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Mountain Goat IPA had a series of hilarious ads during the Melbourne International Film Festival, which shows what you can do with a low budget. These are their earlier ads: they have a 2019 campaign with The Monkeys in Sydney, featuring a goat call center:
Australian brewer Mountain Goat has launched GOAT Lager, an uncomplicated, very enjoyable craft beer with an interactive campaign – ’13GOAT’, developed by The Monkeys Melbourne, part of Accenture Interactive.
To put the brewer on the big stage, The Monkeys built on the tongue-in-cheek tone of Mountain Goat and created something crucial to the success of every big brand: a call centre. The only difference being 13GOAT is run by who else, but the goats themselves.
Part giveaway mechanic, part customer service centre, 13GOAT is a call centre run by goats whose sole purpose is to give away a year of very enjoyable GOAT beer, or a trip to the GOAT brewery in Melbourne.
This New Zealand anti-smoking PSA asks smokers to consider the effect of their lifestyle and cigarette smoke on their pets. Via Adweek:
You’re not going to like this ad, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t watch it.
In its newest gut-punch of a PSA, the New Zealand Health Promotion Agency’s anti-smoking initiative, Quitline, reminds us that humans aren’t the only ones who suffer from exposure to cigarettes. While one would hope that knowing the damage you’re doing to yourself and your family would be enough to break an addiction, the reality is that these points have been hammered by health advocates for decades. The reality of smoking cessation is that different messages work on different people, which is how you end up with angles like this one.
The spot shows a blue-collar Kiwi’s bond with his loyal dog, with most of the 2-minute story told from the dog’s point of view. That perspective makes the largely predictable and tragically unavoidable turn of events all the more potent, as it contrasts the owner’s love with the harm he’s doing to his “best mate.”
Emporium Melbourne ran a surprisingly elaborate ad at the Melbourne International Film Festival. For a moment we thought it was a perfume ad… Apparently, it was a collaboration with MIFF:
For the first time, this year Emporium Melbourne collaborated with MIFF and Cos We Can to produce ‘Persephone’; a fashion short film, featuring Emporium Melbourne designer labels and starring Australian actress Lily Sullivan as ‘Persephone’ – the Greek goddess who ruled the underworld, but left the underworld once Spring arrived.
I’m at a Networx function, sipping a beer and chatting with Frank Chamberlain, who writes for this esteemed publication regularly. We’re talking about the pitfalls of penning a piece without a decent brief, when I notice to my right a woman who is staring at me.
Being a well-brought-up boy, I put my hand out and we introduce ourselves. As soon as our names have been exchanged she asks me ‘What do you do?’. (I’d never start off with that question.) I say ‘I’m not sure, it depends what the time is and where I am’. She blinks, like I’ve kicked her in the shins. Then asks me ‘What does Starship do?’ (I’m wearing a name tag, much as I hate them.) I say ‘We’re an advertising agency’. She says ‘That’s it?’
So I stupidly play her game. I ask her this, which is a big mistake. “What does XXXX do?” (She has the name of a big headhunting firm on her lapel. Of course I know them.) She says “You don’t know? We’re a recruitment firm!” I say (third mistake) “Oh, I see”. She asks aggressively “What do you mean by that?” I know what I want to say but hesitate, searching for the right word.
“I’ve always found personnel people to be, ahhh, what’s the term? (I desperately think of plays, Oscar Wilde……) A bit earnest…’
“Earnest. You think I’m earnest?” (whites of eyes showing). “Would you say that if you knew I was the new marketing manager?” She says like she means “Hey, I’ve got a big budget and you better be nice to me, because all you ad guys want it.” And she storms off because I’ve been so offensive. Not exactly a new situation for me.
I didn’t mean to be rude, but there you go, in her mind, it’s obviously a major sin to not take yourself seriously.
Frank smiles, shrugs his shoulders. I sip another beer and wonder why people think their careers so matter so much, instead of just trying to enjoy themselves for their own sake. Why they literally live their job. So with the intention of making damn sure you know why you’re doing what you’re doing instead of selling drugs, bad legal advice or second hand houses, below I’ve cobbled together a list of the ‘professions’ (I use the term lightly) you could have done instead and why you’re better off where you are, in career nirvana.
In order to not appear too discriminatory, I’ve listed them alphabetically. And in case you’re wondering, I’ve interviewed at least one member of each of these professions, to get the running on what’s the real perception from the inside. They’re all very necessary, except perhaps tax lawyers, so I don’t really want to insult their members, but be warned. This is an article which will offend anyone who isn’t a marketer, so don’t show it to your friends unless you’re sick of them.
