Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to simantics,
Did we all go to the same Lotusphere conference? I got to hear Sir Tim Berners-Lee speak about open and free internet around the same time as SOPA and that’s the story I came away with from the conference.
Wow, you got a much more interesting Lotusphere than me. But this was, like, the late 90s.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Josie McNaught,
dishes that require expensive imported ingredients (panko breadcrumbs grrr)
They do cook up in a way that ordinary breadcrumbs don't, especially in deep-frying situations, but they are a bit more expensive. Otoh, they're cheaper than the mostly horrible crumb-coatings that people buy in supermarkets. I tend to stick to bags of ordinary breadcrumbs that seem to last forever.
but the simple act of taking some of your “poor time” and going out and actually handling the food, knowing what is in season, and going through the simple act of cooking it at home seems to deeply unsexy.
Easy to say for we freelance journalists, less so for those poor buggers who have to work proper jobs and may not get home till 7pm and want to spend some time with their kids.
This requires time and intelligence and energy, but the physical and intellectual effort of shopping for ingredients (or hey growing them yourself) seems to pass you dumbos by.
That's not exactly a way to win people over to your point of view. For what it's worth, I go to markets most Saturdays (La Cigale) and Sundays (Avondale). I love it. But not everyone does, or can, do that. That doesn't make them morally or intellectually defective.
$179? For that amount of food? Let’s have a cook off and I’ll cook enough food to a much larger group for longer – including using up the leftovers.
This is such a thin point. Yes, you could make 25 servings for less than $7 each -- we all could -- but it would be more difficult if you committed to using ingredients of similar quality (free-range meats, etc) and making similar meals. This isn't competing against budget meal strategies, but with what its target market might otherwise buy at Victoria Park New World.
Leftovers do not feature in these recipes -- but that's hardly unique to these particular recipes. I love leftovers, both next-day and frozen. I think My Food Bag will have to become more flexible if it's to be sustainable. But there's nothing immoral or terrible about using a service that undertakes to shop well on your behalf.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Alastair Thompson,
But what you're asking for there is telling people who've merely received a product for trial what they're allowed to write. You're actually contracting them. If I get involved in a discussion about the product, do I have to use #ad? Even if I say the product sucks?
@scooptechlab is really quite different, in that you're explicitly contracted to deliver words written by a handful of named individuals in exchange for money -- and they're contracted to deliver those words, in exchange for cash and the free (and valuable) product. It's just not the same thing as sending out some trial product.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Robyn Gallagher,
The kind of people whose spare rooms are already full of goodie bags from events past. They did some cooking the first night, tooted about it, then by the second night – ooh, shiny! – something else had grabbed their attention.
Goodie bags are an odd thing -- although they generally fill a secondary PR purpose by being filled the other products the same PR firm is representing.
Bridget Saunders wrote a great piece a while back on how to become a celebrity, as that term is defined for the purpose of PR launches. It takes a bit of work -- you have to respond to each PR approach, and show you're a good soldier by turning up at the launch of some bloody thing on a Tuesday night. And if you're not invited, turn up and glad-hand the PR people.
I confess there's the odd one (whisky tastings and champagne marque events) that I've thought, ooh, I wonder who I'd have had to grease up for that. But mostly, it's about turning up for indifferent wine and nibbles and getting your picture in the paper.
It probably makes financial sense for some folk ("celebrity" is actually generally a poorly-paid job in NZ) , but I'm amazed at the number of people who could clearly be buying their own drinks turning up to eat stale sushi on a rainy night. I think it's a social thing for most of them -- they know all the other people who do the same thing.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Lilith __,
Surely it’s naive to think journos don’t get free samples to review? Book reviewers don’t buy the books.
The irony there is that it's not uncommon for editors to hand over review copies of books and tell their poor reviewers that is the payment.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to BenWilson,
Edit: Oh shit, that just gave me a Saturday night flashback.
Breathe slowly and deeply.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Damian Christie,
There’s a HUGE difference between being paid by the Casino and casually mentioning how much you like certain restaurants there while on TV; and getting sent a product to review.
Quite. Hosking was pocketing $60,000 a year to say good things as a SkyCity "ambassador" and didn't disclose that until he was forced to.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Paul Brislen,
That’s the place! The Swan and Dolphin… really quite hideous. Surreal from memory (mostly blacked out now).
I arrived very late on a Saturday night after flying for half my life and tottered down to one of the restaurants in the morning to find it being haunted by people in Disney character costumes. It was not as much fun as that sounds. And the fact that there were doors everywhere marked "cast members only" was indeed quite surreal.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to George Darroch,
The reciprocal obligation is a very strong one, hardwired into human brain circuitry (according to Kahneman and others). It’s very well known in psychology, and it’s certainly very well known to the PR industry. You give something to someone, the obligation to give back in is very strong. It’s actually painful not to.
This is true. I’m certainly more inclined to give some time to someone calling from Pead because I’ve done business with them over the years, and because I’m pretty confident they won’t waste my time.
Otoh, I was horrified by the “starkish” stunt (which was pitched to me) and astonished at how the likes of Mark Sainsbury included the “word” in their actual professional work because they might win a trip to New York. I think it was a bit of a learning experience for Pead, too, frankly.
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Hard News: My Food Bag: is it any good?, in reply to Dylan Reeve,
A while ago Canon NZ spent a fair bit of money bringing video camera demigod Philip Bloom to NZ to demo their new high-end video camera to a room full of local TV and video types. He basically started off by focusing on the negatives of the product, it was pretty clear he was being honest in his assessment and it reflected really well on him and Canon, at least in my opinion.
Interesting!
Of course, that's another kind of marketing spend: paying thousands of dollars to bring over someone you hope will get media coverage for the product. If I wasn't making a TV show, I'd have tried to wangle my way into the Sky channel launch being presented tomorrow night by William Shatner. And I'd have jolly well blogged about it afterwards too.