"Convenience, loyalty programs, and strategic mobile app implementation emerge as key growth drivers for the QSR industry," according to InMobi.
Creating impactful television campaigns that deliver on key performance indicators meaningful to a client's business is critical these days. Fortunately, there are now great products and systems that
allow advertisers to tie television advertising directly to specific business goals. Justin Poe, Media Director at EvansHardy+Young, will share how they connected their QSR client's goals with their
television campaign to provide actionable insights and help prove what worked and what didn't.
Kantar BrandZ reveals a 20% drop in overall value for brands. And McDonald's, at number 5, is the ranking's top non-tech brand.
What drives consumer loyalty to dining brands? A global view suggests there are both universal appeals that transcend cultures and geography as well as highly localized and variable ideas around true
value exchange. KFC's Senior Product Owner, CRM & Loyalty, Haley Davison, shares the insights that one of the world's most recognizable QSR brands draws from a global footprint. How can aggregated
data like this lead to insights and tactics around identifying better value propositions that grow loyalty?
A common data model has been critical to Whataburger's radically personalized...and personal...approach to all aspects of the digital experience for customers. Whataburger's Digital & Strategy
Director, Keith McLellan, explains how its deep profiles recognizes at all touchpoints who you are, what you like and buy, and how. And perhaps most importantly they know when you stop buying and how
long they have to win you back. This level of super-segmentation allows for crafting highly personalized and more emotional appeals, to know who to message, how and especially when, to create a data
driven but very human digital conversation.
Reigniting interest in buffet-style dining in the last year has been a challenge across the fast casual category. Cicis is using it as an opportunity to energize the brand and enhance onsite customer
experiences around food, entertainment, and restaurant design. Cicis Pizza's CMO, Stephanie Hoppe, shares what they've learned along the way about embracing Cicis' roots, driving adaptability, and
cultivating an always-on optimization mindset to power a successful "Endless Pizzabilities" brand relaunch that bets big on experiences fueling Cicis' continued growth.
Finessing the tension between premium product and value takes imaginative development and optimizing both menus and messaging. In introducing its double burger, A&W focused on weary consumers' craving
for indulgence over a simple deal. A&W Restaurants' Senior Director of Marketing, Liz Bazner, shares the company's learnings from balancing premium with value marketing across multiple channels and at
local levels.
"Ad environments that fall into grey areas require careful judgment calls be made by brands and their agencies," notes Joshua Lowcock, global chief media officer at UM.
Sixty-seven percent of those who had seen a QSR OOH ad and then engaged with the advertised chain made an in-restaurant purchase.
Through a combination of app and loyalty program usage along with local events, Fazoli's is crafting a data strategy that funnels local intelligence back to franchisees and managers so they can
interact with customers in more personalized ways. At MediaPost's Brand Insider Summit QSR, Fazoli's Senior Manager/Brand Marketing, Erin Stevens, shares how cross-functional teams across the
organization use this data to test and learn new engagement tactics as well as inform individual outlets how to better serve customers.
As the 90-year-old Krystal restaurant brand looked to appeal to younger demos, the marketing team focused on college towns and some of their strongest influencers - star athletes. Executing on this
smart plan took more than posing Quarterbacks with store owners. Krystal Restaurants' Director of Marketing, Kaitlin Stoehr, shares what the company learned about crafting local campaigns around
recruiting this special class of social influencers, creating authentic live engagements, and then amplifying this content effectively in the community.
As Insomnia Cookies sought to rebrand its late-night snacking model around new flavors and "Cookie-vation," they invented the "Cookie Lab" at their flagship location in Philadelphia. Nicole Geyer,
Insomnia Cookies' Brand Manager, explains how the Lab became a genuine research site as well as a branding tool and even a tourist attraction. But it took a strategy - around everything from facility
design to customer recruitment and data gathering. From leveraging invisible messaging to unforeseen uses of maple syrup, the lab has rendered more than a few surprising results.
The soft-serve shop 16 Handles has always been about the on-premise experience of personally personalizing customer desserts. It is a case study in building in-person delight. But as the company has
moved into delivery and on-app ordering it has been challenged to digitize the experiential dimension of the brand across channels. The Founder and CEO of 16 Handles, Solomon Coi, shares how the brand
thinks about making WOW omnichannel.
