Marketing: Age Appropriate
Friendly’s uses its new interactive campaign to generate buzz among teens and young adults.
By Margaret Littman, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 9/1/2007
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Friendly’s is a 72-year-old brand that is loved by young kids and parents, particularly 25- to 55-year-old women. But among teens and young adults, it suffers from a “not cool” stigma that many established brands face.
“One of our objectives is to become a bigger part of consumers’ lives at a younger age,” says Hope McManus, marketing manager for Wilbraham, Mass.-based Friendly’s. “We know they were part of the brand when they were younger, with their parents and grandparents, and we are trying to reintroduce them to the brand. To reach them, we had to look at alternative media.”
Until it came to this conclusion last year, Friendly’s had a Web site, but had not taken online efforts much further, nor had it looked into other media that capture the attention of teens and young adults. To change that, Friendly’s worked with Boston-based Cone and Charlestown, Mass.-based One to One Interactive, in addition to its agency of record, Chicago’s Laughlin Constable, to develop an interactive promotional campaign for the ice cream brand’s hot summer season.
15 Minutes of Fame
From June to August, the company asked young customers to submit videos and photos that represented the way they felt about Friendly’s. Customers could upload them at www.iscreamfriendlys.com (spelled with a lowercase “i” to be evocative of the iPod) or send them via mobile phone. While adults tend to use their mobile phones as discrete devices for select conversations, teens and young adults—who don’t remember a world without cell phones—are happy to receive relevant sales messages, surf the Web and take photos with their phones.
Diners voted for their favorites, viewing new additions as they were posted on the Web site after One to One Interactive vetted them. Viewing and voting on user-generated creations is second nature to the YouTube demographic. They selected weekly winners, who received prizes teens crave more than ice cream, including an Apple TV, video iPod and Apple shopping sprees.
One winning video features teenage boys imagining they are dancing with a Friendly’s staffer. Another shows couples, kids and others “screaming” over the thought of going to Friendly’s. Photos include cats and dogs eating ice cream and someone getting a tattoo that says “Friendly’s.”
Friendly’s will not disclose what it spent on this campaign, but according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus, the chain’s total advertising spending reached close to $20 million in 2006. An interactive effort such as this is a small fraction of the price of a mass-market ad campaign.
Calling All Teens
To get the word out, Friendly’s sent young, mohawk-clad representatives to 15 cities. They walked the streets, talking about the contest and passing out coupons for free iced lattes and Friendly’s Chillers (a concoction of lemon-lime soda and orange juice), two menu items promoted with the contest. The representatives encouraged onlookers to send text messages to the company with the word “iSCREAM” to try for smaller prizes such as T-shirts.
In addition, each of the chain’s 515 units had POP signage about the promotion, and McManus says many of the photos submitted were taken from inside a Friendly’s.
At press time, Friendly’s had received 3,000 contest entries; 70 percent of those who registered for the contest were between 15 and 21 years old. The Web site attracted an average of 300 visitors daily. Friendly’s was surprised both by the number of entries and that none—as of press time—included inappropriate content that could not be posted to the site.
The agencies did not coordinate the promotion with other Friendly’s advertising because it wanted customers to feel free to be creative with their videos and photos.
“Freedom of expression is critical to the success of any interactive campaign. Savvy marketers understand that the empowerment of consumers to interact with a brand in ways most important to them is the key to effective engagement and customer loyalty,” explains Bill Fleishman, executive vice president of brand marketing for Cone. “Attempting to put strict controls over the content will likely limit success.”
The interactive summer campaign began before Friendly Ice Cream Corp. announced that an affiliate of Sun Capital Partners will acquire it later this year. The $337.2 million deal will take the firm private. If successful, the new owners will help pay down Friendly’s debt, about $222 million, while capitalizing on the strength of the brand name—and targeting young consumers will be an important part of that strategy.
Adds McManus: “The goal was to start a dialogue to become a part of their life [again], to remind these people that they should go back to why they loved Friendly’s.”
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