RSS Feeds
A Grand Slam in the Making
Back at it.
Happy New Year, belatedly.
Apologies to anyone (anyone, anyone?) who missed reading musings here but it's been kind of busy, thankfully.
Interesting things going on in the world though today we'll keep focused on the business of marketing and specifically the idea of connecting with customers. And prospects. And those who will never be either customers or prospects.
For those of you thinking ahead, yes, this is about the Super Bowl, among other things. Oops. I mean the "big game" or hereafter TBG. Sorry NFL.
Throughout the buildup ahead of TBG there was the usual hype about who was breaking what campaign, how many units were sold, how much inventory was available, etc., for as much as $3 million for :30 or $100,000 per second.
The big question after TBG is who really got their money's worth? Or perhaps a bigger and equally relevant question is whether anyone who did or did not get their money's worth even knows whether they did (or not).
Did anyone's advertising cause a conscious change in purchasing behavior, or a behavior at all?
From a sheer production investment, the guys who created the Doritos spot certainly did, much to the dismay and simultaneous celebration of the advertising world. These guys spent $998,000 less than a typical Super Bowl spot and created one as good as anything that ran. Whether it sold any bags of Doritos who knows, but people have at least talked and written about it.
The more interesting spot was Denny's offer of a free Grand Slam breakfast the following Tuesday at any Denny's across the U.S.. They actually tied their TV spot with a promotional offer and an in-store experience to generate trial from prospects, lapsed customers and current customers. Meaning they generated trial, repeat business and yes, some dilution. They still came out ahead.
Denny's hit a literal and figurative Grand Slam, especially relative to any other advertiser in TBG. They got a few million customers into their restaurants yesterday, many of which were not regulars. Hopefully those people were delivered an experience at or above their expectations and they will return.
However, as someone more left-brained than I said, "hope is not a strategy." Ideally -- and we are idealists when it comes to customer marketing - Denny's would have an idea of who those people are and thus be able to gently and relevantly remind them to come back in and pay for a Grand Slam breakfast.
AdAge was being tongue-in-cheek calling Denny's campaign "beginner's luck". We applaud their efforts to make a $3 million ad buy pay back but want to point out that the payback could have been even greater (and more measurable) had they given customers a bounce back offer, a way to opt-in for email, and a clear reason to do so.
So maybe not a total grand slam, but at least they did get around all the bases.
