Recently a high profile food blogger (but on the other hand self-claimed low profile) is going to publish his book and busying on promoting his piece. In one of his interviews, he shared his life as a food blogger, complaining how hard his life is since restaurants were not willing to pay for him to write critics andcomment in the media about them. He did think being paid to write is no bigdeal, just like his counterparts in beauty and fashion field.
Every body thinks he is doing brilliantly and should beat all others working on similar things. However, a piece of personal opinion is not neccesarily from a fair point of view. Toanswer his doubt, we should stand on his supposedly potential clients’ feet.
As a businessman or a PR, what makes you decide to hire somebody to write for you? No one will concern how much thewrite have contributed into. Instead, they will ask for the value of this kindof food critics. They expect acclaims, priases, and all kinds of good thingswhich can boost their revenue. Of course it would be more than ideal if thewriter is a respected and convincing one. But as a respected and convincingwriter, you worked very hard to win all these from readers for long time.Surely you don’t want to give up his pride, becoming reluctant to accept theidea of giving positive comments for awful food. So, is there anyone damp hismoney for something dragging him back? Absolutely not.
As he said before, to be a successiful food critic, he should eat more to experience a variety of tastes so that he coulddistinguish good food from bad one. This is time consuimg and costing you a lotof money. Being paid to eat is one thing, but I am hesitated to trust arrangedtasting dinings. For a dinner intended to be discussed in the public forpromotional purpose, how dare you feed your guests with trash? Leave alone paid food articles. Some serious food critics overseas even try hard to avoid beingrecoginzed when they go tasting. Maybe the food blogger is more honest to whathe has tasted. But it is just another myth of “All PRs are pretty and nice”.Being accompanied by a pretty PR or chef who note that he is a food critic whois known for his honesty, I am sure he gets most delicate and attentive foodand service that is you and I can ever imagine. If PR arranged meals havepotential cheats, paid ones are even dangerous. That would possibily erode thelong time built trust from his readers. Do you think paid news is news? Idon’t. I will say it is an advertisement. We all can tell the difference.
The food blogger mentionedthat he would make 2 offers to restaurants for negative comments: post it orhold it, but anyway, he still responded and commented honestly for therestaurants for improvement. I don’t know how confident he is about his fame,ability and influencing power. But he doesn’t know his position for sure. Hemight be have some knowledge in cooking (as he claimed), but still uncomparableto a professional chef. For restuarants seeking improvement in recipe, whydon’t they turn to a professional who can provide details of how to cook betterbut now you a food critic who merely comment a few words for the food is goodor not? Unless you are an auditor, you hardly make money from your client likethis. The truth is, if you are not prepared to step down from the altar ofcredible bloggers, please accept that you can’t win them all, and keep accusing beauty bloggers who areoften paid for writing as these bloggers agree to acclaim low quality productswhich you don’t give a damn.
Stopmaking yourself feel good by showing off how you are devoted to food andcomplaining how people are unfair to you. Try make use of your fame onprofitable business. No one even Choi Lan or William Mark manage to makethemselves rich by merely offering articles to newspapers or appearing on TV.
"All PRs are pretty and nice" is just a myth?! Ohhhhhhhhhhh!! I can't believe it!!
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting when I saw him in the TV show, while the chef said "his comment is useful for us to improve our product". I think it is basic requirement for a chef to know whether his food taste good or not, the chef actually knows "this will be good, that will be better...etc". But they can't do the perfect food mainly because of the consideration of cost-effective (for technical question, I don't think he can suggests).
Just as some 3* chef said, usually you can make the perfect risotto but they can't, as it needs a few ten minutes for cooking, which is unacceptable in their kitchen.
Yeah! Remembered you plurked about some people dreamt about having a decent and cozy cafe, offering nice and wonderful coffee where also could serving as a private place for him to have some gatherings with friends? That's the same. Doing business, if not for making money, at least no one is expecting deficit and finally forced to leave with huge debts right? I think he might be able to give some fair comments but can his comments be useful enough to help the chef making meaning improvement without hurting the revenue? If he can, actually he can work as a consultant, designing a recipe which is fast cost effective enough to be prepared, and tans tasty enough to win customers' heart! I am sure he would have his own blue sea. Don't forget Choi san runs his own food and restaurant business apart from showing up in TV. This is what he is doing to turn his fame to real money. No food critics can sustain himself simply with a column.
ReplyDeleteA food critic, especially a convincing one is just like a journalist. If you are paid to write, no one would consider your piece is a genuine comment or news. I just can't imagine a seems-to-be experienced man doesn't make it clear.