Building a Brand One Story At a Time
A few weeks ago, I attended a professional women’s conference sponsored by a local chamber of commerce. Celebrated chef Gale Gand was the keynote luncheon speaker, which is what I was most interested in. Actually, I wanted to meet her and that happened as well. And now I have a signed copy of one of her fabulous books (Gale Gand’s Brunch! 100 Fantastic Recipes for the Weekend’s Best Meal) and memories of her equally fabulous presentation.
Why did she leave such an indelible impression? It was the stories she told. In my last post, I talked about the power of storytelling, how universal stories can be, how utterly successful stories can be when it comes to building and promoting your brand.
Since I’ve only heard her speak this one time I can’t really provide a comprehensive analysis of Gale’s brand, but I can tell you I am not surprised in the least that this James Beard Award-winning pastry chef has been wildly successful.
I first learned about Gale in an unlikely place. Years ago, when my son took his first guitar lessons I used to walk around the Village Music Store, a converted house in Deerfield, IL. Sometimes I looked at guitars or the vast collection of sheet music downstairs. Other times, if I were lucky, I’d commandeer one of the empty music rooms upstairs and just read. On one of those earlier visits I noticed several framed articles about an up and coming chef named Gale Gand. It took a few more visits to realize that Gale’s father, Bob Gand, was the music shop’s owner. I loved this demonstration of a proud father and it was fun, of course, to read about a local girl who’d made it.
So fast forward to last week’s keynote and I got to find out even more about Gale’s father and the fact that he was a folksinger. She told us how embarrassing it was as a kid to be the one whose dad wasn’t the insurance salesman or the dentist or the lawyer, but rather the folksinger (which is actually very cool). She shared another tale about the time she was asked, along with some other well-known chefs, to cook for the one and only Julie Child. But this wasn’t someone namedropping. No, in Gale’s telling we were practically in the kitchen with her and Julia.
In another memorable story, Gale described her arrival, letter of acceptance in hand, at a French restaurant (can’t remember if it was actually in Paris, but it was in France). Yes, they’d agreed to take her on, but they were sure that “she” was really a “he.” There must have been some mistake. She persisted and today, of course, she is one of our best pastry chefs not just in Chicago but certainly the world.
Follow me on Twitter @LeslieLevine to find out which one of Gale’s recipes is at the top of my list.
