A recipe for bad PR

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What happens when a fan-favorite chef mixes her desire to open a restaurant with Kickstarter? A lot of people are left with a bad taste in their mouths.

Carla Hall, a “Top Chef” contender and co-host of ABC’s “The Chew,” is a celebrity chef with a sizable following. Fans love Hall’s folksy, down-home style as much as they’re crazy about her unique take on Southern comfort food.

The classically French-trained chef recently teased her fan base with the promise of a “BIG announcement.” She dropped hints on social media, posting a video of herself prancing gleefully around Manhattan and a tantalizing image of chicken frying in roiling oil (“Any guesses what it might be?”).

More than a thousand of her Facebook fans threw out ideas – many even surmising (hoping!) the 50-year-old was pregnant. While few were surprised when she announced Wednesday that she planned to open her first restaurant, the Nashville-inspired Carla Hall’s Southern Kitchen, in New York City, many of her fans were appalled to learn she is funding it through Kickstarter.

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According to the website, 7 million people have funded 70,000 such projects since Kickstarter launched in 2009. Although the media coverage of her announcement has been largely positive, many of her fans reacted negatively — probably because they view Kickstarter as a way for cash-strapped artists, entrepreneurs and philanthropists to get funding for their creative projects.

The move alienated fans, who expressed their distaste on Hall’s Facebook page:

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Ironically, Hall seemed to take the crowdsourcing route to involve her fans from the beginning:

I knew the only place I could go for support to build something as personal to me as the kitchen in my first restaurant, is to my fans. No, my family.

We advised one of our clients who had developed a new technology not to do a Kickstarter campaign because they already had big name funders. We believed it would appear as a step back in the eyes of other investors and licensing partners. Our client ultimately agreed, but they, like Hall, were tempted by the PR opportunity sites like Kickstarter afford.

The fan backlash to Hall’s announcement could have been mitigated if she had anticipated the negative reaction and explained the reasoning upfront. Instead of the sugary teases, Hall should have framed the announcement along the lines of “I’m about to launch an amazing project, but I don’t want to do it alone. Because I think of you as my family, you have to be a vital part of it. Stay tuned to find out how…”

One needs only to read through Hall’s Kickstarter webpage to see that she is offering some pretty amazing perks to fans family who get in on the ground floor. For example, the $25 contribution level garners, among other things, having your name posted on the Founders Wall in every Southern Kitchen that Hall opens – “Forever. Seriously.”

Plus, the effort does have an altruistic aspect: Hall is partnering with Drexel University’s Center for Hospitality and Sport Management whose culinary and hospitality students will work with her to learn the aspects of opening a new restaurant – something many of the peeved fans don’t seem to know.

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It’s a lesson you’d think every star chef would know: You can have all the best ingredients, but people will quickly lose their appetite if the presentation is poorly executed.

Did you ever have all the right ingredients for a great launch only to have it fall flat?

 

 

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