Challenge
How to position Qdoba Mexican Grill’s numerous unique menu offerings as a competitive differentiator
Solution
A fun, digital platform diagnosing customers with “burrito boredom” and providing a community-based, lunchtime special cure
Results
The website received triple the amount of anticipated traffic, and a 520,000 coupons were redeemed.
Challenge
To highlight its extensive menu offerings as a competitive differentiator, Qdoba Mexican Grill and GFM launched a “More to Explore” campaign, encouraging guests to try something new. Qdoba tasked GFM and partner agencies to bring “More to Explore” to life through an interactive digital campaign, and ultimately, drive traffic to its restaurants.
Solution
Through research, GFM discovered that half of customers order the same meal each time they visit a particular restaurant chain. And since Qdoba Mexican Grill customers love fresh, flavorful and innovative food, GFM teamed with Motive Creative to rally consumers in a fight against what the campaign called a nationwide epidemic – “burrito boredom.”
The resulting Food Lovers Fighting Burrito Boredom campaign included a microsite, online video, direct mail, social media strategy, online advertising, promotional giveaways and media relations.
The microsite encouraged visitors to take three steps:
- Self diagnosis: a quiz to determine if guests suffer from burrito boredom
- Build a cure: an application to build a Qdoba meal that would combat burrito boredom and, in turn, provide a coupon to try a new meal combination
- The burrito boredom support group: a community for burrito boredom sufferers to share stories and upload videos
The site was promoted via email marketing, social networks and through national, in-market and restaurant trade media outlets. As part of this outreach, GFM created and delivered campaign gift boxes to influential, in-market bloggers.
Results
The campaign site was promoted for two months. During that time, it received more than 380,000 unique visitors and 520,000 coupons were distributed through the site. In total, there were 10,669 instances of site visitors sharing their experiences with their friends online. Nearly 4,400 individuals shared their experience with friends by email, nearly 2,200 on Facebook and 510 with Twitter. GFM garnered coverage in all the major national restaurant trade outlets, such as Brandweek, QSR and Fast Casual, as well as in regional outlets like The Denver Post and SFgate.com and on hundreds of blogs (more than 7,500 Google blog results).
