What Would Google Do_ - Jeff Jarvis [82]
So far, I’ve suggested that restaurants use the internet to turn the spotlight on diners. Googley restaurateurs can also use the web to become stars. Judging by the popularity of kitchen-based reality shows, I think it’s time for chefs to come out from behind the stove. Restaurants have stories, dramas, comedies, and knowledge to share. If I were a chef, I’d blog about my restaurant; my taste, travels, and inspirations; and the trends I see. I’d be blunt and honest. Howard Stern has succeeded on radio and chef Ramsey has succeeded on TV with that formula. So, too, could neighborhood chefs become local stars. I’d make videos teaching people how to cook—remember that the gift economy works both ways. I’d start a cooking club with my most loyal fans—my best customers, my partners—and let them in on discussions if not decisions on the menu and recipes. I might even hand the place over to my community for a night, playing Ramsey in real life and making the restaurant a show. Restaurants don’t just sell food—cooked atoms. They are a platform for the enjoyment and discussion of taste. A community and its creativity can grow around that.
Google Shops: A company built on people
Let’s visit a retailer who has learned and acted on many of these lessons and is eager to try more. Gary Vaynerchuk, a wine merchant in Springfield, New Jersey, burst onto the internet in 2006 with a daily video blog. Put down this book for a minute—just a minute—go to WineLibrary.TV, and watch one of his shows. Be prepared to be blown back by a jet-engine blast of personality and enthusiasm. Vaynerchuk is hardly the image of a wine snoot. He could just as easily be touting a horse or shouting about his favorite football team (the New York Jets). He’s a guy’s guy, a man of the people, and that’s his point. He’s democratizing wine.
Before starting his video blog, Vaynerchuk had already run a successful store with his Russian-immigrant father and family. They rebuilt the place into an impressive, two-story retail space—a library of bottles—and grew revenue from $4 million to $60 million annually over a few years. The Wall Street Journal profiled him in 2006. I’d shopped in his store for years but met him first online.
His video blog made him a star. The show is seen by 80,000 people a day—no small feat for watching a guy holler about wine for 20 minutes and spit his sips into a Jets bucket. His passion is infectious and so his fans spread it around. One day, deep into a show, he mentioned that he was planning an event in his store for his online community. Three-hundred “Vayniacs,” as he calls his followers, showed up, flying from California and Florida.
Vaynerchuk got onto big TV thanks to the internet, appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, The Ellen Degeneres Show, and CNBC’s Mad Money with its equally forceful host, Jim Cramer. He got speaking engagements. Earlier, I told of his using Twitter to gather a flash party at the South by Southwest conference in Austin. At the conference, he spoke on a panel alongside his Hollywood agent. Then he published a book, 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World. The moment it became available to order, Vaynerchuk’s fans raised it to 36th place on Amazon’s best-seller list. Vaynerchuk started a project to create a collaborative wine—Vayniac Cabernet 2007—concocted with