I form a habit around ringing the bell just on the off chance I get a reward. This is where design, marketing and innovation work together in an exciting, novel way.

The Coronavirus pandemic is currently sweeping the globe and we are experiencing unprecedented times which have hit the hospitality industry hard. What is your advice for trying to survive these uncertain times?

Now more than ever hospitality marketing has to, hast to focus on storytelling, compassion and reflection. Those keeping schtum, not sharing positive stories about kind actions or putting bottom line over their community and teams will categorically be cast from the mind of the consumers and employees when we do reopen. The do-gooders and positive banner flyers will be the real champions during and after this crisis.

The biggest piece of advice I can offer is simply: get on with it. Adapted, find new ways to make business, raise brand awareness and support your team and community. Look beyond your physical venues for the next few months and think of ways that you can bring your brand into people’s home. With this interconnected, digital glitter-bomb of a world, there really are no limitations. Take a quick peek at to Instagram you can see the quick-footed, responsive Operators making the most out of this bad situation. That allotted time you have given ‘worry’ use it to start working on your comeback strategy. Take-up an online course, get dirty fingernailed under the roots of your brand and core offering and pump heaps of love and positive vibes into your team because when you reopen those doors you will be a better version of yourselves.

Just think of the positives to come, you will have consumers who are seriously hungry to eat-out craving experiences with a capital ‘E’. They will have a little extra cash saved from unused travel or work expenses, who have fallen in love with their local high street again as it supported them through this. They will want to drink more, eat more and celebrate a return to normal life. They will appreciate those local love plans more and hugely empathise with stories of employee kindness, as they have just been in the same boat. Good times are just around the corner, be ready to optimise every ounce of energy as we begin to turn that bend.

Read Elizabeth’s latest blog post for more marketing advice for what to do during Covid-19, as well as key tools and amazing resources from industry legends.