Vanity Fair recently published an article on Julia Child five years after her death and approaching the eve of the new movie “Julie and Julia.” Now I must admit that while I know the name and to some extent the character, Julia is a little bit before my time. As I read this article, I realized what a feat Julia accomplished having successfully translated French cooking into an American masterpiece.
Born to a wealthy American family, Julia ended up in France through life choices and happenstance. It was there that she discovered her love for French cuisine and wanted to share that love with the United States. To do this, she not only had to literally translate the recipes to use American ingredients and measurements, but also had to construct the guide in a way that worked in an American kitchen. Julia nailed something that both anthropologists and marketers strive to achieve – authenticity.
Julia was a true Anthropologist. While she didn’t have the degree, she did exactly what anthropologists do. It was her love for French cooking that drove her to study the cuisine to a near native level. She worked tirelessly to construct an inside-out view of the food and culture that is such an integral part of France, using participant observations and many of the other tenets of ethnography. Then she had to work backwards to deconstruct all of the elements she had learned and use her native understanding of her audience to authentically translate this in a way that was culturally relevant in the United States. Through this process she wrote her ethnography in the form of a cookbook.
The authenticity of this ethnography was proven through the marketing success the book achieved. Selling over 600,000 copies by 1969 (a huge accomplishment for the 1960s) Julia achieved something that many had failed at before. The point here is that authenticity goes a long way when you are trying to sell something. Whether it is cookbooks, bottles of wine, or children’s toys this remains the same: we should all strive to be anthropologists in our own right. Having an authentic offering positioned in a meaningful way for your audience is the foundation for success for anthropologists, marketers and world-class chefs alike.
2 comments:
Regarding Julia Child's authenticity, there are two possible meanings of authenticity, but you only touched on one. I agree that one of the elements contributing to her success is the authenticity with which she approached French cuisine and the meticulous translations of both the literal and the contextual aspects of the recipes. Cooking is less like chemistry and more like language. It's also a lot like chemistry, as many molecular gastronomy fans will attest. But food is about culture, community, and communication, too. That's where Child's anthropological authenticity comes in to play, which you noted.
But equally important was Julia Child's personal authenticity, the genuineness of her personality and character, her manner and style. She was an ambassador and a translator, and in some ways a Prometheus, bringing the hard to reach French cuisine into American homes. Not just anyone can do that, regardless of how authentic her approach to understanding and translating French food and food culture was. Being a woman in the man’s world of French food, being the jolly character she was, self-effacing with a sense of humor, and a tolerance for flexibility, creativity and mistakes and accidents in the kitchen made her an authentic human being. It made it easy to relate to her and identify with her, and made people think, “If she can cook this fancy French food, so can I.”
Julia Child combined both of those authentic ingredients, which made her so successful. Good post!
I absolutely agree with you. When you look at Julia as a whole, beyond the success of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, it was about how she carried authenticity into everything she did.
This furthers the conversation within marketing to say that it's not just about understanding the target, the product, and how it culturally aligns, but it's also in authentic delivery. Without that, there won't be much success.
It means that research types like myself and the people who build the strategy off of the research have to continue to integrate the creatives who actually develop the content that will be used to sell whatever it is that we are selling.
Thanks for the additional fodder!
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