The FARANG Speaks 2 Much (tfs2m)

The old addage in marketing is any press is good press - providing they spell your name right. What if they don’t spell your name right? Well - in the age of the internet you send them email and hope for the best. Following is the tale of The Metro Magazine(Bangkok) and their quest for highlightinging the best burger of Bangkok - which of course involves The Big Mango Bar since we are the purveyors of the best burger in Bangkok. I may have got the spelling wrong on the magazine but hey - u get the drift. It is a rather long post but hopefully u will all enjoy it!

A few months back a few guys came in from Bangkok Magazine Metro to try out our burger and see if we were worthy of inclusion into the May 06 issue which would be highlighting the best burgers in Bangkok. We were thrilled to be involved and hoped that our supreme offering to the Meat Gods would prove worthy enough for a magazine with such distinction. However we started to get a little worried when the reviewers asked us very little about our bar or the burger and even went so far as to tell us that upon arriving at our bar they were a little burger’d out. What? How can a reviewer properly taste a burger when they have already overindulged? Seems a little weird. Anyway - we served them our best and hoped we would get a fair shake.

May rolls around and we rush out to the local magazine place and pick up the Metro in Bangkok Magazine and look for the review. We made it. We were estatic to say the least but of course we had not read it yet but just saw our name in it - but wait, they spelled the name wrong. They called us Mango Bar. Nice. On top of that we were rated 1.5 burgers out of a possible 5 burgers. Ouch. This is what they said:

Mango Bar - Cheeseburger

2nd Flr, Nana Plaza, Sukhunvit soi 4

Let’s stop here folks. The bar is called The Big Mango Bar and we are on Sukhumvit soi 4. Seems the folks at bangkok le Metro magazine not only have gotten the name wrong but also forgot how to spell Sukhumvit - one of the most popular streets in Bangkok. Okay - on to the review:

“Needless to say most people come to Nana Plaza for another type of meat. Many people recommended this place along withe Nana burger (the stall at the entry to the plaza) but we had to narrow it down. And after tasting the burger we are convinced that the scenery and a gut full of alcohol must be the reason that this place has such a good reputation. The burger has too much cheese and is squashed into a tiny bun that would never soak up the fat oozing out of the meat. The taste was satisfactory but our mouths felt like we’d drunk directly from an oil bottle. We recommend going to the Nana burger boy instead.

Comes with crunchy french fries.”

Ouch. What can I say? How is it that we are compared to the Nana burger boy when the Nana burger boy is not part of the said review? Why the dig on people who visit nana Plaza? We tried to be happy about being included until we talked to another restaurant owner who was in the review(did well) and told us that he totally schmoozed the reviewers and was solicited for advertising in the May issue which he of course chose to do. We felt schmoozing was not the right thing to do and it seems that since we are in Nana Plaza we are not offered the chance to advertise in Bangkok the Metro Magazine. Seems a little odd to not offer us a chance to advertise as well as grant us such a poor review. On top of the poor review we notice that there were no pictures of our burger either - seems kind of weird given there were pictures of all the other fare. Well. We got a little peeved over all this and Nick, fearless co-owner of The Big Mango Bar and purveyor of truth, decided to send the editor of In Metro Bangok magazine an email.

On the left u can see a thumbnail picture. Just click on it to open it up full screen to read the page we scanned from the July issue of metro in which the email from Nick is printed and some comments from the editor. However they did not print the whole email so here is the paragraph they seemed to have left out:

“Another interesting fact from Robb is that he was called a week after
the review by your Advertising department to advertise in your
magazine. Interesting, one might think that some restaurants were
favored over others based on their advertising revenue potential for
Metro. We were never called by your Advertising team. Shame, Shame.”

This whole advertising situation smells a little fishy. Let’s look at it all another way. Magazine needs ads. Magazine decides to run a feature like - let’s find the best burger in Bangkok. Then after reviewing said burger joints the magazine solicits them for adverstising. In this scenario it would seem that readers really are not getting a fair perception of food when good reviews and ads seem to go hand in hand. Just a thought.

Anyway. A few of our devoted Big Mango Bar burger fans also read the review of our
burger and used the mighty internet to let the Bangkok is the Metro Magazine know just how they felt. Click on the thumbnail to the right to see the printed emails and the editor’s comments. All in all we were pretty well defended and my assumption is that they received more emails than they actually printed in the magazine. Well - we got our free advertising even though the metro boys printed our name wrong and can’t spell Sukhumvit. I was a little heartwarmed this week when a customer came into the bar to order a burger citing his reason for coming by was that he was impressed with how many customers emailed the metro to voice their displeasure with the review which meant to him that the burgers must be worth a visit.

Thanks to all of our customers who did email and thanks to Bangkok Metro:Magazine (I checked the spelling by looking at their official magazine) for printing Nick’s email and our customer’s emails! I never suspected they would but was tickled to see the July issue with all the emails.