The marketing of catering and event services within the new digital and delivery ecosystems offers brands unexpected challenges and opportunities. How do you allocate across convenience and
celebratory segments, target the right new and old customers, and convert those third party acquisitions into first party loyalists? Trish shares lessons learned as she adds celebratory marketing to
Earl's portfolio of casual brands via third party apps, a dedicated loyalty program, and beyond.
As inflation drove up costs and pricing, the Checkers brands felt it was leaving a core value-driven customer behind. Instead of overall discounting, the brand leveraged its CDP to identify and
specifically message this segment with highly targeted discounts to motivate purchasing. Barry shares how they modeled this often elusive cash-based clientele and created tightly localized
cross-channel media to drive bargains to the ones who needed them most.
Almost half of consumers said they'll cut back on restaurant dining as inflation hits 40-year highs.
What is the value of apps, and how do they help with conversions and connections, especially with consumers deleting or ignoring them once they are downloaded to their mobile phone?
Top-ranked QSR was followed by Starbucks, Dunkin', McDonald's, Taco Bell and KFC.
New research finds that QSR chains need to sharpen their digital skills to keep customers engaged with loyalty programs.
As of November, 28.2% of podcast listeners had used restaurant delivery in the past 30 days, compared to 14% of non-listeners.
As social platforms fragment, brands need to remain flexible in their paid and organic strategies. Church's Chicken reimagined its social media playbook for changed times. Alan Magee, Vice President,
Digital Marketing & Technology at Church's Chicken, explains how they sought to encourage more than engagement but engender true brand fan love. With campaigns that broke through the clutter Church's
is growing its social footprint and engagement in ways that serve the core business and not just Follows and Likes.
The majority (39%) of total QSR ad impressions were on Twitter, followed by YouTube (33%), Facebook (15%) and Instagram (13%).
Thanks to White Castle's QSR roots, social media has long been a significant part of their grocery division's marketing mix. CMO Lynn Blashford talks strategy, and how not only the channel, but the
content, plays a crucial role in expanding audience reach to younger consumers. She also shares how embracing the fight against social injustice opened doors for the family-owned brand.
Who would have known the launch of a chicken sandwich would be the QSR story of the year? Apparently, not even Popeye's own marketing team. Brand Lead Lisa O'Brien shares what happens when consumers
take over your launch, blow up the media plan, and create success and PR challenges that were truly unprecedented.
How are digital dollars moving your customers to action? Franchisees need to know exactly where their ad money goes and show results - quickly! Liz Bazner, the director of digital at A&W Restaurants,
tells us how in the past few years A&W has been doing just that since moving to a cost-per-visit measurement model for their campaigns.
Incentives, discounts and loyalty points are all well and good when getting a loyalty app program off the ground, but over the long haul it takes diversification of benefits and deeper kinds of
interaction to engage the loyalist and make them feel special outside of direct use of benefits. A veteran of Amazon's Prime program, Starbucks and currently KFC's Director of Digital Strategy, Ashley
Travis, shares the lessons of true loyalty.
Every marketing success probably was preceded by a line of valuable failures, but we rarely share that full path to the big win. But failing fast, learning faster is itself a necessary marketing
skill. Hedy Payghambari, director of marketing and media at Papa Murphy's, shares her teachable moments and the tools and tactics she leveraged to maximize return on investment on digital channels.
More than a "campaign," Pancheros' recent brand push put digital and data at the center. But how do you reorganize diverse franchisees around social-first local tactics, and relaunch an app so that it
nearly doubles participation? The QSR brand's marketing team leveraged data to unlock the power of fanatical customers in a digital-first brand makeover.
The path to customer loyalty will be mobilized, but cracking consumers' limited app awareness and reuse takes a multi-pronged approach. Fazoli's chief marketing officer, Jodi Conrad, explains how the
QSR brand used aggressive acquisition tactics, streamlined interface, 360-degree promotion, and data-driven segmentation to grab home screen mindshare. The results not only grew the topline loyalists
number but also bottom line participation and revenue.
Remember all that bread-baking last spring? Americans are over it and reconsidering restaurants, says the Hartman Group.