Red Lobster yesterday said that sales spiked 33% over the previous Super Bowl Sunday in the wake of Beyonce’s “sexually charged” mention of the restaurant in a single
and YouTube video released Saturday prior to her appearance on the half-time show the next day. But that good news was tempered by the hammering the chain took in social media for its delayed, and
then half-baked, response to the more than 300,000 tweets it generated.
“Red Lobster didn't realize Beyonce called out the chain in her song until the chain started trending
on Twitter,” CEO Kim Lopdrup tellsUSA Today’s Hadley
Malcolm in revealing the sales boost that continued through Monday.
“We had nothing to do with the song and had no advance knowledge of it being released,” he says. "We
learned about it by seeing that we were trending as number one on Twitter, which is probably the first time that has ever happened.”
Here’s the “dirty”
version of the “Formation” video on YouTube
“In case you're not exactly sure what this Red Lobster lyric
is about, the songstress is saying that she rewards some quality sex with a trip to the restaurant and treating her partner to a meal,” writes Jon Niles in a Music Times piece.
To be sure, there’s much more wallop to the song than that perhaps-not-safe-for-work reference, as Amy Vernon observes for Inc. in a piece that was picked up by the Chicago Tribune.
“It's a powerful #BlackLivesMatter moment.”
But it’s that line, in particular, that lit up Twitter.
“Fans and followers— many
from the black community — flew to Twitter, waiting for some reaction from Red Lobster,” Vernon writes.
“And waited.
“And waited.
“Hours later, a relatively tame response: “"Cheddar Bey Biscuits" has a nice ring to it, don't you think? #Formation @Beyonce”
The song is broken down by Tahir Register in a post on TheBlackMedia.org blog.
“While
most of the lyrics in ‘Formation’ are bold, ‘cocky-like’ statements used to represent Beyonce’s present strength of past insecurities, and repetitious rumors, we can
agree that the overall theme, message in text, and in visuals are fitting for today’s social issues,” he writes.
But Red Lobster clearly was not ready for the exposure.
Jeff Beer speaks to executives at three agencies that have had success in similar situations and offers “3 Lessons On How Not To Pull A Red Lobster If Beyonce Boosts Your
Brand” on Fast Company’s “Co.Create” blog.
Victor Pineiro, SVP of social media for Big Spaceship — with clients such as YouTube, BMW, and
Samsung — says “especially during major cultural events when all eyes are on social you do need a few unicorns on call.”
A unicorn, in this case, is “someone
who is both very creative and completely dialed into Internet and pop culture,” and they are “surprisingly hard to find,” Pineiro says. “They need to speak the language of
social media and Internet culture, or it falls flat. Red Lobster’s tweet is an extreme example of it, but you see this happen every day on social.”
CNBC’s Sarah
Whitten points out that Red Lobster “traditionally experiences a spike in sales during this
time of year due to their annual ‘Lobster Fest’ promotion, but Lopdrup credits this weekend's boost to the R&B star. The company refers to it as the ‘Beyoncé Bounce’
and some of its employees have already begun renaming popular menu items after the pop star.”
“We are absolutely delighted with what we saw over the weekend,
particularly the consumer sentiment that we saw expressed,” Lopdrup tells Whitten. “It's clear that Beyoncé has helped create some Red Lobster fans, and we are very grateful to her
for that.”
But “to be clear, it would be hard to track just how much of a sales bump Red Lobster is getting from Beyoncé. After all, it's not like waiters are
asking patrons ‘did Bey send you?’” Jessica Wohl writes for Ad Age. And
the chain, now owned by private equity firm Golden Gate Capital, “won't necessarily publicly report the actual sales lift,” she points out.
Meanwhile, former New York
City mayor Rudy Giuliani took to Fox News to criticize “what he described as an ‘attack’ on police officers during [Beyoncé’s] Super Bowl halftime show
performance, Niraj Chokshi reports in
the Washington Post. “Other conservatives took issue with it as well,” he writes, just above a screen-grab of a disapproving tweet from Rep. Peter King (R.-NY).
“The performance carried a strong theme of black empowerment, featuring Beyoncé flanked by women dressed in what was clearly a nod to the fashion of the Black
Panther Party of the 1960s and 1970s,” Chokshi observes.
But Andrew Rosenthal takes issue with those taking issue with Beyoncé’s homage to the
Panthers in the New York Times’ “Taking Note” blog.
“But the Panthers were no more racist than, say, the governor of Alabama or the state troopers in
Selma in 1965, or the Democratic National Committee in 1968, or the Chicago police force in that year, or today. At least the Panthers could claim some provocation for their rage,” he
writes.