Accountant
I had to start with the worst one first. Someone who thinks the word conservative means business-like. ‘Personality’ used as a contraceptive. People who make bankers look exciting. A profession filled with people who are so money-oriented they studied how to track it. And look backwards? They spend their life with their eyes firmly locked on the rear vision mirror. Accountants don’t know how to generate money, only know how to find where it’s gone. Even then they have the cheek to think they can manage businesses because they read Balance Sheets all day. That’s like a traffic speeding cop telling you because he sees people go fast all the time he’s by definition a good driver. The accountant is the enemy of the marketer, in the same way the pet door is the enemy of the fat cat. Something to squeeze past on the way to a good time.
Architect
7 years studying how to create unique living environments, 3-dimensional art, getting the physics, engineering, dimensions exactly right for a nirvana space where people can just ‘be’ in a pleasant existence, only to be told by a pimply kid doing work experience at the local Council they won’t approve it.
Artist
Yes, you get to drink and take drugs all day, slap some crap on the wall and make out you’re brilliant. The madder it is, the better you are. But if you ain’t into flagrant self-promotion, you starve.
Banker
See accountant, assume they have all the money and want all of it back, with interest. Plus want to charge you mega bucks for doing anything complex, like taking your own money out of your account. Then recognise that’s the good ones.
Builder
To be told what colour tiles, where they want the stove, why the window has to be double-glazed all day long, drives builders nuts. A good honest profession where you can clearly see what you’ve achieved in a day has its merits, but with many a downside too.
Chemist
Scores well on the public trust factor (we’d be pretty stuffed if they didn’t – imagine going to the chemist for Disprin and getting Heroine) but as boring as bat shit for the chemist themselves. Yes, you do get to meet lots of people who wander in the door, but the same four walls, day in day out? The same piece of carpet to stand on while you dish out the pills? No wonder lots of chemists start to tickle the till. Wouldn’t you take a sniff of something to make your day more interesting?
Chiropractor
Saving people from pain is a noble calling. But because the doctors and physios see them as a threat, Chiro’s are relegated to a position close to tarot card readers by many of the more conservative public. And this after 7 to 10 years of intense training. I ask you?
Dentist
Spend your time looking down people’s mouths all day, squinting, trying to see what’s going wrong behind a back molar. When the buggers have had garlic sausages for lunch…. And almost everyone you talk to can’t talk back (a mouth-full of instruments and suction tubes). No wonder they are all nutty. Nice people, overqualified, overpaid, but generally, quite mad.
Doctor
Take some of the highest I.Q people in the country, have their parents push them into a high paying job that will come in handy when Mum and Dad are old. And it’s great to brag about to friends ‘Yes, John’s doing medicine at Melbourne’. Then stick them in tiny rooms, with bad light, get them to see lonely little old ladies all day. Doling out aspirins. Pay them shit per person, so they have to race through their diagnoses. What a waste. The smartest people in the country operating as distribution systems for chemical companies. Bored out of their minds. We’d be better off to train nurses to go on those diagnoses web sites and get the Doctors doing something better with their time.
Engineer
I could be an engineer. You get to invent things, design things, improve things. They are invariably decent people. Virtually un-recognised in Australia, this is a career that has merit and deserves respect. But gets bugger-all salary unless you’re at the very top. Also involves a lot of study in your chosen area and that could be tricky for a dummy like me.
General Manager
We need them. Many of us are doing their job already without knowing it. The work is as varied as Paris’s love life and you can control the lives of all around you, so it has a lot of plusses. But the down-side is a lack of focus, a lack of expertise and the sad fact that accountants often think they should be in this key role of business without any ability in the calling at all. General Managers vary incredibly in quality. They can be the worst entrepreneurs or the best. The worst marketers, or the best. There’s not enough training being undertaken at graduate level. I think most MBA’s should be spending their time doing General Management, instead of wanting to be experts at something. You could move to GM, many marketers do. But you’d spend a lot of time doing accounting or buying widgets, which you may not like.
