The Key to Building Buzz in Marketing with Milo Frank, Senior Director of Marketing at H Wood Group | Ep. 427

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0:25Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests, stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the f*** up. We are back with another episode of the Marketing Millennials Podcast. And today I have Milo Frank. He's the Senior Director of Marketing of the H Group. And if you don't know the H Group, they are one of the most popular restaurant groups out there. They have restaurants like Delilah. If you've been in L.A., if you've been in Miami, you know what that is.

1:17The Nice Guy and so many more. And I'm excited to talk to Milo about restaurants and marketing and all that good stuff. So welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me, Daniel. I want to get a little bit of how you got into the H Group and restaurant industry.

1:35Milo Frank:Yeah, so I grew up in Santa Monica, California, very close to our headquarters and, you know, where we're centralized now. But back then, HWIT only had really three concepts. This is 2014. So let's see, I'm at college at Cal Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and I'm about to graduate. And I meet with John and Brian, who are the founders. And, you know, I said, hey, I'm a local kid. I'm in college. I have no idea what I want to do with my life. And I'd love to be a part of what you're doing. And I lived at home at this time. and I lived with my mom and she was battling stage four cancer. And, you know, so the struggles of the college life, as we all know, but with a lot greater responsibilities.

2:28Milo Frank:And John and Brian basically brought me on at what was their first venue, really, called Shore Bar. This was their first true management operations venue. And it was the only venue West Side at the time. and it was in my hometown. And funny enough, my business teacher in high school, his son was actually running Shorebar at the time. And so they had me come in and really I knew nothing. I was clueless about the nightlife and hospitality world. And they said, hey, do you want to come in on a couple nights and host some of your friends and some local great Santa Monica people? And I said, absolutely.

3:07Milo Frank:And so I did that for a few weeks and I graduate college. and the day after, you know, my mom passes from cancer. And she's really the one that taught me a lot of the business acumen. She was a single mom. She ran her own business, a private fitness trainer. And for years, she taught me how to handle clients, how to be good with people, how to manage my finances, which is a big one for college kids, right? And so all the things that my mom taught me really translated without me even knowing it. So obviously my life is kind of upside down at this time. And, but through that, that summer and, and all, you know, I hosted some groups at Shore Bar and tried to learn the ins and outs as much as I could.

3:55Milo Frank:And, you know, for six months I threw parties there and had performances and friends who were up and coming artists wanted to play there. And, you know, six months down the line, I kept walking into John's office and I kept texting him And I kept saying, hey, you know, what can I do? How can I be a part of this? And at some point, my business teacher's son, as I mentioned, he was leaving Shore Bar to go work in VC. And they brought me on full time. And so Shore Bar is what was, we sold it a few years ago, but a fantastic dive bar in Santa Monica. A true local spot next to one of the most reputable restaurants in LA.

4:35Milo Frank:so you get celebs you get locals you get people coming from out of town and this was really my first uh introduction into nightlife and and hospitality right is um started off with just running our private members lounge upstairs and then moved on to doing everything from the door to booking the djs to bringing in partnerships private events um it was really like the full array and kind of taught me, taught me everything from the operations side to the handholding VIP side, dealing with talent, you know, all tied in at Shorebar and really gave me a lot of tools that, that I use today and that we use today as a company.

5:18First of all, that's great. I didn't know you, you all own Shorebar. Cause I, me and my wife, we, she's from LA and I grew up, I, I, I worked in LA for like eight years. because I'm from San Diego and Shore Bar was like the place to go. Shore Bar, Bungalow, all those, the West Side spots because that's where everybody can go on the West Side if they lived on the West Side. So totally remember that. So like the H Wood Group built its whole identity in LA. So I just wanted to know like when you decide to take that somewhere completely different like Dallas or Cleveland, And what's the first question you have to answer?

