Who would have thought that the old lunch truck that traditionally rolled up at construction sites serving mostly greasy fast foods could have evolved into a gourmet fad, adopted by hordes of hungry twitter-addicted truck junkies?

Well, that’s exactly what’s happening across the streets of America.  Apparently a soured economy, coupled with a saturated restaurant market and available social media technologies (as in find where your favorite food truck is located, by following its Twitter feed) has triggered a movable feast.

Trucks rolling in cities carrying anything from grass-fed organic beef (Let’s Be Frank); and desserts from former pastry sous chef at famed Manhattan restaurant Le Cirque, www.desserttruck.com; crunchy coating on fried chicken, shrimp or avocado at www.mightycone.com; eco-friendly hamburgers, falafel and fish tacos (Green Truck on the Go); architecturally inspired ice cream sandwiches (Coolhaus); tonkatsu burgers on rice patties (Marked 5); sushi rolls (Fishlips Sushi); vegan sausages (the Franken Stand); to all manner of “fusion” tacos (Kogi BBQ, Calbi BBQ, Bool BBQ, Don Chow Tacos).

Some are chef-inspired, such as San Francisco’s www.spenceronthego.com, serving French cuisine by chef Laurent Katgely, who also owns Chez Spencer, an upscale French restaurant. Others serve upscale bistro food cooked in a converted Airstream trailer such as Seattle’s www.skilletstreetfood.com or Cambridge, Mass.’s cloverfoodlab.com which sells only vegetarian items from a truck fueled by fryer grease.

Innovators like Los Angeles’ www.kogibbq.com have propelled a profusion of truck-borne foods.  Whether used only as a marketing ploy – a rolling “billboard” for an existing restaurant such as Border Grill and even corporate behemoths like Taco Bell and Baja Fresh Mexican Grill or for trying to cash in on the trend, or as a cost saving measure (the comparatively low cost of launching a truck as opposed to a restaurant) such as Barbie’s Q,  the popularity of nouveau food trucks cannot be ignored when you consider that some truck borne food companies such as www.kogibbq.com now boast 37,000 followers on Twitter.

There is the case of the owner of a crème brulee cart in San Francisco, who according to an article in the New York Times, July 22 headlined, “Creme Brulee Man Becomes Twitter’s Poster Boy,” started out only to sell to friends his particular delectable version of the dessert, when a single “tweet” appeared about it.  Now he has 5,400 twittering about where the cart will appear next.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “Food trucks may be more than just an emblem of culinary fusion or a clever use of social networking technologies. They may actually herald a significant change in the mobility patterns of young, middle-class urbanites known as “millennials.”

I have always felt that society has a way of righting itself out of need.  Here’s one industry that is keying into today’s mobility phenomenon and its resulting changing habits…

Leave it to the Russians to understand the value of gardening.  For decades the then Soviet Union public-at-large spent their summers in their “dachas” (basic summer cabins with a small plot of land attached) toiling the earth, planting vegetables and most notably, potatoes and cabbage, staples in their diet, to load up the shelves with food that was mostly then pickled, in order to remain edible throughout the harsh Russian winters.  These individual gardens kept a whole population alive and were depended upon for sheer survival.

So it came as no surprise that, during the Obama family’s visit to Russia last week, while President Obama held high level meetings surrounding diplomacy issues, Michelle Obama did her own thing, meeting with a Russian audience that, according to a report by Robin Givhan of the Washington Post, “were more enamored of her gardening skills than of anything else on her résumé,” referring to her recently planted White House vegetable garden.  Apparently a headline on a weekly Russian magazine had a cover line that read, “The Queen of the Fields: Michelle Obama And Her Husband Can Overturn Our Understanding Of America.”  Well, maybe that was a moment of effusive enthusiasm, but it’s clear that the First Lady’s love of gardening resonated with people that understood that, per the article, “tomatoes, can serve as tools for diplomacy.”

Not in the real sense, of course — but still, the gardening “world moment” happily happened and, with it, comes hope of elevating the traditions of American localism, a growing spirit of American environmentalism.

Photo Courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov

The symbolic importance for the American public of an organic garden on the South Lawn of the White House has blossomed in ways no one could have expected. For one thing, it has already spurred many to have home gardens of their own.  For another, just consider the warmth of the coupling of kids, gardens, seeds and a “meeting over the fence” to discuss compost or lettuce, and the sense of old fashioned neighborliness that can be re-ignited.  And then there is the simple economic truth – growing your own vegetables helps constrained budgets.  And how about the word “pride” in just the creation of a garden that flourishes?

OK, altruistic and old fashioned concepts, maybe, but timely in an era where arguably, electronic communications have overtaken live discussions.  A new focus and interest in neighborhood or community gardens could prompt renewed “live” connectivity between people.

I do know first hand the value of it all, for I once walked through the back streets of a string of “dacha” villages in the hot humid days of summer outside Moscow, and found something that felt strangely wonderful.  Throughout the winding dirt street, there was a sense of togetherness among the people — a single shared purpose in prodding the earth into becoming bountiful coupled with a common pride in making it happen.