Head Hunter
Called Slave Traders, Meat Marketers or worse behind their backs, and treated very politely to their faces, ‘cause head hunters can tip you into a good possie, or ruin your chances for one, many personnel operators can’t help taking life way too seriously. If you spent all day weighing people up or selling through your ability to sum people up, either way, you get judgemental and start not to see the funny side of anything. Especially when you’re trained up to the eye-balls, in what people who have no idea think is business ‘best practice’. I know head hunters who couldn’t laugh at their own funeral. There are some talented marketers trapped in headhunting companies, but they do bugger-all marketing, really. The bosses don’t believe in spending money and what do you say about a product (people) that obviously is always different, and when it goes wrong, it’s never your fault, but you have to wear it? Would you want to be one?
Journalist
Here you have highly entertaining, intelligent people. Interesting folk, drinking themselves to sleep because some bastards a hundred years ago allowed what is arguably Australia’s most powerful profession to be subjugated by rogue robber barons. Now there are only three or four sizable employers, so (outside of the specialist magazines and podcasting) you have few options and an awful union/class-based system under which to work. One decent, but despondent place is the ABC, where because it‘s starved of funds and not listened to by the public, you only earn a pittance as a journo. The rest, (while some are great organizations, with fantastic people working with you) ruin your career and your headspace. Many of these places force their main asset to sully itself like an old man shitting himself on the bus. Due to the need to attract audience numbers, they get involved in fostering plain bad entertainment (Big Brother, Biggest Loser) And what about the shoddy shock and sensationalistic pseudo-journalism that passes for news from News Ltd? The profession you study/enter, if you have the highest of moral drivers, is often the business you work in with the lowest morals of the lot. Irony? No wonder they drink.
Lawyer
While they may spend their time making up laws and hence control our lives and the rule this country, lawyers do so with a smug belief that they, and they alone, know what’s right. And they spend most of their time in battles with other lawyers. They can’t both be right. Usually, the kid at school who didn’t win the fights, they now fight all the time, as dictated by the adversarial system under which they operate. When they are uncertain if they’ll win, they go out and find more rules, often delving back centuries. And they out-right lie. Yep, they make good money, but have to struggle through a traction-like professional system; spending years as slaves to the partners. We as marketers have it one up on the lawyers in another respect too. The law is controlled by public opinion in the main, particularly legislation. And we can control public opinion.
Nurse
My heart goes out to the nurses, under-paid, caring, close as you can get to we sticky humans and they do it all the time, day and night, anything you can imagine, they have to do. With gusto and determination and pride. And our system ignores them. Treats them like second-class medical staff. Along with their even more down-trodden assistants, they are undermanned, under-appreciated and under-resourced. The system is overburdened, their lives are drenched with forms, the tedium is palpable and through all that Nurses have to be absolutely exacting in their delivery of medicines and co-ordinated like a machine to save lives. They are exhausted, depressed and leaving in droves. Would you want to be a nurse?
Physiotherapist
Close to nurses are physios. Less stressed and a great career if you like spending time helping people. Can live anywhere if you speak the language. Get to mix with sports stars. You’d have to like touching people I guess, (that rules out most of the lawyers) but generally, I can’t really knock being a physio.
Pilot
Can you imagine spending more than 10 years paying a fortune to fly and taking all sorts of exams? Being responsible for the lives of hundreds of people? But there’s a lot of up-side. Travel all over the world, have great accommodation. Get to wear snappy suits and a cap, whacko! Set up a spouse in several cities. Party yourself stupid for days at a time in exotic locations and go on holiday almost free. But with auto-pilot, between taking off and landing, you are bored to tears. You have to work for some real bastards, it gets highly political in the admin side, and the pressure not to fuck up (ie. smack into a mountain and kill the lot) is something you and I will never know.
Politician
The most sucked up to is also the most hated. I challenge you to think of any role more derisive. The pollies separate us. Tear at our psyche and our belief in truth and fairness. They cause great rifts in our society and do so for personal gain. But that power is at a terrible cost. Think how you’d feel being Kevin Rudd or Peter Garret at a Liberal convention? You are under people’s skin; changing the very fabric of their existence, on the one hand doing good for a few, on the other tipping the balance the wrong way for some others. Pollies are treated like Gods, but would you want to stand in a line and agree with stuff you didn’t for the good of the party? And invariably once you’re with a party, you’re with them the whole way. A marketer could do well to join. God knows they need better marketing of some pressing issues. But would you still be a marketer, or could you say they are all, already marketers?
Priest
I’ve listed the profession Priest to cover any religious role. I had many years of being indoctrinated by them. Nice people, but full of shit. Sell something I had no confidence in? I’d rather sell tobacco; at least you know for sure it’s certain death.
