Storyboard: El Pollo Loco's Trump Card

El Pollo Loco leverages an appearance on “The Apprentice” to boost brand awareness.

By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 4/1/2007

Rosie O’Donnell may not be noticing residual goodwill as a result of her recent interactions with Donald Trump. But for consumer brands, associating with The Donald can be a good thing.

That’s the experience of El Pollo Loco, anyway. The Irvine, Calif.-based chain is the latest restaurant to participate in "The Apprentice," Trump’s reality TV program on NBC. On the show, aspiring executives are given business challenges, and Trump judges their results. Other restaurant chains including Dairy Queen, Burger King and Arby’s have appeared on the show.

"Restaurants are a perfect fit for the show," explains Jay Bienstock, an Apprentice executive producer. "You do not need to explain how a restaurant works. And it is fun. You do not have to get mired down in boring cash flow."

When the show moved to Los Angeles from New York for its sixth season, the producers sought a restaurant chain that was representative of the California gestalt.

Quintessentially California

"We’re an iconic Southern California brand. They wanted to do something around automobiles, and we’re a QSR with a drive-thru," says Karen Eadon, El Pollo Loco’s chief marketing officer.

That desire dovetailed with El Pollo Loco’s goal to expand its brand identity beyond its core market. The 360-unit chain plans to add 30 units in 2007 and 49 in 2008, mostly through franchising in new markets like Rhode Island. The appearance on "The Apprentice" provided an incomparable boost of brand awareness to both potential new customers and prospective franchisees. And the chain’s demographic target of 25- to 49-year-olds meshed well with the program’s audience.

"For people to see and understand that you can serve flame-broiled chicken through a drive-thru is invaluable to us," says CEO Steve Carley. "It was a 10-minute, uninterrupted look at the attention to how we serve our food."

El Pollo Loco can’t say what it paid for the "product integration," but Eadon says it was "significantly less" than what national chains paid for the opportunity. "The benefit far exceeded the value of a 30-second commercial," she says. The chain’s ad budget for 2007 is an estimated $10 million to $15 million.

Power of the Small Screen

Both Carley and Eadon appeared on the Jan. 28 episode of "The Apprentice: Los Angeles." They instructed contestants to develop, market and sell a new version of its Original Pollo Bowl. The TV teams wore El Pollo Loco T-shirts and worked behind the counters and the drive-thrus.

In the week after the broadcast, the chain saw a 6 percent increase in Pollo Bowl sales, a 43 percent rise in catering orders (a category highlighted by some contestants) over the previous week and a 30 percent increase in inquiries from prospective franchisees. Simultaneously, El Pollo Loco launched a two-week Create Your Own Pollo Bowl contest online, allowing customers to out-play the contestants and enter to win a trip to the show’s finale.

The online promotion netted 42,000 hits on the El Pollo Loco’s Web site, about two-and-a-half times the number it normally receives, says Mark Hardison, director of marketing. More than 10,000 people entered the contest, and at press time the chain had a 28 percent redemption rate for the coupon contestants received. It also collected e-mail addresses for its first significant e-mail marketing campaign.

Carley was surprised by how much interest the TV appearance and online promotion generated among bloggers and through other Internet sites. Because the El Pollo Loco episode ran the week before the Super Bowl, the chain essentially got "an extra week of buzz" before the next episode aired, he says.

Integrated Marketing

Bienstock predicts that this kind of product integration will increase, because there is an inherent purpose built into the marketing, as opposed to product placement, where a TV character conveniently drives to a specific QSR during a scene about something else.

Because reality TV is considered a game show, the Federal Communications Commission regulates certain aspects of its content. "We cannot tell a contestant to do something," Bienstock explains. As a result, "The Apprentice" can’t guarantee any particular outcome for a brand. But neither Bienstock nor El Pollo Loco felt that was a risky proposition. When contestants in the third season created poor caliber ads for a Dove skin-care product, requests for free samples still "went through the roof," Bienstock says. The audience was able to distinguish between the contest and the product’s core qualities.

"This worked because the messaging about the brand was consistent. That message is: ‘We are the leader in flame-grilled chicken,’" Eadon says. The TV appearances helped drive that home, while the company can focus the message with in-store materials on healthy dining or even how to pronounce the

concept’s name—crucial in new markets with small Hispanic populations.

Carley feels the message hit home because the product integration allowed others to talk highly of the concept, instead of the chain touting itself. "It is a major endorsement of the brand," he says.

“The Apprentice” Length: 1 hour
1. The Donald, CEO Steve Carley and Chief Marketing Officer Karen Eadon meet the teams.	2. Their task: Build a better Pollo Bowl.
3. The teams had two hours to come up with their best bets for a new Pollo Bowl.	4. Then they had to sell them in-store at two different units.
5.	6. The teams wore their El Pollo Loco uniforms in the boardroom, extending the brand exposure.
7. Trump says, "You’re fired," to one competitor, but El Pollo Loco comes away the winner.	8.