6:01Milo Frank:We have to know our crowd wherever we go, right? We have to know our clientele. That's the most important thing is who are you speaking to? What do they want, right? It's easy for us to say we love this menu at this restaurant, this dish, this band. But what is it that people truly want in, yeah, a city like Dallas, for instance, right? Which is much different than LA. And those are the questions that we have to answer, that we have to figure out. And we come into these things a lot of times not knowing, right? We have to rely on the locals to tell us what we should be doing. We rely heavily on our PR teams in the local cities, but it's important to hear from the people who are going out frequently or are restaurateurs or are regular diners.

6:52Milo Frank:And that's kind of how we approach it. I mean, like, for example, like Dallas, they're bringing in a lot of restaurant groups there, like Carbone came there and like Dave Gruntman's group came out there. So a bunch of it's basically becoming like a like a mini Dubai with all like, like in the heat out there, which is kind of funny. And then like New York is like one of the most competitive markets. And I know you're, you're bringing things there. um so how do you figure out like whether a city actually wants what you're selling like the product you're trying to deliver like what how do you figure out what they want that they actually want this product so you know when we're approaching a market we want to see not only where our competitors are standing how they approach the that specific terrain but kind of how we fit into their story, right?

7:46Milo Frank:How does Delilah play into the Dallas story? Um, and Dallas is a very opulent, um, very, they're super excited to go out, right? Everybody's dressed to the nines. Um, they, they're a little bit different and unique, but it's also a community there. Right. And so, uh, word of mouth is key in a city like Dallas. Um, you know, when we opened, We wanted to make sure that we had the right people and the right operators and the right buzz ahead of time. And a big part of that is sort of our marketing plan, our rollout strategy to a city like Dallas. But how we pick it is based on where we feel we are and where we feel the city is too.

8:35Milo Frank:And there have been a lot of cities where we've been all in. And then all of a sudden we say, hey, you know what? we're going to pause on that for a few years and wait until the moment's right until the venue's perfect because you also don't want to go into a city and put your venue in the wrong location right you don't want to have um a place that's sort of like a dead end that nobody really goes anymore but but for us you know when we went into dallas we saw okay cool well the design district is really kind of next up as you mentioned there's carbone is down the street from us right and and Ketch.

9:09Milo Frank:And then you have Nick and Sam's and you have the Evelyn and Mr. Charles. And a lot of these are now Staples institutions in Dallas. And they're from Dallas. They're Dallas operators. And we're kind of the new kids on the block. So it's fun. We're really learning a lot about the market, but Dallas as a city has embraced us with open arms. It's been such a fantastic opening. um we're really excited to be there and we're actually looking at a couple new locations to open there as well yeah i mean i have a question about that like for like location because you kind of told us where the location is but when you're scouting locations what goes on the checklist of like this is the location i want our restaurant or our club to be a part of yeah it's really case by case.

10:00Milo Frank:You know, with our new venue in New York coming, for instance, it's the most walking traffic possible, right? We have a great place that's right next to, like I said, you know, a bunch of our competitors will be in the area. And what we look for is really a venue that makes sense for us, but also makes sense for, okay, is it commutable? Is it easy to get there? Is it easy to get dropped off there? What else is happening around the venue? Is there noise, right? And where is our crowd that we're aiming for? Where are they typically going, you know, is what we want to see. So there's a lot of components.

10:41Milo Frank:Our business development team does a fantastic job going out and looking at endless locations all over the world now. and it's we really you know what we do is our business development team goes out and they say hey we have these options and we all huddle and we say okay what do we all think is the best best place for Delilah to land or the best place for nice guy to be that might maybe it compliments Delilah right maybe when we have nice guy and Delilah in the same city that there's a reason for that. They're so close to each other, you know? So it, you know, it comes down to right timing, right place, right location and taking a chance.

11:25It's always, it's always a risk. Yeah. I mean, it does make sense because like a place like New York, you have to pick the right place that comes up. And also New York is just like one of those unique U.S. cities where it's walkable. It also, you have to pick up a town where it's like, like you said, easy to get to, but a lot of your crowds there. And so it's, and it's in meatpacking, right? So meatpacking is like really like, I would say one of the like up and coming trendy areas in New York right now. I mean, it's always been a top of that, but it has like catch and stuff like that. So So it totally makes sense how that was the decision to be made.