Public servant
Closely reined in by the politicians is their arch-nemesis, the servant of the public. Unelected, brimming with ultimate power and usually stuffed full of brains, the bureaucrats are an interesting bunch. Sometimes actually paid quite well, they must struggle through a system that would kill you of tedium, but thankfully awards profile, like ours does. Always being asked to fix something by everyone you meet, (like a doctor for our society, some are asked to fix a culture issue, others asked to fix the roads) many of my public servant friends invent other jobs on social occasions; a medico, a bikie drug smuggler, occasionally a Jedi Knight.
Real estate agent
Spend your days showing people through houses. Yes, you get to drive snappy cars and wear nice suits, but that’s it for the fun aspect.
Stock broker
Selling second-hand shares is slightly more fun than second-hand houses, as you can promise great returns and you can knock up all sorts of statistics to make it seem like you’re not really gambling. And you can sell one lot of shares to another of your own clients if turnover looks a bit iffy this month. And did I mention the nice suits and boozy lunches?
Teacher
You get good holidays. But could you stand there, spending days at a time trying to keep unruly, badly brought up kids quiet while you try to get them to absorb something they don’t appreciate, no matter how vital it might be for the rest of their lives? And get paid shit money for it? I’d rather jump.
Vet
Deserve sincere praise for what they do to look after those in our community who can’t look after themselves and can’t explain how they feel. I respect the specialists – horse, dogs, cattle etc. But I question the expertise of the general vet. I doubt the ability of anyone to be able to know much about a wide range of animals (birds, fish, lizards, cats?) when we can’t find decent generalist doctors for people who are much good, and we’re only one species. How much would a vet in Brighton really know about Gangrene in Galahs or Guatemalan Geckos? So you’re giving advice on something you know nothing about, much of the time. Sounds like a lawyer telling you about advertising.
Zoo keeper
See vet, assume almost no income. Dress up in a natty Steve outfit and perform like a trained seal for the public most days of the week. Glamour? I’d like to be the keeper of the eagles, or the panthers, for a week-end.
Marketers
What is good about being a marketer, you already know. The variety, the power, the pay, the intellectual interest, the moving sea of challenge living inside a competitive chess–game. But we have an image problem. We are not treated with the same respect as many of the above professions. Doctors, lawyers, pilots, engineers (the list goes on and on) all rank above us in public opinion, public respect. And we spend our waking hours in charge of public opinion. It’s beyond a joke.
Our profession must start to stake its claim as a complex balance of science, art, competition and calibre. I’m sick to death of being in the one profession that has absolutely no respect for itself. We have no visible promotional efforts made by our leadership. There are no CPA, AMA, ADA, Master Builders promotional campaigns going on for us. No TV ads. No public relations effort. No real public pride-building done for we humble Marketers. I beg you AMI, ASMI, AMSRS, DMA, fix it. One of you, please fix it. Or get together like grown-ups and do it jointly, but fix it.
Make us not just personally proud of what we do (many of us can only brag to head hunters and pissed colleagues) but please make us acknowledged for what we do, by our public. I’d be more than happy to contribute to the campaign.
Even the Free to Air TV stations run their own promotions. Why can’t we? Couldn’t we lean on the media? Surely they owe us something, we’re the bloody decision-makers, aren’t we?
Article originally published with Marketing Magazine. Updated August 2019.
We’re looking forward to catching The Rest at MIFF 2019, another film from acclaimed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Via Vox:
Ai and his team shot much more footage and interviews for Human Flow than they could use in one film, so they’ve followed it up with The Rest, which moves from the macroscopic to the microscopic. The Rest once again moves around the globe, but focuses on the faces and individual impact of the conditions that refugees often face. It is moving and sometimes very difficult to watch, but always focuses on dignity and the beauty of each human no matter their migration status.
The Rest premiered at Copenhagen’s prestigious CPH:DOX festival in April, and two months later, Ai and the film traveled for its UK premiere to the Sheffield Doc/Fest in northern England, where I met the artist to speak about the film, his work, and what gives him hope. Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
In this day and age, if you have zero online presence, you’d probably be suspected of being Too Hipster to Care, a Dinosaur, or of laundering money for some local mafia. Even a token webpage would do, one of those annoying one-pagers which contain a phone number and a picture and little else. That’s the bare minimum to at least appear credible, unless you really are going for the Too Hipster to Care angle. Websites aren’t hard to build, and they don’t have to be a trial to upkeep — if you want to know more, just get in touch and we can give you a rough idea of what goes into it and how much it’ll cost.
