Panel: alternative marketing helps cut through 'clutter'

Nation's Restaurant News,  Oct 30, 2006  by Alan J. Liddle

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Dallas -- Restaurant chains' official Internet blog sites and status-imbuing network log-on names, or "handles," were two of the strategies for tapping into nontraditional marketing media recommended by panelists at the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators conference here.

Howard Gordon, vice president of business development and marketing for The Cheesecake Factory Inc., said the 111-unit dinnerhouse operator would launch an Internet blog site next year where Cheesecake Factory fans can post their thoughts about the company's food and service. He shared that plan during the MUFSO panel "Opportunities in NonTraditional Media Marketing," when he also indicated that his Calabasas Hills, Calif.-based company is considering offering wireless Internet access to guests at some or all of its restaurants.

"It doesn't just have to be Starbucks" that offers Wi-Fi access to patrons, Gordon remarked, referring to the coffeehouse chain's early entry into the Web hotspot arena.

Another panelist, video game pioneer and Chuck E. Cheese's creator Nolan Bushnell, now chief executive of interactive-bistro developer uWink Inc., said customers logging onto the restaurant's network for group gaming and messaging soon will have the option of broadcasting their location over the Internet to friends at such websites as MySpace.com.

The log-on names or "handles" of customers at the new uWink concept's Woodland Hills, Calif., prototype restaurant would also play a role in the fledgling chain's affinity program by including a component that would indicate the number of the would-be chain's restaurants they have visited.

"We'll send people [by e-mail or text message] free meals just because we like them," Bushnell said of how his new concept would live up to its mission to be fun and use its digital link with guests for marketing. He said uWink would create coed teams for in-restaurant group video gaming, intended to create "social lubrication."

Panelist George Katakalidis, chief executive of the near-70-unit, Daphne's Greek Care fast-casual chain, based in San Diego, said it was about to air its first cable TV commercial, which would prominently mention the www.daphnesgreekcafe.com website. However, the restaurateur added he was in favor of traditional-media marketing.

Pizza Patron Inc. chief executive Antonio Swad said his chain augments its limited television advertising with "product placement" by paying to have its restaurants or products featured in popular Spanish-language TV shows. The 59-unit, mostly franchised chain targets Hispanic consumers.

"There's too much clutter," Swad said of all the competing media vying for consumers' attention. He said that may explain why a commercial that cost him $700 to make years ago generated a much bigger blip on his chain's sales radar than a much slicker spot recently completed for $35,000.

To make an impression despite such clutter, Pizza Patron takes part in street festivals and other cultural events that are more relevant to its core base of customers, many of whom are not connected to the Internet, Swad said.

The audience for MUFSO's panel on nontraditional marketing also was reminded that so-called mobile marketing entails the use of text messages and multimedia messages, including promotional offers and alerts about new products, that restaurateurs can send to customers' cell phones and Internet-capable wireless devices.

Restaurant patrons who own those devices were among the nation's 219 million subscribers to such wireless services as of June--a year-to-year leap in usage of 25 percent that has been tapped into by such text-messaging marketers as Burger King, Krystal and McDonald's.

By Alan J. Liddle

aliddle@nrn.com

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