Make up your own awards, promote the heck out of them in your free weekly paper, give businesses various ways to 'enhance' their odds of winning, PROFIT!
I didn't mind them back in the days before the categories started multiplying like cancer cells.
What was once a single award bifurcates endlessly, generating ever multiplying opportunities to put the advertising touch on winners. Best Restaurant becomes Best North County Restaurant, Best South County Restaurant, Best Coastal Restaurant, and on an on to this years iteration, where every town in the county bigger than Pop. 50 got its own special award.
I did get a good laugh from the winner of Atascadero's Best Restaurants.
Amidst the (long) list of county 'best restaurants', featuring many well known eateries, it amused me to find In n' Out Burger carrying the banner for Atascadero fine dining.
It's a fabulous fast food joint, but c'mon now.
There is one sure way to pick up a 'Best Of' without paying a dime in advertising extortion- outlive all the competition. Not only are we the only used book store left in town, we're the only independent bookstore left in town. Perhaps next year we'll score a two-fer, or maybe even a five or six-fer, if category expansion persists in its runaway course.
Synchronicity!
Here's an interview with Anthony Bourdain that just popped up in my twitter feed.
And, while we're talking about those places, what are your thoughts on The World's 50 Best List?
The guys who put together that list all call each other and horse trade. It's good for business, it's good for chefs, but I mean, no one takes it seriously. It's not even a popularity contest, it is a list brokered by a lot of people with common interests. They're in the business — not to sound bitter because it's good for the people who end up on the list — but you'll notice that it tends to concentrate on countries where they sell a lot of Pellegrino. Michelin is about selling tires, Pellegrino is about selling water, and Zagat is about selling Zagat guides.
If you look at the business models along those lines, the critical value of their determinations becomes a little clearer. One might ask the question, "How many copies of the Zagat Guide do particular restaurants buy every year?" You'll notice that a lot of restaurants buy an awful lot of copies of the Zagat Guide each year. I mean, you're being reviewed but you're also buying thousands of copies of the Zagat Guide?
Same thing here, only on a smaller scale and instead of selling guides or water they're selling ads.
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