If you already have a website, congratulations. That’s just the first step. Was the website created in the days of Geocities? Is your hosting in a labyrinthine mess where you’re not entirely sure who you’re now paying for hosting and why? Do you even have access to your site? All these are common issues that our clients face before they even get around to whether their site is now mobile-friendly or security compliant. Moving past that, we get on to whether your site even looks like a modern website, or whether it’s a morass of copy put in place by a developer rather than a designer.
A website doesn’t have to be token in this day and age. For many businesses, it’s a vital part of their overarching brand strategy. And yes, it should work on mobile AND on desktop.
Business Marketing on Social Media
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recently released a long report about digital platforms, where they discussed 23 recommendations around their concerns about the dominance of Facebook and Google:
The ACCC says it sees no sign that Australians will slow down their use and engagement with these digital platforms. Though the ACCC says it has no concerns with growth and profitability, it does compel policymakers to consider the “extent to which important decisions about the dissemination of information, the collection of personal data and business’ interaction with consumers online, should be left to the discretion of certain large digital platforms, given their substantial market power, pervasiveness and inherent profit motive.”
[…]
“Discrimination may occur in multiple ways where a digital platform is active in related markets,” reads the report. The ACCC has also expressed concern over Google and Facebook’s near duopoly on the online advertising supply chain. “While the existing tools and goals of competition law and consumer law frameworks remain applicable to digital markets, the opacity and complexity of these markets make it difficult to detect issues and can limit the effectiveness of the broad principles.”
It definitely doesn’t look like Australians will stop using Facebook and Google anytime soon. That’s why — depending on the client — we often recommend that clients centralise Facebook ads and Google Adwords in their digital marketing strategy. It isn’t just a matter of slapping an ad together and shoving it onto the platform in question, though. It should be integrated into your general strategy as a whole. Naturally, we’re going to recommend that you leave it to the pros. But if you’re just trying things out, here are some quick tips:
- Be respectful. It’s no longer true that any attention is good attention. Negative attention on social media — especially if it goes viral — can be completely damaging to your business and to your staff.
- Have definite goals in mind. Do you want to drive traffic to your site? Raise the profile of a particular product?
- Make sure the goals are attainable. Don’t waste money on moonshots unless you have money to spare.
- Make sure the process you’re using is measurable.
- Know your audience — the wording you use and the platforms you use need to match them.
- Check out your competition and see what they’re up to.
Testing, testing
Don’t be afraid to test new strategies and campaigns on small samples of your audience to see how they’re received. In a safe, controlled environment, we’d usually work this out on focus groups, but if you don’t want to use them, you can segment your audience into groups to try things out. Testing is a key part of any winning strategy. You need to figure out what works and what doesn’t and learn lessons from both. As to the amount of resources you’re willing to devote to testing vs a workable strategy, that’s up to you.
Marketing Tactics for Business
You might have heard of the so-called 7 Ps of Marketing: Price, Promotion, Place, People, Process, and Physical Evidence. Basically, you have to be clear on where you stand on each point. What are you selling and are you selling anything more or new? How are you putting your product out there on the market? Where can your products be seen or bought? What sort of people make up your business? Do you have processes in place that ensure good customer service and delivery? Finally, what are the physical touchpoints that your customers encounter when they see your products, such as branding or packaging?
Having to nail all of those can be a hard ask, which is why people tend to get professional help. That being said, by having definite goals and careful testing, you can often figure out key goalposts on all 7 by yourself, which is a good place to move forward from. Many of our clients do come to us with these already in place — either because it’s what they decided or because of particular constraints.
Where it can get granular is usually specific to the type of business you run. Is it a tech startup? Retail? B2B or B2C? All these will have their own realities key to effective marketing. Not to mention that marketing has been increasingly evolving as technology and the world itself evolves.
New Technologies
In 2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in his Google I/O keynote that 20 percent of queries on its mobile app and on Android devices are voice searches. We presume that number’s only gotten higher by now. What does this mean for businesses? We can see two things right off — that any search terms you now buy in Adwords for your business should probably be more conversational than technical, and the names of your products should be easy to pronounce. If you speak the name of your product into Google and it comes up with something completely different, you might be in trouble. These statistics, after all, are just confined to Google. If you add in the number of people with other home assistants like Alexa, it’ll be even higher.
