Isaac Tigrett - Business Insights
06.03.22 - In grad school for an International Marketing class, I worked on a semester long project that required putting together a marketing plan for a Planet Hollywood location in Prague. In doing research for the project I gathered so much information on the theme restaurant (eatertainment) industry that i decided to figure out a way to document all the news.
I put together a business plan and what started out being a biweekly hard copy newsletter branded “Show-Notes”, morphed into ThemeRestaurant.com - a subscription-based online playground and competitor intelligence tool for the industry’s cultural change agents.
I tracked over 80 concepts worldwide with detailed profiles, delivered daily industry news, offered a plethora of industry-related content, put together distribution deals with the likes of Nation’s Restaurant News, got to interview leaders in the industry, was brought on as a consultant for concept start-ups, and even developed detailed concept plans for my own potential passion projects (SuperFriends Cafe and Big Ten Club - what could have been…).
For the purpose of this post I want to touch on the industry leader interviews - among others I had a chance to talk with: Isaac Tigrett - Founder of Hard Rock Cafe and House of Blues; Steven Schussler - Founder of Rainforest Cafe; Ian Hamilton - President of the Official All-Star Cafe; and Keith Rudman - President of The Clubhouse.
Mr. Tigrett was the key to all the other interviews. He was/is an icon in the industry and one could argue created the modern-day form of word-of-mouth marketing with Hard Rock location t-shirts. Once that was published I was able to get an audience with any of the top industry players.
I recently came across a copy of that interview and below are some of the insights from Mr. Tigrett that still resonate today:
1. Money is a by-product of not exploiting culture, it is not the major objective or you will not be culture at all. And people know, they can smell it, and they can feel it.
2. Success has to be in your blood, because it's an 18-hour a day, seven day a week job. It's a culture in itself, and if you're there as a whim or you think it's cool, it's not going to work that way, and returns will be minimal.
3. Money is a by-product of doing something you enjoy. Money is down the line as far as I'm concerned.
4. If you take a cultural brand and you try to three dimensionalize it, nine times out of ten you're going to do a disservice to that brand. Unless you can enhance the brand by creating something that is masterful, you're going to diminish the value of the brand. It becomes a dark chapter in the history of your logo.
5. It all comes down to the culture, understanding culture. Culture changes, it's moving all the time. If management and the visionaries behind the concept originally lose sight of the culture and don't move with it, then they will dissipate and the energy will go out of it. It takes very unique individuals that can see into the cultural future.
6. You have a responsibility to the people that work for you to give them something to take on their journey. You give them a work ethic and you create a culture that's important to their future.
7. The visionary entrepreneur and the large corporation are destined to collide. There's always going to be a point where the money guys and the creative guys clash. You need to have the power to balance the money guys and the imagination guys to work together.
8. Eventually, if you don't keep the promise every day, then it's just another mediocre brand. There can only be one. The first guy out gets the hearts and minds of the people. Everything else is an imitation.
9. If you can teach somebody something using technology, that is its proper use. Technology should be used to enhance people's intellect.
10. You don't exploit culture, you have to earn the right to represent it and you have to do that every day!
For more information on Mr. Tigrett visit - https://isaac-tigrett.com/