12:10I also want to go into also how does the, like LA, you could probably make any call and you'll get a favor because you're so well-known in LA. Your group's so well-known in LA. But like talking about like how Dallas welcomed you all with welcome arms, How do you build the hype in the room on opening night when you didn't have those like the as strong as connections as LA?

12:43Milo Frank:So from the marketing side, there's a bunch of angles to HWID and what we do. But from the marketing side, you know, a lot of it is in advance ahead of time is a lot of research going in, um, including us taking trips out to that city and identifying, like I said, where our crowd is, um, what the trendy spots are and, and not just that's a, that's a vague term, but you know, where are people going for dinner? Where are people going after dinner? Where are people going to get drinks? Right. Where are people going to the club? Are people dancing there? Like what's, what's motivating people to go to the next place?

13:21Milo Frank:Right. Cause we're not going to get everybody to Delilah all seven nights of the week. But really, we want to find out why are people moving the way they are moving in that city. So a big part for us was going out to Dallas and doing some research where we go to 15 to 20 places in 24 to 48 hours. And we pop in and say hi to the operators and we talk to them. We look at the menus. We do a deep dive on food and beverage. And that's a big part of our prep is really understanding the city, you know? So, so we do, we, we do that extensively, both our marketing team, our operations team, and of course our business development team from the get-go.

14:06Milo Frank:As far as opening the venue, you know, it takes months of planning from a social aspect. You know, I build out the whole strategy. We have to come up with all of our content ahead of time, even when a place is being built, which is very complicated. So, you know, it's, and then aligning marketing with the operations side too, right? Is making sure all of our eggs in the basket to be able to do the photo shoot that you need for the images that you need for press, right? Leading up to the grand opening. Those types of things, it all takes planning and coordination. And definitely when I'm in LA and the venues in Dallas opening it's it's a little trickier but um a big part of what H would does and you know Delilah better than anyone is we're very mysterious right you never really know what's gonna happen who's gonna perform what's gonna come like you just don't know and that's the surprise element that people seem to love right so for our grand openings we never really announce our talent we don't tell anybody who's gonna perform we say a surprise performance and we let them figure it out or be wowed the night of um we have to make sure the right people are there um and delilah is a tricky brand because it is very much our you know our sign at every delilah says no photos please right our marquee sign says nothing to see here it's very hey uh there's something secretive going on inside we don't want to tell you too much but if you come in you'll find out, right?

15:47Milo Frank:And for Delilah, we teeter this line of, okay, well, we want people, when we say no photos, we want people to be there and stay in the moment and enjoy their meal, enjoy their experience. We want them to be present more than separate of, hey, don't take photos. It's more of put your phone down, put it on silent, be here with your people. And that's what we aim for at the same time when we're doing an opening we do have to use the social media component in a few different ways right and you know social has been our strongest um uh channel as far as communicating for the last 15 years um and we tell people something but we don't tell them too much, right?

16:35Milo Frank:We want to keep them kind of guessing and wondering. But a big component is social is people posting and posting their, you know, grand opening invite or what it may be for that specific location and building word of mouth. That's what we truly rely on. That's what we believe in. I think it's more powerful than anything is people saying what their opinion is on a location on an experience on a party um but that's that's really how we build the buzz in a new city is okay something's coming uh i'm seeing peaks of it on social i got an email about it i don't really know but i'm curious yeah i mean it sounds very like old hollywood old la party scene where things were secretives in the club, where things weren't, you were there to have fun.

17:35There wasn't cameras. It wasn't, but people wanted to be there because they knew they weren't going to get their photo taken, which is, I'm guessing a vibe you're trying to go for the old Hollywood style.

17:47Milo Frank:Yeah, it's so funny you say that. My grandmother, who just turned 90, she tells me endless stories about nightlife in Los Angeles and New York, right? And there's a famous club called the Copacabana Club in New York City. And her favorite element of it was that there was a girl walking around every night with a, what was a Polaroid camera. And she snapped a photo of you. And before you left, you take that photo home. And that image, what, you know, we have photo booths today and we have photographers everywhere. But that image was really how you remembered that one night was like a true moment in time.

