QSR Media Conference 2014: How to blend traditional and social media marketing techniques and apps to achieve optimal results

Brands are allotting 10% of their marketing budget to social media.

In this session, Peter Dable, National Marketing Manager of The Cheesecake Shop and Nicole West, National Marketing Manager of Nando's revealed that their brands have increased their marketing budget for social media.

West talked about their recent marketing success of the "Mango Gate" heist and how social media played a massive part of its success.

The Big Mango heist created a nation-wide media frenzy, with over 3000 TV, radio, print and internet stories reported.

• The news even went global reaching over 50 countries.
• #Mangogate became the #1 trending topic on twitter across Australia.
• The you tube heist video received over 280,000 views
• Social media went crazy and people started creating content, memes and even songs about what happened to the Big Mango.
• The Facebook pages received over 6000 new likes over the campaign period
• Over 1,220,000 viewed our Facebook content in just two days and millions more, including politicians and celebrities posted, tweeted, shared and talked about it.

The "Mango Gate" heist started off on Facebook, she recounted, "it went viral from there." However, despite being a social media campaign which also involved content seeding, the brand still blended in some traditional media, like newspaper advertising and they rolled out a supporting radio campaign post heist . "The proof of success from this campaign was the amount of publicity we received but most importantly was the success of the product in restaurant. There was a massive and sustained spike of this product mix which actually exceeded our expectations."

Adding, people are coming into our restaurants in response to our social media activity and call to actions and most importantly are returning on a frequent basis as loyalists.

Peter Dable, National Marketing Manager of The Cheesecake Shop had a similar experience. Acquiring the master franchise in New Zealand, efforts were put in to get the word out. "We went traditional and purchased full page ads but after 3 consecutive weeks, we only had one lead. I put a bit of money on Facebook despite being discouraged to, I did it anyway. After that we received 84 leads and 13 genuine franchisee interests."

He noted that the brand is committing more to social media, "we've found that a mixture of everything works, as social media is strong in specific areas." However, he emphasized that social media does not always work, so a mix of marketing platforms would be a better course. "In some of our existing locations, Facebook did not make a huge impact.

Traditionally, money allocated for online presence is spent on searches for a brand's national website or an offer, said Paola Tanner, Director of Fuse. "Big trend now on marketing is where the message is working better localized."