Category: Media

Over the last three years, Vivaldi’s Winter, The Four Seasons (Concerto No. 4 in F Minor, Op. 8, RV 297) has become a Pavlovian tune for fans of Netflix’s hit show, Chef’s Table. As a violin soars expressively above a dynamic bass line, heartbeats quicken, breaths abate, eyes widen and appetites awaken. The piece is the theme music for a three-season feast for the senses, where each episode features a prolific chef and their restaurant. Produced by David Gelb, filmmaker of the mouth-watering Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Chef’s Table has made haute-cuisine accessible and inspiring. That no culinary show comes close to matching the stature of one of Netflix’s crown jewels speaks volumes. As communications professionals, we would do well to listen and take two valuable lessons from the show.

Lesson 1: Why you do it

Renowned thought leader Simon Sinek has often said that people don’t buy what you do, or how you do it; they buy why you do it. This belief is at the core of every episode of Chef’s Table. Understanding who a chef is and why they cook is equally, or perhaps even more, important than what they cook.

Consider for example Episode 1, Season 1, which profiles Massimo Bottura, Chef Patron of Osteria Francescana, named world’s best restaurant in 2016. The episode deftly establishes why Massimo cooks — to reinvent Italian cuisine — and what inspires him — music and art. Thus, when the episode unveils a dish such as ‘The Crunchy Part of the Lasagne’, a dish consisting of crispy pasta, the viewer understands the intent with which it was conceived. Similarly, when Bottura presents ‘Tribute to Monk’ — a dish of ash-covered black cod in black katsuobushi broth, imagined as Bottura listened to Thelonious Monk late one night and heard ‘a flash in the dark’ — the viewer’s knowledge of the chef’s interest in music places them in the unusual position of almost sous-chef.

Though the show’s decision to seemingly prioritize chef over food may seem counter-intuitive at first, it is an approach that reflects the producers’ keen understanding of what consumers are eager to watch. As Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, suggests, people seek out brands that behave like human beings; specifically, brands that tell stories that forge emotional connections. Chef’s Table’s camera lingers on the chef for an inordinate amount of time. However, in doing so, it captures an introspective exercise at work.

For example, in Season 2, Episode 3, the talented and soulful Dominique Crenn remarks that her seemingly eponymous restaurant Atelier Crenn is not named after her, but after her father. It was Allain Crenn, the French painter and politician, who encouraged his daughter’s artistic pursuits. The closeness of their relationship manifests itself in Dominique’s dishes. Her dessert, ‘Walking deep in the woods, as the earth might have something to spare’ is a reflection on a walk through the woods she took with her father. Prioritizing who Dominique is before unveiling her food enables Chef’s Table to highlight the emotions behind the food. This, in turn, engenders empathy and secures investment from the viewer, who is not simply eating a dessert, but observing a relationship.

The lesson here is simple: we need to approach communications projects with a willingness to ask and answer ‘why’. We need to be willing to present messages in a way that is authentic and genuine. This humanizes the message and, thus, deepens its impact on the consumer.

Lesson 2: The wrapping matters

Chef’s Table pays a great deal of attention to what its camera captures — a subtle expression, a dusting of icing sugar, the plating of a dish, the harmonious chaos of a kitchen, the majesty of a landscape. In particular, the show’s treatment of plating and landscapes reflects the producers’ acknowledgement that viewers are willing to engage with sophisticated detail that is presented in an elegant way.

David Gelb, Chef’s Table’s creator, first raised the bar for food shows to then-unsurpassable heights with Jiro Dreams of Sushi. In a clip from the movie, a Japanese food critic and friends sit down to experience a 20-course omakase menu. The critic describes the series of dishes as a concerto, with individual movements paying homage to particular ingredients and flavours. As each course is served, the camera draws near and captures every detail of each piece of sushi — the glistening soy sauce, the thickness of the fish, and the structure of the rice base. Gelb recognizes that viewers’ palates have become more refined and, as such, presents polished images that engage all the viewer’s senses. It is this recognition, manifested in a surprisingly unorthodox commitment to visual quality, that Gelb has brought with him to Chef’s Table — an approach that is at the heart of the show’s success.

Equally breathtaking are each episode’s stunning landscapes that transport the audience to different corners of the globe. In Season 1, viewers soak in Francis Mallmann’s Patagonian landscapes; in Season 2, they lose themselves in the mountains of Ana Ros’ Slovenia; and in Season 3, they find serenity in the verdant hilltop surroundings of Jeong Kwan’s temple. In every Chef’s Table episode, the camera pauses lengthily on these landscapes or deliberately frames dishes in their foreground. By carefully capturing, curating and presenting the chefs’ environments, the impact of the food itself is heightened. That Mallmann’s brook trout, baked in clay, is prepared and served against a Patagonian lake and filmed in dim natural light, speaks to who he is and what his cuisine is all about — mastering natural elements. Similarly, the tranquility of Jeong Kwan’s ‘temple food’ is only fully realized once the viewer has soaked in the stillness of her monastic surroundings. This technique distinguishes the show because it suggests an implicit trust in the audience’s ability to leverage subtle context and, thus, engage with a story on a deeper level.