18:22Milo Frank:And I just love that. I think that that's really the, that's the era that I kind of wish I grew up in of the, you know, no phones and true word of mouth of just people enjoying and then saying to their friends, hey, this is the best place you can go on Saturday night. I wanted to also, because I know you make the restaurant scene, the opening, but I know you've also thrown parties at Coachella, the Super Bowl. How do those cultural moments translate into actual foot traffic for the restaurants? Yeah. So separate of our 16 venues, H. Wood has done a fantastic job activating and showing up at these cultural moments all over the world.

19:05Milo Frank:Right. Everything from Super Bowl to NBA All-Star Weekend, Coachella. We do everything. We do the after party for Amphar at Hotel Du Cap every year. Paris Men's Fashion Week, New York Fashion Week, all the F1 events. we really make it a point to show up in these cultural moments and especially in markets that we don't exist at all times right so coachella is such an interesting one right you see all the brand marketing and all the social marketing and and this is all kind of like taken over what was like just a great music festival um but for us it's about brand awareness it's about oh delilah showed up there and we've seen them before but we don't really know what they're gonna do you know and and we keep people kind of on like a little bit of a cliffhanger like what is hwood gonna do this year so we started off doing the bootsy bellows mcdonald's party um in 20 i want to say 2013 it was right before i started and bootsy bellows was our premier nightclub in los angeles And we partnered with McDonald's and did a great, you know, it was gourmet McDonald's food with a ball pit and activations and Post Malone sang White Iverson for their first time.

20:25Milo Frank:It was really like that kind of thing, right? Where now it's sort of nostalgic for people. Now it's almost like, oh, wow, like, were you at that party 10 years ago when you saw so-and-so? But, you know, now, for instance, this year, we activated with 818 Tequila. we had a whole Delilah space and sort of like a VIP section, if you will. And it had our cocktails, it had our signage, and it was a great moment for us culturally, right? And 818 did a fantastic job, our friends over there, with all the different brands and placement and food activations. But, you know, Delilah kind of had this sort of mystery around it like oh what's happening in that VIP space and that's where we thrive not only with Coachella but but with all of our events and and they're all different right with something like F1 in Miami we just did a whole weekend takeover at Delilah Miami we had four different artists performing Thursday through Sunday and you know same thing with Delilah in Las Vegas this last year we had my friend John Mayer perform and it was kind of shocking for everybody again it was like that surprise thing.

21:40Milo Frank:No one really knew it was not announced and people were not expecting, you know, John Mayer and F1 to go hand in hand, but here we are. Right. And, um, the moment went viral, uh, one of the best performing videos for, for Wynn and Delilah Las Vegas. And those types of moments are why, you know, we kind of remain in that cultural relevance. These, these, you never know what you might see. I would say that. And I think your clientele thrive on access, um, and being at the place that nobody like has things that nobody has access to like, Oh, I got to see a private John Mayer concert at F1 where, and then add like hotel do cap.

22:26Like that's everybody, like everybody who knows these are all like we're all like wealthy clientele or hanging out they want access they want that invite how do i get the invite and if you keep it if you tell someone up front what's happening they might back out but if you don't give them the whole story then they have to show up to see what is and if they don't they're going to get major fomo um like they're so right FOMO is the the key to it all right FOMO especially with that crowd which is the funniest thing is like that crowd has access to every like so many things but they they want to be able to say I was at a private John Mayer concert and I was at Delilah at this time with all these people um who wanted yeah and now now what you're seeing is a lot of these um fortune

23:19Milo Frank:500 companies are really leaning into the experience aspect, right? This experiential aspect of, hey, I can be on the Ritz-Carlton boat in the south of France for a week and go from Cannes to Saint-Tropez to Monaco. That's an experience, right? Or even this summer, we're doing a pop-up with Chase, Chase Sapphire Reserve. We're doing a Delilah pop-up in Montauk, right? We did it last year and we're doing the same this year for two weeks. We book talent, we do, and a true restaurant experience that's not there normally, but people, people want that. They want to do something that kind of hasn't been done yet, right?

