View of Hudson Valley

I am the most fortunate of women.

I live in the Hudson Valley.

Yesterday I went food shopping in Adams Fairacre Farms, a locally-owned super supermarket. It carries glorious fruits and vegetables, many organically grown by local farmers; fabulous fish — and smoked salmon supplied from a local smokehouse. There is free-range poultry, (including duck, goose, young turkeys and baby poussins), and pastured, grass-fed beef and lamb. There’s a huge variety of cheeses, creme fraiche and locally-churned butter.

There’s honey personally delivered by a neighborhood bee-keeper, farmhouse pickles and preserves, prize-winning cheeses from Valley cheese makers as well as ice creams and sorbets from a nearby creamery. There are handmade chocolates and cookies and a vast selection of breads, biscotti and cookies from nearby brick-oven bakeries.

The store doesn’t carry wines, but there are 167 wineries in this region and they are readily available. (Clinton Vineyards provided wines for Chelsea Clinton’s recent upstate New York wedding.)

“Aha,” thought I. Here’s a business — a food job!

There are more than a million visitors to the Hudson Valley every year. Many travelers are looking for a gift to take home to the kind person, who looked after the children or the dogs and cats.

How about a gift basket overflowing with artisanal foods and Hudson Valley wines? If you’d love to give such a present, imagine how much your friend would like to receive it!

No matter where you live, there are regional specialties to arrange in an attractive container to be hand delivered or mailed.

Offer your creative services to food shops, florists, hotels, bed and breakfasts, historical homes, wineries and wherever tourists gather together.

Suggest different price points and several options and be willing to do the mailing.

Give a commission to the sites that display your “for real” or photographed gift basket ideas or make a contribution to a local worthy cause with every purchase.

In this way you have your own business and you have benefited many others!

Chef Mario Batali

What do you think of when you think of Mario Batali? Pony tail, shorts, plump knees, orange crocs? What do you think of when you think of Donald Trump, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga (? ? ?) Public faces (and private fortunes!) are created by brand managers.

In a way, we too create ourselves. We develop a style all our own that encompasses how we wear our hair, how we dress, how we walk, what we read, which TV programs we watch and how we communicate our thoughts. We may behave differently in the company of close friends than when we are going for a job interview, but, essentially we are who we are.

The difference between us and “them” is “they” are supposed to stay in character all the time. We show a different face to our beloved than to the repair man, who failed to show up — again!

Brand Manager Job Description

A brand manager is a creative professional, who develops a public image for a person, product or an entire company and increases his, her or its revenues.

For example, we think of Ben & Jerry as great philanthropists who produce super ice cream. We think of Starbucks as earth-friendly folk who generously provide health benefits for their employees and make high priced coffee that is sold in a paper cup.

These images are creations of marketing experts who have specialized knowledge within specific fields.

A culinary brand manager understands the demographic profile of food television viewers, analyzes food trends, researches packaging innovations and coordinates the strategies of advertisers and marketers.

The brand manager invents novel or traditional products to be endorsed or manufactured by a food celebrity and distributed to consumers, who are eager to buy.

The goal of a culinary personality brand manager is to create a unique, instantly recognizable, endearing personality, who is inclined to repeat words like “Bam!,” “EVOO!” and “Y’ALL” to further the ultimate objective which is to make heaps of money for the “brand,” whether or not the brand is Emeril (Lagasse), Rachael (Ray) or y’all.

Common traits of brand managers include: being results oriented and highly creative innovators, who possess strong interpersonal, communication and analytical skills, and entrepreneurial leanings. (Source: About.com)

Average salary is $76,100 though CNN places this figure at $90.000 or even higher for a senior executive.

Education/Experience Requirements: A Bachelor’s degree and 4 years of field experience. (For culinary brand managers, it helps to have culinary training but it isn’t crucial.)

Sample interview questions for an applicant to this field include:

1. Describe a time when you went above and beyond for a customer.
2. What would you do to maximize the brand image in this region?
3. A new competitor is entering the market. How do you protect your market share?
4. Tell me about a brand that does not compete in your current category that is not doing performing well and why?
5. Walk me through your resume – tell me why you’re qualified.
6. Give me an example in which you have led a team successfully to accomplish a task
7. Why should we hire you as opposed to someone else?
8. In trying to market a product, how do you differentiate one brand of product to another.
9. Do you have a culinary degree?

(Source HR Management)

Getting Started
Check out The Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin as well as the Top 10 Brand Management Blogs for getting started and gaining insights.

Cola Cola Open Happiness Campaign

“So?”, (as former VP Dick Cheney was heard to remark), it has come to this? The latest marketing idea is not to mention the product at all. Brilliant!

Alfred Hitchcock knew a Psycho shadow was much more scary than a real live, but deranged person.

I mention this turn of affairs because it’s reported in the New York Times that “commercials for Coca-Cola are sometimes so completely shrouded by storytelling that viewers can make a game of brand-spotting.”

This seems to be some sort of line extension beyond: Where is Waldo; Where has South Carolina Governor Sanford been/is going; Who Killed Michael Jackson and assorted mysteries of the universe.

We’ve come a long way since the concept of USP meaning, of course, Unique Selling Position. All major brands have one i.e. Quaker Oats, McDonald’s Golden Arches, Aunt Jemima, Disney, Mario Batali etc.

Perdue Farms had a great slogan: “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” The company took a chicken little operation into a giant empire. Founder Frank Perdue knew more about chickens than anyone and was doubly credible because he looked so much like a chicken that he was able to sell himself.

You could say that he transformed the utopian idea of “a chicken in every pot” to “a chicken in every pot cheap! cheep!” For a quick check of the website tells us, “With annual sales in excess of $4.1 billion, Perdue today is ranked as the third largest poultry company in the U.S. We provide food and agricultural products and services to customers in more than 50 countries.”

Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co, Dr Pepper and the Snapple Group are just part of an even more vast enterprise. The U.S. beverage manufacture and bottling industry includes about 3,000 companies with a combined annual revenue of $70 billion.

With this kind of clout, no wonder the thoughtful food advertisers have opted to hide in plain sight.

Note: Water is on tap for virtually nothing at all. This has led to such value-added products as beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee and onion soup that are Mmm Mmm good… to the last drop.

Food advertising is a $7.5 billion industry, second only to automobile advertising. It is an industry continually in search of copy writers and graphic designers; Webby award-winning website designers, food stylists and food photographers; recipe writers and special event and promotion pros — with fresh ideas.

An article in the archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Studies show that children are much more likely to want to eat food that comes in branded packaging than food with no branding – even if it is the same product. For example, a study of 3 to 5 year-olds showed that 76.7% of children preferred French fries in McDonald’s branded wrapping compared to 13.3% preferring plain packaging when in fact, the food was exactly the same!

And for every $1 the World Health Organization spends on trying to improve the nutrition of the world’s population, $500 is spent by the food industry in promoting processed food.

If you would like to step into this business, you should begin by reading the trade magazine, Advertising Age as well as the website Media Bistro.