Capitalize on Your Mishaps

Contributed by Bryce Ward

This past week a high-dollar restaurant in Manchester, England called Hawksmoor accidentally served a $5,700 bottle of wine to a customer who, presumably, ordered a much more affordable one. Hawksmoor could’ve easily marked this mishap off as a costly mistake, scolded the employee responsible, and moved forward. Instead, they chose to capitalize off their blunder by utilizing social media. Soon after the incident, the restaurant posted this tweet:

As you can see, this post garnered quite the response on Twitter, receiving upwards of 66,000 likes in only a handful of days. Hawksmoor’s canny marketing decision turned what would have been a ~$5,000 loss into millions of dollars’ worth of marketing presence for their restaurant[1]… needless to say, a pretty good return on their investment.

Hawksmoor’s story is a great lesson for all businesses faced with adversity. Turning to social media to make fun of yourself may not always be the way to go, necessarily, but it’s a great example of how to turn a negative into a positive. Ancient Chinese philosophers used to espouse this approach – instead of deeming something as useless, they would advocate finding use in the (so-called) useless – and it continues to be a useful worldview today.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/17/hawksmoor-restaurant-mistakenly-serves-up-a-5700-bottle-of-wine.html