Re-reported on Bankers Ball.
While the magazine features foxy females, restaurant patrons shouldn't expect scantily clad servers. The chain will not be a Hooters (known for servers in shorts cut high and shirts cut low). Maxim Prime will be more upscale and intimate. "Sexy but sophisticated," Chodorow says. "They're not going to be airy, light places."
Maxim Prime also aims to update the steak-joint stereotype of heavy meals that make diners "want to go to sleep," Chodorow says. In contrast, Maxim Prime will offer small portions as well as lighter fare. "The people who leave here are going to go someplace else — maybe dancing," he says. "They're not going to go home and go to bed."
My issues here are threefold:
First, if you are going to brand a steakhouse as Maxim why would you not put over-endowed spokesmodel-style servers in skimpy outfits? If Long or Short Capital.com has taught us anything, it’s that big boobs sell! I think if they aren’t going to milk the whole Maxim image, they’re doomed to failure.
Second, I’m no expert, but I would imagine that the two hundred young men who still read Maxim think that a posh night out is Tony Roma’s. I don’t think late teen/early twenties Maxim readers can afford what is supposed to be an expense account restaurant.
Third, what’s this about non-massive portions? If I’m going to a steakhouse where a standard serving isn’t at least 26oz, I don’t care who pays for it, the restaurant is totally wasting my time. If you don’t want to be full to bursting, go to the Lentil Palace before hitting the clubs.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
USA Today: 'Maxim' plans to put magazine's brand on steakhouse
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This isn't the first time a corporation has begun a new venture and attempted through it to significantly change the public perception of the brand. To use as an examople a company recently mentioned in this blog we can look at Air Canada and their mostly failed attempt to move the consumer's perception of them closer to the way they see Westjet through AC's discount carrier Jazz.
Granted Maxim isn't launching a new magazine like Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse did, when he began Omni magazine in the 70's but the goal is usually the same, as is the motivation. The hope being to capture a new section of the consumer market and cross promote both offerings to both groups. Interestingly enough, I had a large stack of Omni magazines at one time and still have my copies of their first 5 fiction anthologies. But I was never pursuaded to try the publisher's other magazine. On man's meat is another man's poison (it's hard to avoid double entendres while commenting on this subject).
Demographic shifts in taste, trends and lifestyle have the power to move popular culture offerings into or out of the spotlight. It's true that sex always sells, but the boomers - that is the folks with bucks - are aging and their focus is shifting, viagra notwithstanding (?!?).
Rather than risk tinkering too much editorially with the magazine, it would seem that Maxim hopes their new "lifestyle" concious restaurant will shift the public perception of the brand and/or capture an new slice of the market for them to promote their Brand to. It's obvious this new endeavor is not aimed at their current demographic as Lee points out.
Unintentionally (?) humourous comments about "milking" aside, I'm with Lee on this. History has shown that in business two strategies seem to prevail in the long term. The first is a resolute and unshakable belief in your product and goals coupled with the guts to see it through against all odds until you succeed. The second is having the courage to take real risks with your direction at critical, strategic moments in order to reinvent your brand. Often the stories of the most iconic products and companies we know include chapters on how they managed to use both of these strategies to their benefit.
Maxim's latest announcement carries the cachet of neither courageous strategy and is as Lee implys, merely lame and confused.
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