If you’re in the food business and haven’t heard about Kogi BBQ, L.A.’s roving Korean taco truck that commands hours-long lines and worldwide fans, you’re probably interested in their secret now. It only involves simple math: A bit of spot-on branding plus the perfect social media strategy equals 14,000 Twitter followers and a much-traversed blog; and coverage in the Los Angeles Times, LAist, Serious Eats, Yelp, and more, about a year after the truck’s debut.
How the heck did they do it? Social media guru Mike Prasad, now with Girlgamer.com, walked us through the process.
Step 1: Start with Basic Branding
Prasad and Kogi cofounder Mark Manguera came up with the basics over a three-hour lunch. “We wanted to create an iconic food phenomenon,” Prasad says. They started with a name; something distinctive and short, but not too cultural to where it wouldn’t cross over to the main market. Like Pinkberry. “Gogi,” Korean for meat, was tossed around; Prasad heard “Kogi,” which he felt was more accessible. “The K stands for Korean,” he says.
Lesson 2: Choose the Correct Social Media Platforms
Prasad felt Kogi’s Korean tacos were an embodiment of L.A. street culture, the fusion and food found all along its windy, populated asphalt.
“We really wanted to leverage the brand and create a culture around the brand, and we couldn’t do that if we stayed in the same place all the time,” Prasad said. Twitter was the obvious social media tool to keep potential street eaters up to speed on where the truck would be. Sure, Kogi employees would blog scheduled stops for the week, but they also moved around a lot, both to where the crowd would take them and after cops might make them move.
“Twitter was like a game—find the Kogi truck,” Prasad says. “And it does help create [customer] ownership of the company.”
Lesson 3: Bridge the Gap
But Prasad didn’t believe in a “if you build it, they will come” approach. So he and the rest of Kogi’s gang hit the streets to “hustle.”
“You have to broadcast your message,” he says. “So we looked for ways to engage our audience. We came up with nightclubs. The first week was really full. Steve [Yoo, promoter] is one of the guys; he’d go in the club and hustle in the club: ‘hey, you gotta come check this out.’ He’d bribe the security guys at the door with tacos.
“I invited influential people to try the tacos—LAist, key people. They liked it and talked about it.”
Mommybloggers and Yelp reviews came next, spurred by Prasad’s plugging the truck to hungry bloggers just let out of late conferences.
Lesson 4: Shutup and Let it Go
Well, just kinda. When you base your marketing on interactive social media platforms, Prasad says, you have to be open to customer ownership and participation. The key is to hone it to the point where it benefits you and the customer.
“The brand has to be focused on its core value, but you have to be flexible enough to let it go and flow where the consumer base takes it,” he says. “If you try to control it too much, it backlashes. And if you don’t do it enough your company isn’t gonna sustain itself.”
Kogi seriously considers the taco and other menu selections customers request, or visiting a site—often, UCLA—where customers have asked and gathered a crowd. Several bands have already made their own Kogi theme songs, which the Taco Truck 2.0 happily showcases on its blog.
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