Congratulations TGI Fridays, Now The Work Begins

Restaurants are no strangers to using social media as a vehicle for an advertising campaign, as we’ve all seen examples from Chili’s (PJ Bland's), Burger King (sacrifice a friend for a free burger), and so on. Campaigns such as these typically work well with social media because “food is naturally social.”

Discussed in this article is TGI Friday’s Facebook campaign to advertise their Jack Daniel’s burgers and restaurant in general. To participate in this campaign, users were told to become a Facebook fan of a random guy named Woody, and in return, they would be rewarded with a coupon for a free hamburger. There was also a time-based element, as Woody needed 500,000 fans in just 30 days. In the end, Woody reached his goal in about a week and Fridays retaliated and boosted the number of fans needed up to one million (a goal that was also reached in no time at all).

This article discusses the negative side of this promotion: a short-lived campaign, with no long-lasting consumer relationship and very little consumer ROI (aside from the hamburger coupon). The author believes there’s very little use in building a community that offers us almost nothing in return. While it is an opportunity to earn loyalty to the company, there are still better (longer running campaigns) that can provide the same results. In the end, I'm sure we can all agree that using social media as a platform for promotions is a great idea.. as long as it has more to offer than a one-click interaction.

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Woody's Facebook