Meatball Sundae or Tomato Basil Goodness?

Today, Seth Godin talked about his new book Meatball Sundae. He published a thought piece from the book describing what a Meatball Sundae is. In particular, he was describing it in terms of Web 2.0. You know: social networks, user generated content, viral marketing, and AJAXy goodness! The analogy is relevant to many market trends though. It’s the idea that you can simply have a better business by tacking on whatever the latest trend is. Currently that is Web 2.0. 

This made me think about our approach to Tribal Pizza. The core idea behind Tribal Pizza breaks down into three parts: 

• Tight logistical management of the supply chain. (Whew! Jargon overload)
• A unique (for now) user experience, ala user participation via Pizza Design and Pizza Battle. Add to that order tracking.
• An in your face attitude, all the way from the Web Site, to our approach to marketing. We are different, not trying to be different! 

I weighed each of these prongs against the Meatball Sundae analogy. Here are some conclusions: 

• Tight logistical management is critical to the operation. This is not Marketechure. Tightly controlling the bottom line allows us to compete in a market where food and gas prices will continue to increase in the future. This key enabling technology will allow us to run harder and faster than our competition. Period!
• The user experience is highly influenced by Web 2.0 trends. Jay and I have always felt that brining our customers into the experience and actually making them part of the company is part of our not so secret Juju. We want our customers to feel like they own part of Tribal Pizza and our success can be theirs as well. Further, we think once we are up and running this is going to be a big part of driving our word of mouth marketing. “Dude, I kicked Johnny’s butt in a Pizza Battle yesterday! I took his money and his design.” “Really, that sounds cool, what’s a Pizza Battle?”
• Our attitude at the surface seems to be very Web 2.0’ish. Not really. This is just our combined personality manifested in a corporate entity. Jay and I have really tried to build the company that reflects us. Behind the visions of sugar plums dancing in our heads, the real motivation is to  build our company. You can see it in everything. From the vague references to Snowcrash to the deep red tomato colored website. Tribal Pizza is us! 

I like the analogy Seth uses. Going forward I think it’s a salient mental picture for us to weigh some of our approaches against. Does this make the sundae taste better or are we just placing meatballs on top? 

What’s your experience with Meatball Sundaes and the high priests of what is cool today?

Comments

[Jenny B]

Hi Mike - A few thoughts on this post. Coming from the CRM side of the business, I think you are on point about how Tribal is not intentionally trying to leverage Web 2.0; Tribal is a company that started DURING Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is rapidly capitalizing on consumer-driven change which will accelerate market growth for companies that take advantage of it. Web 2.0 represents a participatory model for creating content, systems and business models. Tribal seems to be taking advantage of this consumer trend and using it to its advantage. Ultimately, Tribal needs to leverage 2.0 to generate customer loyalty. As you suggested in your comment "Dude, I kicked Johnny's butt..", this implies a significant degree customer of loyalty that you have enabled through a participatory business model. Just my 2 cents. JB