• by Tanya Gazdik , June 12, 2009

Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que restaurant franchise is rewarding its fans for promoting the restaurant online via its "Quest for the Best Famous Fan" contest.

Ten Famous Fans are creating grassroots Famous Dave's campaigns online. The Famous Fans will compete for prizes by designing their own "Make it Famous" campaigns using various social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr and blogs to generate buzz and content around their experiences with Famous Dave's.

The promotion offers a chance to win prizes including Famous Dave's food for a year, a trip to Famous Dave's BBQ & Blues club in Minneapolis to meet company founder Famous Dave Anderson, or an end-of-summer barbeque feast hosted by Famous Dave himself. The Minneapolis-based company has 176 locations in 38 states.

Famous Fans will be featured on the restaurant's Web site throughout the summer with links to their online campaigns. Weekly challenges, such as "Write a Haiku about the 'Que for Two," will guide online followers of the Famous Fans to compete for prizes themselves. Challenges can be answered as blog posts, Facebook group wall posts, photos on FlickR, YouTube or 12-second video, or any other online way fans can come up with. Winners will be chosen based on creativity.

In connection with the "Quest for the Best Famous Fan" promotion, Famous Dave's has also launched a state-of-the-art rich-Internet application to capture the real-time momentum of the Famous Fans campaign online. The application creates the ability to download Twitter status messages and other social media communications relating to Famous Dave's in real time, showcasing the enthusiasm of Famous Dave's fans nationwide on the company's website. The application is running at www.famousdaves.com/famous-fans/. It includes a box with recent tweets such as "Just had Famous Dave's for the first time --definitely won't be my last" - jbuti, 6/11/2009 at 8:16:10 PM Eastern Time or "En route to famous daves." - Lonny31790, 6/11/2009 at 7:18:12 PM Eastern Time or "Leftover famous daves ribs and brisket for dinner. yuuuuuuummm." - angelawrites, 6/11/2009 at 6:47:18 PM Eastern Time.

"We're so flattered by the many online commentators who are out there creating a buzz for Famous Dave's that we wanted to meet some of the more active fans and find a way to thank them," said Christopher O'Donnell, president and CEO of Famous Dave's, in a statement.

One Famous Fan currently featured on the Web site is Josh H. of Cape Coral, Fla., whom the company found tweeting on Twitter. He has gone on to create a channel dedicated to Famous Dave's in addition to a MySpace page dedicated to the restaurant. The Web site features links to follow Josh on Twitter, become a friend on MySpace, or read his blog.