In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with Anton Nicholas, Managing Partner at ICR.

ICR is an integrated communications firm. Nicholas says, “We do everything from public company investor and public relations to private company consumer public relations and brand public relations. We also do a ton in the transaction support world and crisis communications.” Nicholas is responsible for managing the firm’s consumer corporate and financial communications practice as well as the ICR Lifestyle Lab, ICR’s consumer and brand public relations practice.

Frischling asks Nicholas to share how the dramatic shift away from capital has expanded the focus on marketing and how this is affecting your business and your clients. Nicholas says that 2022 was something they have never seen before, the capital markets were shut, and getting capital for marketing was evaporated.

“So I think what happened was whether you're big or small you realize that you really got to focus on your core business and in particular for restaurants you know that's about trying to attract new and also get existing customers to repeat frequency and I think we've seen a ton of people shift back to those traditional ways to do that,” Nicholas says. He adds, “In today's world with digital in particular, PR tends to be higher ROI because it's less expensive upfront investment than advertising.”

Nicholas shares his thoughts on traditional media verse digital media as well as the trends and how you know people consume data. He says, “I think if you look at the way people consume media today, it's just more broad-based. They still read The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times of the world. They do it digitally probably mostly, but they still read those publications, and those publications still have influence just as much as some commentary blog.”

To hear how media can influence how we consume data as well as consume food, plus get the answers for Tuesday trivia check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.