To pay or not to pay - that's the question Shakespeare's Hamlet
might ask if he lived in Singapore and wasn't so hung up about
wanting to be or not to be.
Instead, it's a question that is increasingly being asked in
food-obsessed Singapore, where the explosion of social media has
spawned a flood of bloggers/journalists writing incessantly about
it: should a writer pay for a meal at the restaurant he or she
writes about?
The answer may seem like an obvious "yes", but it is the reality
that is causing some concern in the fiercely competitive F&B
industry, where restaurants depend on a constant flow of publicity
to stay on the radar of fickle diners.
It wasn't so long ago that restaurants had to depend on established
newspapers and magazines to deem if they were worthy of coverage.
Not any more.
Social media has opened up a whole new vista, and food bloggers
once considered lowly outliers are now feverishly feted by
restaurants ever-willing to barter a free meal for a good word in
cyberspace.
Anyone with a smartphone is now bombarded with Instagram posts of
food, blogger reviews as well as those by conventional media - and
there's no way of filtering the legitimacy of one from another.
Hosted meals are either not mentioned at all, or in fine print at
the end of the review.
Restaurants with the means to host multiple media will always have
the edge over smaller, indie restaurants without such budgets. Is
it a case of sour grapes among industry observers or does this
point to fissures that could lead to more serious issues later
on?
Welcome to the new world
In an ideal situation, food writers visit a restaurant incognito,
pay for the meal and then write about it. But not all restaurants
are willing to sit around and wait for that to happen, which is why
the concept of restaurants hosting free meals for journalists is
not new; it is a marketing tool to introduce new menus or concepts
to the media, which are not obliged to provide coverage in
exchange.
Restaurants embrace online media because many bloggers are young
and more likely to cover everything they are invited to. For this
reason, like it or not, social media is here to stay, says Edina
Hong, co-owner of the Emmanuel Stroobant group.
"There is no good or bad about it. Consumers are exposed to digital
content on a daily basis. It is essential for restaurants to see
the importance of social media and include it in their marketing.
Bloggers are good for my casual restaurants because they target the
younger crowd, which prefer modern means of communication."
Restaurateur Beppe de Vito thinks nothing of spending some S$10,000
over the first three months of opening a new eatery, which involves
heavy media entertaining - 12 to 15 writers a month.
"It's always been a big part of our marketing efforts, although the
restaurant and media landscape has changed drastically over the
last five years," he says. "Back then, it was only for the
traditional media; now, every person on the street can be "media",
so long as they have access to the Internet. The frequency of media
entertaining has increased along with it."
But he stops short of paying for reviews, along with the
restaurateurs named here. The fear of missing out is another reason
why F&B operators have latched on to social media.
"There are clients who want so much online coverage that we are
forced to reach out to bloggers," says a public relations
consultant who has her share of horror stories about bloggers who
take advantage of invitations to turn a free meal into a private
party.
"There are also clients who want only social media and not the
traditional press," she adds, estimating that on average, a new
restaurant can host 50 to 60 journalists from across media
platforms.
A veteran PR director from a top hotel here also cites pressure
from management to embrace the new media - "especially if your
bosses (and their wives, children, friends and neighbours) keep
raving about blogs and social media posts about your competitors.
It's 10 times worse if your competitors are mentioned but you're
not. We have to join the crowd or be accused of not doing our
job".
The food-blogging business
How badly do restaurants want to be featured by food bloggers?
Enough to pay four-figure sums for a well-known "influencer" to
mention them on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, it seems.
No longer content to just accept invitations to hosted meals,
bloggers with large followings now charge enough to make for a very
profitable sideline or full-time career.
Brad Lau - also known as Ladyironchef and perhaps the best known
food blogger with 600,000 followers on Instagram alone - declined
to be interviewed for this article, but is known to charge a fee
for showing up at a media tasting and more for an actual
article.
One F&B operator told The Business Times that it paid him
S$3,800 recently to promote its restaurant. It also paid Daniel Ang
of DanielFoodDiary (166,000 Instagram followers) S$2,300; Seth Lui
(9,965 Instagram followers), charges "between S$1,000 and S$10,000"
for advertorials. Maureen Ow, a former journalist who blogs under
the moniker Miss Tam Chiak, keeps her fees under S$2,000.
These so-called A-list bloggers command page views of a million or
more. Derrick Tan of SGFood on Foot, who gets 70,000 page views,
has his fee starting at S$500.
Besides sponsored posts or advertorials, bloggers also make money
from advertising. The more page views one gets, the more money
there is to be made. In Daniel Ang's case, even though he has kept
his day job as a mass communications lecturer, he makes a high
four-figure sum a month from advertising, in addition to sponsored
posts.
Still, even among the blogging community, there is disagreement
over what constitutes professional ethics.
Mr Ang says: "If I did (blogging) full-time, I would find it hard
to be objective. Singapore's food companies are also closely
related, and if you write a bad review about one restaurant, the
likelihood of them being linked to another or a chain is very high.
You don't want to be offending your advertisers, so it's a
sensitive situation."
Aun Koh of food blog Chubby Hubby fame, claims that he does not
accept any invitations for tastings, "because once you do, no
matter what anyone says, you owe them something. There's no such
thing as a free lunch".
Edsmond Cheong of The Chosen Glutton counters: "When I go to a
tasting, if there are more bad things than good things, then I
won't write about it." The 25-year-old University of Sheffield
student goes for two to three tastings a week.
Aaron Nathanael Ho of Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow says: "A lot of new
bloggers don't know how to appreciate food, and can't tell what's
good and what's bad, so it does make you wonder about their
motives. I met a blogger once who didn't even know that egg shells
are sometimes brown; he thought all eggs came out white!"
The part-time NTU tutor accepts one tasting invitation a week and
doesn't shy away from writing negative reviews. "Sometimes the PR
companies don't invite me back for more tastings, but it's okay, I
just go and pay for the meal myself."
Most bloggers label sponsored posts and advertorials as such, but
some don't feel the need to make it unequivocal when they attend
invited tastings.
Derrick Tan says: "I don't usually label the tastings, but I tag
the articles as media invites. I don't think it's that important to
explicitly state it because I know I write objectively."
Ms Ow of Miss Tam Chiak says: "I think we should apply a personal
code of ethics to our work. There are some bloggers who think it's
free food and so they must write something good about the
restaurant."
Mr Ang adds: "It's really a question of ethics. There isn't any
regulation, but at the end of the day, your credibility is at
stake. If your readers don't agree with the majority of opinions
you post, they might stop reading your blog. I think it's a
self-regulating industry in that sense."
Even so, a prominent blogger who declines to be named says the
scene is a cowboy town, where anything goes, and everybody's a
critic. It's a bane to restaurants who have to deal with obscure
bloggers who rant about them online, or threaten to shame them if
their demands are not met.
This article was first published on 24 July,
2015.