There are also existing technologies out there that can streamline marketing for your company, especially on a customer relations front. Chatbots are proliferating everywhere, and although they can’t take the place of a well-trained customer service team, they can alleviate the pressure of having to respond immediately to customers, and can even resolve minor queries. Tech can make your stores easier to navigate, or even fully integrate online and offline seamlessly — what we’d call an omnichannel approach.
Technology does need to be carefully considered before use, so as not to annoy your customers. If properly integrated, it can be a fun part of your customer’s experience — for example, the Singapore Airlines app is a great way to keep track of your travels and check on your tickets. It’s beautifully designed too:
However, not every business requires an app. Given how difficult it is to get people to commit to downloading apps. According to comScore, 51% of phone users sampled in the USA don’t download any new apps every month. This behaviour is likely similar to Australia’s usage. Of the people who do download apps every month, 13% download just one app. Most of the people who download apps are millennials (18-34 years old). Before you commit to the high cost of app development, keep all this in mind.
Need more information? Get in touch.
AdAge’s outgoing Small Agency of the Year, BSSP, has made a hilarious spoof of Nike’s famous “Jogger” ad as an ode to small agencies. You can watch the full video here.
The original ad:
French’s has made mustard ice cream for its customers, which I presume nobody actually asked for. Since it went viral, it’s good marketing…? Via CNN:
Another strangely specific national day for food is upon us. And the honoree, a condiment frequently found at barbecues and baseball games, is taking over the ice cream shop.
For Saturday’s National Mustard Day, French’s has unveiled a yellow mustard-flavored ice cream, available for a limited time at Coolhaus ice cream stores. What mustard did to deserve its own frozen dessert remains to be seen.
The company said it created the Frankenfood to “bring together two all-American classics, ice cream and mustard.” But do the two belong together? That’s for the taster to decide.
Coolhaus will scoop the mustardy dessert at locations in New York from Thursday through Saturday, in California from Friday through Sunday and three days next week. Sorry, Chicagoans, you’ll have to get your mustard fix on hot dogs. Or just freeze the stuff.
Brave customers will receive a pretzel cookie with their purchase in what can only be assumed to be a much-needed palate cleanser.
Burger King Brazil has launched a new campaign featuring a blind person, Eduardo, who describes the sandwiches through touch. Via Adweek:
Burger King’s latest Brazilian ad finds a unique way to showcase those senses while also promoting inclusion for people with disabilities. Ad agency David SP in São Paulo cast Eduardo, a blind man, to describe the sandwiches through touch.
His descriptions bring the burgers to life as he calls the double cheddar a “cheddar explosion” and describes the buns as “soft sesame bread.” Additionally, the 30-second spot allows Eduardo’s personality to shine, including a couple of lines that may turn some heads. Arguably the most important part of this ad is the beginning. The audio description at the beginning sets the scene for visually-impaired viewers. This is a permanent service on Secondary Audio Programming, or SAP, which helps people get an idea of the visual cues happening during a show. For this ad, BK instead opts to make the audio description a primary feature. Additionally, captions throughout the ad are in place to help those with hearing issues.
The Gods of Food is a new mockumentary that takes the piss out of self-indulgent dramatic food shows like Chef’s Table. Via Netflix:
Just like its inspiration, each episode will tell one chef’s life story with plenty of slow-mo shots of food being plated and classical music cues, plus commentary from culinary experts. While the chefs themselves are all fictional characters played by up-and-coming actors and comedians, some of the talking heads are actual famous chefs playing themselves. Hugh Acheson, Jet Tila, Alison Roman, and Richard Blais all appear throughout the show’s six episodes, offering context on the lives and careers of these fictional temperamental geniuses. Some episodes skewer specific Chef’s Table sagas — the second installment is a direct riff on the Jeong Kwan episode — while others take looser inspiration from Netflix’s show.
Judging by the new trailer, creator Rekha Shankar and her team absolutely nailed the look and tone of Chef’s Table. “I thought it was pretty ripe for parody,” Shankar tells Eater. “It was almost already just there. And I do love all these shows too, and I love some of the things they have to say about creating something from nothing and innovating in a space where all the ideas have already happened.” Shankar, a writer and comedian based in LA, is a huge food TV fan and says the idea was initially born out of conversations she had with a co-worker who hated these types of series. While other TV shows have poked fun at Chef’s Table and its precursor Jiro Dreams of Sushi — most notable Documentary Now! and Ugly Delicious — the world of high-end cuisine has never received a full-blown parody like Gods of Food before.