Watching online videos of people dancing awkwardly to silly songs is one of America’s favorite ways to waste time. But Atlanta-based Moe’s Southwest Grill turned that pointless pastime into a big moneymaker with its second-annual Dance Your Queso Off contest.
The contest asked fans to upload to the www.ilovequeso.com microsite videos of themselves expressing their love for Moe’s queso appetizer — a melted white-cheese dip — through interpretive dance. Videos garnered 104,000 votes from the beginning of June through July 24. All of the video watching promoted the fast-casual chain’s Free Queso Day promotion, which took place systemwide June 20.
Brand officials said the user-generated video contest was popular because more people are getting comfortable filming their own videos and sharing. But Moe’s also thinks the real star of the promotion was the queso.
“In my mind, it was definitely the queso,” said Brett Campbell, director of marketing for Moe’s, which has 420 locations in 32 states. “Guests tell us all the time how passionate they are for that product. It’s a big differentiator for us.”
It also turned out to be a big traffic driver. The first dance contest in 2010 spurred a 50-percent rise in traffic compared with a year earlier for the first Free Queso Day, and this year’s promotion increased guest counts an additional 23 percent on top of that comp for the daylong giveaway.
Campbell could not quantify the lift in sales for this year’s Free Queso Day, but he did note that Moe’s got very satisfying returns on the marketing spend and food cost for the free queso, because entrées and drinks weren’t discounted.
“That’s the beauty: Queso is a side or a sharing product,” Campbell said. “It’s a strong enough call to action that it drives people in, but they actually purchase their burrito and drink.”
Play it again, Moe’s
Moe’s said it made many improvements this year from the inaugural Dance Your Queso Off contest of 2010, but the brand did keep one key element from the previous year. The original song by Christiano Covino, who won 2010’s user-generated video contest, was the soundtrack to every dance video entered in this year’s competition.
“That gives users from 2010 a chance to see Dance Your Queso Off as more than a one-time show,” Campbell said.
However, Moe’s switched from merely counting the votes for the most popular videos to a tournament-style face-off format, where users would select which of two videos would move on to later rounds. Moe’s recorded improvement in all the contest’s measurable results, Campbell said. Submissions rose from 96 in 2010 to 132 in 2011. Video views increased from 83,000 to 636,000, and Facebook shares rose from 572 to 2,900.
While the 2010 contest was promoted mostly with in-store signage and word-of-mouth, this year’s promotion was the touchstone for a major digital-marketing push for Moe’s.
“After last year’s learnings, we definitely knew that we would get the engagement from our consumers,” Campbell said. “They’re willing to interact, so how do we beef this up? We spent close to $150,000 on a digital plan and bought space on ad networks for mobile and social [media]. We had a bigger incentive this year, going from $1,000 to $10,000.”
The competition angle — pitting videos against one another — encouraged visitors to the site to watch 10 to 20 in a row, added Alberto Pages, senior director of business development for Moe’s marketing agency, Atlanta-based Brandmovers. Moe’s also made the microsite more social this time, incorporating Facebook “like” buttons and Twitter share buttons for each video, as well as a dedicated comment stream for each entry.
The X factor
Campbell reiterated that queso was the ideal product upon which to base the contest and the new marketing push because it’s popular among core guests and also builds up the chain’s average check.
“The whole centerpiece of the promotion was how to leverage our signature product and drive buzz around it,” Campbell said. “All this buildup gets that energy around the product.”
Moe’s also was reasonably confident that guests would be on board with a user-generated video contest because it matches the kind of in-store dialogue for which the chain strives, he added.
“As for user-generated content, your brand has to really be the type of brand to determine [whether the tactic is appropriate],” Campbell said. “With us, the interaction we get on our Facebook page and in our stores, they love to interact with us. When guests walk in the door, we scream, ‘Welcome to Moe’s!’ So within our brand, yes, we could ask them to participate in something, and it would be successful.”
Interaction is great, Pages of Brandmovers said, but it also must have an element that drives traffic and ultimately lifts sales.
“Any idea can be a good idea, but if you don’t put a plan in place that monetizes the entertainment value, there isn’t a whole lot of point in doing it,” Pages said. “The video contest encouraged customers to engage, then we integrated other elements like the digital-ad buy, callouts in the store and social media to broaden awareness and put more butts in seats [for Free Queso Day].”
Contact Mark Brandau at mark.brandau@penton.com.
