Buffalo Wild Wings (@BWWings) has tried to position itself as part of sports' social experience. The restaurant chain's VP/Marketing Bob Ruhland said, "We bill ourselves as the sports fan's biggest fan." At no time does BWW look to bring home that message more than during the NCAA Tournament. With the start of March Madness, BWW launched a new campaign called "We Do It For You," which incorporates content on social media that ties into the brand's commercials. Among the highlights are videos and GIFs on Facebook and Twitter, and Instagram Stories that offer a step-by-step playbook for using the newly introduced “Foodoo” doll to help affect plays and outcomes. Ruhland said of the tournament, "There are three or four large events over the course of a year that really captivate fandom and really engage with guests. This is really an opportunity for us to be part of the conversation around sports." Through the tournament's opening weekend, BWW had 3.3 million impressions and 196,000 engagements across its social channels.
Activating with schools in-tournament that the brand sponsors: During the tournament we do not. Having those marks, we can use their likenesses, their jerseys in our television spots. That provides us a level of authenticity that many other advertisers don’t have. It’s a lethal combination when you’ve got the ability to use the marks and the protected phrases of the NCAA, and on top of that you have the ability to use the team marks. It allows us to really be authentic.
Comparing college basketball and football activation: There are a lot of similarities because there are a lot of real-time opportunities for engaging socially. It is more reminiscent to me of bowl season because each game counts more. There’s more excitement and more need to engage on it at a given point in time.
Approach to social media as a publicly traded company: It’s something you always think about because it’s probably the first channel that can go very wrong for a brand if it’s not monitored and managed in the proper way. While we handle it with all due respect that a channel of its nature requires, it does provide us the greatest opportunity to engage with fans around sporting events. It’s not just us passing out information, but having a two-way conversation with our guests around sporting events.
Restaurants that do social media well: We like to think of ourselves as being in a category of one because we have the ability to talk about things above and beyond what we do around food. It has to do with us billing ourselves as the ultimate social experience for sports fans. We have the ability to engage on different levels than many other brands. The ones who kind of embrace the whole experience, they have a little bit more robust of a social differentiator. Zaxby’s does an OK job, Sonic does a pretty good job of bringing in personality and engagement around their brand.
Putting social and digital under marketing: Social and digital was part of media. But we felt with the earned potential there is behind social, it was more closely aligned with PR. As the appetite for communication has changed, and that’s what has risen to the top, it has become more and more important to marketing to communicate not only the brand but all of the engagement opportunities as well.
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