Word & Mouth Blog

Where food, hospitality, branding, and human behavior all crash into each other. I write about restaurants, wine, placemaking, customer experience, and the small details that make people talk about a business long after they leave.

For even more snarky takes on marketing, pop culture, branding, and the internet, visit my Substack, Burnt Popcorn & Branding: Substack

  • A mix of hospitality, branding, customer psychology, hospitality culture, and internet behavior from someone who’s worked behind the scenes in marketing long enough to know what feels authentic and what feels painfully forced.

  • Yes. Especially if your marketing currently sounds like ChatGPT wrote it.

  • No LinkedIn thought leadership energy here. Just strategy, storytelling, and occasional side-eye toward trends, Chat-GPT written branding advice, and “disruptive” ideas that all look the same.

  • People in marketing, hospitality, branding, retail, wine, or anyone who secretly judges restaurants by their menu design before reading the food list.

Digital Marketing, Healthy Lifestyle, Social Media, Wine County Shana Bull Digital Marketing, Healthy Lifestyle, Social Media, Wine County Shana Bull

Restaurant and Winery Marketing Gets Creative While We Shelter in Place

With the shelter-in-place order, wineries and restaurants all over California are having to rethink their traditional model of people coming to them. Creativity tends to flourish during times of crisis, so I wanted to give a few shoutouts to brands that I think are doing a great job of embracing the horrible reality that we're dealing with right now.

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Digital Marketing, Social Media, Wine County Shana Bull Digital Marketing, Social Media, Wine County Shana Bull

Marketing Is Still Important—Even During a Crisis

For many of us in the hospitality industry, all of our marketing efforts were directed at getting people into the tasting room, restaurant or hotel, and letting our tasting room staff sell wine club memberships/wine/food, etc. And even though this crisis is temporary, the brands that adapt will be able to move forward stronger, and the brands that simply want to revert to the status quo will be left behind.

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