• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, June 5, 2007

Friendly's is organizing a summer-long shout-out for its ice cream and other food products with a promotion that capitalizes on young people's desire to see and be seen online and to win iPods, digital cameras and Apple TVs.

Part of the Wilbraham, Mass.-based company's efforts to re-energize the brand since George M. Condos joined as president/CEO in January, the promotion invites consumers over age 13 to upload videos and photos of themselves declaring their love for Friendly's via a microsite, iscreamfriendlys.com, or by cell phone. The contest runs through Aug. 12.

Entries can be a photo or a video based on a rehearsed screenplay. Each week for seven weeks, the 10 most popular videos and the 10 most popular images will be selected based on this voting. A site feature lets people share submissions and encourage friends and family to vote for them.

A panel of judges will determine the winner among the finalists in each category. Judging starts for the first set of submissions on July 6, and weekly winners in both the video and photo categories will receive prizes.

Prizes include an Apple TV paired with a Canon digital camera and a Video iPod matched with a Bose SoundDock system. All weekly finalists, plus 60 wild card entries, will be judged in a final contest, where grand prize winners in both categories will receive a $10,000 Apple shopping spree. Second- and third-prize winners in each category will get $5,000 and $2,500 Apple shopping sprees, respectively.

In the first quarter, ended March 31, net revenues declined by 2.5% to $122.6 million. Comparable sales decreased 4.1% in company-operated restaurants compared to a 4.8% increase in the year-ago period. Comp sales decreased 4.6% for franchised restaurants.

At the time those results were announced, Condos said the company was developing new initiative to "re-energize the Friendly's brand by improving the quality of our menu and guest experience and by creating a more contemporary environment within our restaurants. Beginning this month, we will introduce the first of these initiatives which includes a new line of cold beverages and a new service program to enhance our guest experience."

Thus, the iScream promotion kicks off the launch of the company's two new summer beverages, Iced Lattes and Friendly's Chillers, designed to appeal to a new demographic--those between the ages of 15 and 30--for the 72-year-old chain.

Marketing manager Hope McManus says the company will use taglines referring to the iScream promotion at the end of its national primetime TV ads and in radio spots. "We are depending on kids with cell phones and computers to really move this program along," she says, noting that Friendly's competitors have had "relative success with these types of programs."

Inside the restaurants, there will be point of purchase and table materials as well as a menu insert.

"We see this as a new opportunity," McManus says. "Friendly's is all about family and kids, but part of our brand is no longer relevant to kids when they turn 14 or 15. We learned when we were trying to target them that they don't typically use the same media we do. They're online and using cell phones."

McManus declined to specify ad spend, but said the promotion is part of the company's overall ad budget. According to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, Friendly's spent nearly $20 million on advertising in 2006.

In addition to the contest, Friendly's street teams sporting Mohawk-style haircuts hand out coupons for free products in more than 15 cities in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic and show people how to enter the iScream contest. Selected people who text "iSCREAM" to 30364 will receive an iScream t-shirt.

Friendly Ice Cream Corp. has 510 company and franchised restaurants throughout the Northeast and distributes its branded ice cream to more than 4,000 supermarkets and other retail locations.