• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, August 25, 2016

Starting today, Friendly's is going to start targeting mobile ads to people while they’re having breakfast at Denny’s and IHOP.

For the family dining chain, it’s a highly experimental campaign, admits CMO Randy Davis. “We’ll see how this goes,” David told attendees of MediaPost’s Brand Marketing Summit, on Thursday.

The experiment ties into a broader effort to target consumers by “situation,” Davis explained.

Whether we’re picking up breakfast for ourselves, grabbing some ice cream after work, or bringing the family for a big sit-down meal on Sunday, we’re all single individuals with different “need states,” said Davis.

The effort is also inspired by the fact that Friendly’s is rarely people’s first choice for breakfast. In some regions, in fact, breakfast sales at Denny’s and IHOP best rival Friendly’s locations by a factor of 8-to-1, by Davis’s estimate.

A 50% off breakfast coupon targeted to diner’s mobile phones could even out those numbers. One problem, however, is that the majority of sit-down breakfast diners are older folks who may not be so mobile savvy.