Jul 13, 2010

Chicken George the Marketing Genius

Gary Eckstein Management 0 brand positioning, business, complexity, Management, marketing, mba, Sales, simplicity

Slightly inland along the coast near Faro in Portugal is a desolate and very unassuming square building. The hand painted sign outside reads ‘Chicken George Restaurant’. Once seated in the plastic chairs at the equally sparsely tables, George’s wife arrives to offer English speaking people “chicken or fish” in a very broken translation from Portuguese. George cooks the mouth watering meals in the tiny kitchen viewable from all tables.

This article is no review of Chicken George Restaurant however is written to highlight the marketing genius of Chicken George and his wife. I have no idea whether either of these two Portuguese fish and chicken restaurateurs have marketing education or MBAs however they are doing a few marketing things very well.

First the name. Trout and Ries, the brand positioning gurus, recommend in their book ‘Positioning: the battle for your mind’ that a name positions the product perception of the consumer. ‘Chicken George Restaurant’ gets part way there as it describes one of the products (chicken) and the owners name (George). A customer therefore expects to be able to get chicken, that it is a restaurant and that George will be present.

Second, George and his wife, probably through communication problems with the large number of foreign language speakers in the area, offer two choices only; chicken or fish. Although probably unintentionally they are doing something very right in not offering a large choice; a study by Draganska and Jain concluded that consumers are more likely to purchase if there are fewer choices.

Sometimes circumstance and plain logic leads to effective marketing. When in doubt, keep things simple as this is usually the best option.