I believe that Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden can go well beyond simply growing vegetables for White House meals. It can be a trigger for a renewed sense of neighborhood involvement, or a heightened awareness of our roots in our America of 2009.

If you are a retailer in the time of an extended recession, what do you do when you open your doors and ever so few walk in?  Despair for one, panic, hand out pink slips or – innovate.

And that’s just what Best Buy did.  According to a report by Bloomberg news last week, headlined, “Best Buy Uses Twitter to Create Sales, Service Team” the company is first in reaching out to the Twitter community to search out people who really care about their consumer electronics – you know, those who chat about what’s new, what works, what brand has more clarity, where to find it, and so on.

Enter Best Buy’s Twelpforce, on July 19.  A clever play on combined words as in Tw for Twitter, elp, for the second half of help, and force as in sales, Best Buy’s 500 person sales team will engage with consumers by Twittering away, entering into 140-character conversations with those who are consumed with consumer electronics and want to devour as many facts, figures, technical tidbits, cost comparisons and whatever else anybody wants to know about consumer electronics.  And guess who will be their “sidekick”…

So, engage first, sales next.  How clever is that?  It has usually been the other way around as in “buy now, and call us if you need help.”

Considering that all this is innovative, we were curious and took a quick straw poll over the 4th of July weekend, as to whether Best Buy’s “Twelpforce” Use Of Twitter To Create Sales Is Hot Or Not.  We found some surprises.  When asked by age groups, 18-24, 25-34. 35-54, and over 55, it was the youngest group that was 100% not sure whether it was a good use of Twitter.  In contrast, the two middle age groups thought it was good use by an average of 60%.  When asked by gender, women outweighed men as to a positive use of Twitter, by 67% to 56%.  When asked by different job categories, more surprises came up. It turned out that academics, marketing and PR people were 100% not sure whether it was a good use of Twitter, while product and sales people were 100% sure.

It’s clear that the jury is still out.  But you have to hand it to them. It’s that old line, that if buyers don’t come to you, go to them.  Traditionally it’s been about going to them through advertising, promotions and coupons.  But this time around it’s the contemporary way, actually going to where their potential customers hang out, listening to what their “wants” are, and communicating directly one-on-one.

Moreover, it’s a frugal way, for it leverages the downtime of employees in the stores. By tapping the Twitter platform, Best Buy has basically made a “pay forward” move, which should pay off in brand loyalty down the road and translate into sales.   It is also the first, to take the next evolutionary step for how sales and service can meld with Twitter.

Marketers take note…

The article in the July 5, Sunday edition of The New York Times (NYT) titled “Spinning the Web: P.R. in the Silicon Valley,” has the PR world “a-twittering” because it brought to the fore the evolutionary changes in the PR industry on the front page of the business section. How great is that…

Although the article’s focus was on PR and the Silicon Valley, its main point – that capturing attention for clients with mentions in print and on television, or even spotlights on technology Web sites and blogs is no longer enough, cuts across the PR industry.  Accordingly, the PR professional now needs to also “court influential voices on the social Web to endorse new companies, Web sites or gadgets — a transformation that analysts and practitioners say is likely to permanently change the role of P.R. in the business world, and particularly in Silicon Valley.”

Some say, a transformation.  I see it as a “changing of the guards.”  PR has always been about finding the influencer, the person, entity or even the public at large — that can shape the way a company or its news is heard and perceived.  So now the players have changed, and with it, the “tools of the trade” as to how to reach the influencers, but the very premise of PR has not.

Look, it’s not new that with the advent of “citizen journalism,” the lines have blurred between journalists and everyone else.  Nor is it new that the metrics of calculating the number of impressions an article gets, either by estimating a publication’s circulation, article’s column inches or pass-along rate, are now more and more calculated by the number of followers twitters may have tweeted, or the number of re-tweets or clicks on links, as well as traffic from Facebook and other social networks.

The NYT article focused on a publicist whose main purpose as she first set out to be a publicist, was to develop one-on-one relationships with “hundreds of bloggers, writers, pundits and then boasted that her extensive list of “friends” who are on her “who’s who list” is the “value” she offers.

Which reminded me that PR at its core, has always been about relationships. All one has to do is look at the word itself, as in the Relations part, of Public Relations. Years ago there was the case of a PR practitioner whose sole activity was to have breakfast, lunch and dinner six days a week with prospects or clients during which he opened up his then “Rolodex” and became the facilitator for needed connections.  That too was about relationships.

The players and processes have changed and the means with which to spread the word, but building and maintaining a network of contacts, be they traditional media, new media, talent agents, bloggers, twitters, etc. has never been disputed as to its value for clients.

Relationships matter, but content is always “King.”  Relationships should be viewed as a starting point that eases the path for a story to be heard.  But it is always about the story, how it is told to what influencers or decision makers, how it gets spun or socialized and within what context it is presented and viewed. Only then can the relationship hold up and do its part.

The more that changes, the more remains the same…