The three largest casual-dining brands recently found there’s more than one way to appeal to parents.
Over the past few weeks, Applebee’s, Chili’s and T.G.I. Friday’s each improved their “buzz scores” among adults with children younger than 18 by using different methods, according to consumer research firm YouGov BrandIndex.
The research firm calculates that brand perception metric by surveying 5,000 consumers every day and asking, “If you’ve heard anything about this brand lately, was it positive or negative?” BrandIndex then subtracts negative answers from positive answers and gets a score for each company ranging from negative 100 to positive 100.
The 1,571-unit Chili’s distributed a coupon nationwide for a free kids’ meal with the purchase of an adult entrée May 10, and its buzz score among adults with children under 18 rose from 14.7 that day to a high of 33 on May 20.
The 2,011-unit Applebee’s chain rolled out a “Girls Night Out” promotion, which made customizable invitations on Facebook available to its fans, on May 9 when its buzz score among parents was 14.8, and its buzz score shot to a high of 31.1 on May 23.
T.G.I. Friday’s, which has more than 900 restaurants, has not run a specific offer focused on kids or adults in the same period, but it’s buzz scores did improve, rising from 12.1 the day Chili’s ran its kids-eat-free coupon to a high of 28.3 on May 19. During that time, however, theatrical trailers debuted for the new kids’ movie “Zookeeper,” in which a talking gorilla asks his human zookeeper whether T.G.I. Friday’s is as amazing as it sounds. The chain’s logo is seen in the final frame of the trailer as the zookeeper and the gorilla drive up to the restaurant.
The buzz score among parents for the casual-dining sector as a whole climbed from 6.2 on May 10 to 11.3 on May 23.
Ted Marzilli, senior vice president of New York-based YouGov BrandIndex, said the firm’s data don’t support the idea that a promotion at one chain could lift the buzz scores of its competitors.
“These are all independent things going on to improve awareness, get people in the stores and lift sales,” he said. “I wouldn’t say the data prove that one of these guys running a promo lifts the boats of the others, but it raises the question of whether these advertisements have a residual impact. That’s different from a taste test or another competitive claim, where you’d expect one brand to benefit at the expense of the other.”
Applebee’s promotion for “Girls’ Night Out” possibly could have spurred some dads into babysitting and letting Mom get away for night, Marzilli speculated, but the brand’s buzz scores improved the most among women without children. Still, Applebee’s buzz score improvements were higher than Chili’s and T.G.I. Friday’s when BrandIndex segmented the results among all female respondents.
Marzilli suggested the improvement at all three brands could have resulted from a “Mother’s Day bump,” in addition to the success of their individual marketing moves.
“Mother’s Day of course is a huge restaurant day,” he said, “so the fact that people were going into these locations to celebrate may have answered positively in the following weeks because their experiences were good ones.”
Contact Mark Brandau at [email protected].
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