The producers’ acknowledgement of how sophisticated viewers have become is reflected in the great attention they put into establishing context around each chef’s dish. With all of the ways people are bombarded with visuals, relying on brash presentations of content is unwise and simply exacerbates consumers’ visual fatigue. We need to trust in consumers’ ability to digest complex detail while simultaneously ensuring that our key messages are beautifully wrapped if we want them to be unpacked.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons concerti were published with accompanying poems that elaborate on what it is about the seasons that each concerto was meant to evoke. In the Winter concerto, Vivaldi presents different poetic observations for each of the Allegro non molto, Largo, and Allegro movements; an exposition of the harshness of the winter months in the Allegro non molto and Allegro passages is juxtaposed against a cozy hearth in the Largo movement. That Vivaldi trusted his listeners to marry two different forms of art to engage more deeply with what each concerto seeks to convey makes his music a fitting theme for a show that challenges its audience in a similar fashion. In an increasingly spoon-fed world, pursuing greater meaning and embracing complexity are approaches that are critical to success in communications and beyond.

‘The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.’- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

This week, U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House. The joint press conference was cordial, even routine, as both leaders promised to protect, and even improve, trade relations between the two nations.

For those watching CBC News or reading Canadian papers, coverage of the visit was hard to ignore. Photos of Trudeau and Trump were plastered all over the front pages to commemorate the momentous occasion. Everyone north of the border watched breathlessly as the fate of Canada was to be decided in that singular visit.

Yet the average American was oblivious to the Damoclean sword hanging over their strongest trading partner’s head. CNN reverted quickly back to the breaking story that national security advisor Michael Flynn had resigned. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal all continued their obsession with U.S. positioning towards China and Russia.

Before your Canadian sense of polite outrage grips you, keep this in mind. Canada and the U.S. have enjoyed decades of good relations, even with a history of presidents and prime ministers who have not always seen eye-to-eye. While amiable relationships and ‘bromances’ have certainly boosted the probability of achieving great things together, Canada and the U.S. have never let the perfect become the enemy of the good when it comes to cross-border relations.

Take for example, the relationship between former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Justin’s father. At a time when Trudeau senior was shutting out foreign (American) investment and recognizing the ‘one China’ policy (and even striving to embarrass the ultra-conservative president at international meetings), President Reagan recalls his relationship with the fiery prime minister favourably in his memoirs, noting that they both wanted to build a closer North American alliance and they ultimately laid the groundwork for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to come under the Mulroney government.

Some thirty years later, critics are watching the relationship unfold with trepidation again. For them, Trump’s ‘America first’ policy and the renegotiation of NAFTA is synonymous with stealing good Canadian jobs and creating the starting line for a scramble to diversify Canada’s economy away from the U.S. market, never mind Canada’s own job losses to Mexico, high electricity prices, and carbon leakage.

On the surface, Trudeau’s approach and Trump’s approach to international relations are not so different when it comes to achieving outcomes that benefit national interests. The two leaders share a sense of fairness and not leaving (middle-class) Canadians and Americans behind in this new postmodern era. Both leaders have acknowledged in their own way that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is ineffective because it is woefully underfunded, which has led to exploring renewed defence funding commitments from all parties concerned. Canadian officials have also speculated about working with the U.S. outside NAFTA whenever Trump opens the renegotiations with the parties involved. When the U.S. withdrew from the Trans Pacific Partnership, then-International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland affirmed the TPP ‘cannot happen’ without the United States. While Prime Minister Trudeau continues to champion Canadian values like openness and inclusion at home, he also understands the importance of ‘going along to get along’ where Canada-US relations are considered.

At the end of the day, Trump has no strong feelings towards Canada – and that’s an incredibly good thing to hang onto when you consider how he feels about other countries in his sightlines like Mexico, China, or even Russia.

The Canada-U.S. relationship under the Trump administration can flourish, if and only if, we let well enough alone and continue to keep our relations wonderfully boring and stereotypically routine. In the words of Fanny Price of Mansfield Park, ‘I was quiet, but I was not blind.’

Unless you spent the last week hiding under a rock, you’re quite familiar with Trump’s executive order banning travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. People much more articulate than me have opined on the many problems and ethical issues with Trump’s EO. But while individuals and specific groups were the intended target of Trump’s EO, businesses are learning that no one — and no company — can escape Trump’s shrapnel, even if their business has no direct relationship to the policy in question. As more and more corporate boards turn their focus to risk management practices, it appears the President of the United States is creating a whole new practice area. Companies that don’t tread carefully could emerge with a bloody nose, or reputational damage.

Case in point: Uber.

On January 30, 2017, thousands of protesters across the U.S. flooded airports to speak out against Trump’s EO. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance tweeted its support for the protests, calling on all drivers to avoid JFK Airport between 6-7pm. The Alliance pointed out the heightened level of personal risk its largely Muslim workforce faced as a result of Trump’s sanctioned bigotry.

