NUMBER EIGHT: Marketing is a philosophy, not a department.
Marketing is everyone’s job, from the hostess to the CFO to the unit level manager. What that means in an operations-driven business where making customers want to come back is so important, is that everyone needs to think about the business from the guest point of view.
One of my favorite examples of this is restaurants that try to solve all guest complaints by offering a complimentary dessert. I’ve been reading comment cards for long enough to know when a guest is complaining about how long a meal took, asking them to wait around for a free dessert is a “tone deaf” solution to the guest’s complaint. As marketers, our job is to get everyone on the same page to really see our guest’s needs and react to them.
More later…as always, let me know what you think.