Marketing directors at foodservice operations are developing breakthrough campaigns by asking their most loyal guests and employees to create marketing materials, from broadcast commercials to static art, that reflect how core users see their favorite brands.
From the world’s largest chain outsourcing a Web series to film students, to independent restaurants commissioning branded artwork from skilled users on a crowd-sourcing website, a spirit of collaboration is running through the industry.
Back to school
Subway has had successful TV commercials for years, including its spots starring spokesman Jared Fogle — possibly the longest-running real-customer campaign ever. But for its latest foray into digital marketing, the chain teamed up with the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. Subway and USC partnered for the Subway Fresh Artists program to let the young filmmakers write and produce an original Web series based on the prompt, “Every sandwich tells a story.”
Tony Pace, chief marketing officer of the Subway Franchisee Advertising Fund Trust, said the point was to generate content that could be distributed online and through social media. The brand chose two winning series, which will play on the My Damn Channel website and were screened last month at the South by Southwest conference.
“Production models that have existed probably aren’t as valid going forward when you’re doing stuff you want to generate buzz with,” Pace said. “This was a great way to get content with some affiliation with the Subway brand that could be deployed in different places. It was a stage for emerging filmmakers, and it gave us a chance to see what could generate social-media discussion.”
Putting students in charge of everything made the series an authentic form of entertainment rather than a new platform simply to promote Subway, Pace said.
“[The students] went in some interesting different directions,” he said. “We don’t want to be demanding that the product is facing the camera. So we’re not so much in the old-fashioned world of product placement, but more the current-decade look at things, which is all about brand and message integrations.”
Getting real
Some brands’ marketing departments still prefer to be in charge of their advertising, but they are taking ideas — and casting their commercials — from other departments and the ranks of their guests.
Domino’s Pizza had one of the most successful campaigns of last year, filming the brand’s executives, employees and customers discussing its reformulated pizza in a documentary-style format.
Carino’s Italian ran a holiday commercial that was conceived of after a server suggested an idea to the chain’s director of marketing. Carino’s liked the results of the commercial so much that it is sponsoring a contest among its 4,000 servers and hourly staff members to develop another one.
Jennifer Legel, brand marketing associate for Captain D’s Seafood Kitchen, said the quick-service brand already had incorporated real people into its advertising, splicing clips of laughing babies and happy people into its TV commercials featuring food shots and high production values. But Captain D’s wanted to move away from using random people on YouTube and toward content from its core customers.
“We wanted to take it a step further and interact with our guests and get engagement about what [Captain D’s] means to them,” Legel said.
The chain’s Happiness in Every Bite contest, supported by the www.happytaste.com microsite, lets customers upload their own videos of happy times to be used in upcoming Captain D’s commercials. Legel said the future spots’ formats likely would mimic the current commercial for the Double Dozen Shrimp combo: food shots, video of happy people, and a voice-over saying, “Yeah, it’s like that.”
The contest site went live the first week in March, and the partially user-generated commercials could start airing as soon as early April and last through the end of the year, Legel said. Customers aren’t given any incentive to upload their clips beyond possibly being on TV.
Legel said requesting videos from customers has had the same streamlining effect on the research-and-development process as listening to guests through social media.
“From a research perspective, we’ll get truer answers from our guests when we’re in these nontraditional realms than when we’re in focus-group settings and they feel put on the spot,” Legel said. “I don’t know if there’s any monetary savings there, but there is the benefit of getting down to what our customers truly want.”
Drawing fans in
Still more restaurants are getting outside contributions for artwork and collateral branding materials. CrowdSPRING, an online crowd-sourcing marketplace, has contracted restaurant design work such as the new logo at Beehive Pizza in Harbor, Maine, and the chicken wing bucket for packaging supplier Westgate Products.
Quick-service chain Pita Pit turned to its customers with the Name That Pita contest on Facebook. From March 21-27, fans submitted a new name for the chain’s latest limited-time offer, the Prime Rib and Provolone Pita.
Toppers Pizza held a similar competition last year, in which more than 100 people submitted their ideas for the chain’s next specialty pizza. Toppers’ current marketing contest asks the chain’s fans and employees to try their hand at designing the next car wrap — a decal or paint job for the hood of a car — for its delivery vehicles
“A franchisee purchased a ’74 Mercury Grand Marquis as a delivery vehicle,” said marketing manager Bridget Keeler, “and we thought, ‘What better way to get that boat wrapped?’”
Toppers is looking for five to seven entries from which to choose, and may ask its guests to design the next pizza box, Keeler added. The outsourcing effort is more about fan engagement than bottom-line savings.
“The cost savings would be minimal because the designer would have to work with our agency to retain consistency across our branding and online-ordering platforms,” she said. “We just want our fans to tell us how they perceive us, and this is a great chance.”
Contact Mark Brandau at mark.brandau@penton.com.