Ninety minutes later, Uber tweeted that it had ‘turned off’ surge pricing at JFK, warning its followers that this could result in longer wait times.

Now, let’s give Uber the benefit of the doubt for a moment.

It’s quite possible Uber saw a business opportunity, and wanted to engender gratitude from its customers. Done well, Uber would be the white knight coming in to save the day for stranded travellers. If that was the intent, the execution was tone-deaf, and as a result, the reaction swift and brutal.

congrats to @Uber_NYC on breaking a strike to profit off of refugees being consigned to Hell. eat shit and die https://t.co/19gbpIc9m9
— HUNTER S. FAILSON (@Bro_Pair) January 29, 2017

Within minutes the #DeleteUber hashtag took, with people sharing screenshots confirming they were deleting the app.

 

i never used it in NYC for a lot of reasons but they won’t see a goddamned penny from me ever again #deleteuber pic.twitter.com/Wh1Yhe5aZa
— matt ? lubchansky (@Lubchansky) January 29, 2017

Clearly, Uber’s evil, right? Not so fast.

If you believe an Uber spokesperson, ‘the decision to turn off surge pricing was made specifically to avoid profiting from increased demand during the protest. The company has previously made a similar commitment to limiting surge pricing during disasters, after being accused of taking advantage of riders in times of need.’

It would appear things are greyer than they first seemed.

They get greyer still, when you consider this piece of information: hours before Uber removed surge pricing at JFK, its CEO, Travis Kalanick sent an email to all Uber employees. The subject? ‘Standing up for what’s right’. Here are some salient passages from that email:

This order has far broader implications as it also affects thousands of drivers who use Uber and come from the listed countries, many of whom take long breaks to go back home to see their extended family. These drivers currently outside of the U.S. will not be able to get back into the country for 90 days. That means they will not be able to earn a living and support their families—and of course they will be separated from their loved ones during that time.

We are working out a process to identify these drivers and compensate them pro bono during the next three months to help mitigate some of the financial stress and complications with supporting their families and putting food on the table.

While every government has their own immigration controls, allowing people from all around the world to come here and make America their home has largely been the U.S.’s policy since its founding. That means this ban will impact many innocent people—an issue that I will raise this coming Friday when I go to Washington for President Trump’s first business advisory group meeting.

Which goes to show, that in this hyper-connected world, anger is the emotion that spreads most. We want and assume the worst in everyone, and especially in big companies. Of course, Kalanick has been criticized for joining Trump’s business advisory group, but as we see in his all-staff email, rare is an issue as binary as we interpret it online. Unfortunately, that’s the world we operate in. As soon as a crisis erupts, the company is the villain, guilty until proven innocent. Days after this crisis erupted, and days after Uber clarified its position, people continued to post screenshots showing them deleting Uber from their phones.

As Kalanick discovered, Trump can be bad for business. Within three days of the crisis, with #DeleteUber still a hot meme, Kalanick sent a follow-up memo to his employees announcing that he was leaving the President’s advisory council, making it clear that he and his company did not want to tacitly support the ban. Here’s the full text of his memo:

Earlier today I spoke briefly with the President about the immigration executive order and its issues for our community. I also let him know that I would not be able to participate on his economic council. Joining the group was not meant to be an endorsement of the President or his agenda but unfortunately it has been misinterpreted to be exactly that. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and mapping it to our values. There are a couple that are particularly relevant:

Inside Out – The implicit assumption that Uber (or I) was somehow endorsing the Administration’s agenda has created a perception-reality gap between who people think we are, and who we actually are.

Just Change – We must believe that the actions we take ultimately move the ball forward. There are many ways we will continue to advocate for just change on immigration but staying on the council was going to get in the way of that. The executive order is hurting many people in communities all across America. Families are being separated, people are stranded overseas and there’s a growing fear the U.S. is no longer a place that welcomes immigrants.

Immigration and openness to refugees is an important part of our country’s success and quite honestly to Uber’s. I am incredibly proud to work directly with people like Thuan and Emil, both of whom were refugees who came here to build a better life for themselves. I know it has been a tough week for many of you and your families, as well as many thousands of drivers whose stories are heartfelt and heart-wrenching.

Please know, your questions and stories on Tuesday, along with what I heard from drivers, have kept me resilient and reminded me of one of our most essential cultural values, Be Yourself. We will fight for the rights of immigrants in our communities so that each of us can be who we are with optimism and hope for the future.

Travis

As Travis learned the hard way, more than ever, companies need to be in tune with, and attuned to the political sensitives of the markets in which they operate. It’s not enough to ask, ‘is this a good business decision?’ Now, to avoid scandal, or to avoid getting sucked into Trump’s orbit, companies need to ask ‘is this a good political decision?’ Companies need to game out the likely scenarios of its business decisions in the political climate. The consequences often cut deep. The business suffers if it makes the wrong political decision. In truth, we live in a world where walking back a bad decision is becoming nearly impossible. Politics has long been a bloody sport, and increasingly businesses are getting bloody noses by not being attuned to the political realities of the markets they operate in.