24:04Milo Frank:Or something that's sort of this moment in time where you can look back and say, Hey, like I was there for that one weekend in Montauk. And, and those are the special moments for people is, you know, and that's what we work on is how can we make something a new experience, right? How can we hit your emotions in a different way so that you say, oh, I've been to Delilah LA. I've been to Delilah Vegas, but Delilah Montauk, this, I was not expecting this, you know? What is the seeding process of like, like, how do you see the right people at the right time? Like, do you have, do you have a PR person working on that?

24:43Do you have a list that you know that, okay, these people will probably be in Montauk at that time? We have that. Or do you have like Friends of Delilah kind of program where you know like these are the people who know people that if they're in the room, they're going to get the right people in the room? If your boss has ever said who approved this copy because they signed off on it a month ago, you might need some ops help. If your campaigns get delayed because no one can find the brief, the assets, or the approvals, you definitely do. Wrike kills the disconnects. It's a smart work management platform that automates the chaos for the whole team in one place.

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25:45Milo Frank:it's all of that all that you just said it's it's it's a combination of things right our pr team who has great experience in new york um with the right crowd us having the right relationships with the new york clientele and then also the other correct operators if we are activating in this other space, right? They have great people who come all summer too. So Montauk is a very niche thing, for instance. So during the summer, people go there for the weekend, they come back to the city or they stay out there all summer, stay there for a month. But we don't know. We don't know everybody. We don't have all the answers.

26:27Milo Frank:So what we do do is heavily rely on our friends, right? And fortunately, we've been doing this a long time. We have great relationships. We have friends who say, hey, we really suggest you have this person come in and do some social content around the pop-up or we have the right person host or we have the right person to perform. But you also have to be very mindful of who your crowd is for this, right? So tying into that is as we book talent, who's the right talent here? Is it the person that we normally book in LA or Miami? Probably not. So that's a big component is like, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier is who is our exact crowd and demographic in this city, right?

27:17Milo Frank:And everybody kind of helps on that. We don't, it's not just us, but yes, our PR team, our social media team suggests great people to work with. And then, you know, a company like Chase, who's our partner on Montauk, they really help us with, okay uh we want to make this a truly exclusive experience for our sapphire reserve members and we come up with fun unique ways to do that right but knowing that these are all great people how can we make this a little different so did that answer your question yeah and i i want to add on to that because like for example montauk let's say like for example the one like dallas delilah has like pays a little bit like homage to like Dallas with like a cigar porch like and there's like localization menu items like how do you how do you think about those type of things or like what what are the things I'm going to like keep tried and true of Delilah at this location and what are some things I'm going to like just localize make sure that it feels very Dallas Texas or very New York City or very LA because you wanted to also feel like have that that vibe that it's like an an underground club at or like roaring 20s type vibe at in that city so how do you how do you think about those like localization marketing tactics localization menu items I know you're not fully involved in that but you're part of like the like thought processes of a lot of these things?

28:50Yeah.

28:50Milo Frank:Food and beverage marketing is, is a key for me specifically. Um, so take Delilah, for instance, we have what's called an evergreen menu of seven to 10 dishes that remain on every Delilah menu, right? LA, Vegas, Miami, Dallas, they have the same key dishes. So, you know, everybody knows our chicken tenders are world famous. We do great pigs in a blanket, tuna tartare. We have our macaroni and cheese grat is fantastic. My favorite personally. These items live on every menu because we've just seen that people are just so attracted to them, right? And they translate both for dinner, for a late night menu, which is great for, you know, our athletes who come in after the game or for our musicians who come in after a performance.

29:40Milo Frank:um we're also a supper club in that way right where we do food late night um so that's a really important part now to your point when we you know in a city like dallas or in a city like miami we do want to make sure we do have some uh some signature items that are for that menu specifically that we can market just to that demo um you know we have cubano fritters in miami which i order every time. Our espresso martini in Miami particularly is absolutely fantastic. It uses locally sourced beans. But those types of things are important in telling the story, right? And we do want our, you know, Dallas especially, we do want our community involved in this.