The NFL season starts this week and marketers including Buffalo Wild Wings and State Farm have already launched efforts tied to the preferred sport within the U.S. Applebee’s joins that roster today (Sept. 3) with the kickoff of a campaign that sees that casual dining chain running onto the sphere at full speed after becoming the official grill and bar of the NFL in April.
New spots, appearing in 15- and 30-second versions, see San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley and Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell bringing their on-field skills to Applebee’s restaurants. In one instance, Campbell uses his notepad to cover his mouth as he would while calling plays.
The spots will run across national TV, NBC’s “Football Night in America” and other linear and digital channels, in addition to through new integrations with NFL programming. The campaign also features a loyalty program sweepstakes, a digital game and a content series made in collaboration with the NFL. The six-part “Pre-Seasoning — An Applebee’s Training Camp” docuseries will air across social channels.
“We love the indisputable fact that the NFL is now a 365-day entity when it comes to how they supply content and engagement with their fans,” said Joel Yashinsky, who’s now in his seventh 12 months as Applebee’s CMO. “We saw an actual opportunity to leverage what we knew was a natural reference to the brand, our guests and the NFL.”
The marketing push comes at a key moment for Applebee’s, which is coping with the identical sluggish consumer demand that’s effecting marketers throughout the dining landscape. The chain saw same-store sales decline 1.8% in Q2, an improvement from a 4.6% slide the prior quarter. Like other restaurant marketers, Applebee’s has leaned harder into value, putting its 50-cent boneless wings at the middle of new ads.
In an interview with Marketing Dive, Yashinsky discussed the NFL partnership, Applebee’s creative strategy and how he’s balancing various demands as a CMO.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: What does the NFL partnership mean for Applebee’s, each now and moving forward?
JOEL YASHINSKY: Applebee’s fans really over index as NFL fans, and so there was a natural connection that led to us developing the official relationship with the NFL and creating a extremely engaged element that will appeal to each NFL and perhaps not-as-big NFL fans. It doesn’t matter where you were on the [fandom] spectrum.
We worked really closely with [ad agency] Grey to develop the ads and content series. The next piece was engaging with the precise talent, so we also partnered with Genesco, an agency that works very closely with a number of sponsorships and the NFL.
Our “Pick Six” promotion will start in October and have six free bonus wings each time there’s a pick six on Sunday. That piece is coming just a little bit down the road, but all of this stuff are a part of how we would like to interact during your entire NFL season. Then, we’ll find ways to interact throughout the draft or at other points.
How do you weave value into the marketing message and still differentiate amongst the several tiers of restaurants?
Value is clearly critically necessary at once throughout the restaurant industry and inside other industries as well. So our focus is: How can we make it relevant for our guests and with what programming and concepts we’ve got? We have the most effective boneless wings in America — we won in head-to-head competition against Buffalo Wild Wings and Wingstop — so bringing that to life at a [low] price is very important to our guests at once, especially due to pressures they’re facing.
Wings being a natural, football-type of food, this all works together in a way that we predict will really help bring some added momentum to our September time period and how we leverage that throughout the remainder of this 12 months and into next 12 months, because [value] goes to stay a crucial component to all marketing.
The campaign features a sweepstakes for Super Bowl tickets though the Club Applebee’s loyalty program. How are you providing value but in addition getting that crucial data that informs your other marketing work via loyalty?
As we’re attempting to work across all touch points, there’s a CRM component to our NFL sponsorship. People can do a sweepstakes to win tickets to the large game. At Applebee’s, you possibly can win tickets to the Super Bowl. That’s a crucial a part of the partnership, when it comes to the marks that you simply’re in a position to use and leverage. We’re also partnering with other NFL partners like TCL and making a gift of 85-inch televisions as a part of weekly prizes that will likely be a part of the CRM effort.
Getting people to interact with us will only provide us higher data to assist serve them what they’re searching for and what will likely be relevant to them to hopefully increase their frequency. This is a pleasant step change for us when it comes to where we’ve been with Club Applebee’s. We’ll look to obviously acquire more members to our Club Applebee’s program, really engage them with some fun giveaways of some great prizes, including autographed memorabilia and gift cards.
Applebee’s previously has marketed around popular culture and emerging areas like NFTs. Can you continue to try this while pushing value and the NFL partnership? How do you stay agile?
It’s really all about how you drive guests to your restaurants, and value is just so critically necessary to them at once. How can we make that fun and interesting? That’s what we’re shooting for with this NFL promotion.
We know football has, far and wide, the best rankings on TV. We know people will see the ads, however the fan who might not be watching as much football on TV will definitely see our engagement from a social and digital standpoint once we’re running “Pre-Seasoning” on YouTube, TikTok and X. We’re at all times taking a look at how we utilize social and digital, especially for Gen Z, and millennials to a certain extent.
Our guests range in age from 4 to 94, and I believe that we want to essentially make sure that that we’re on the market reaching each of those guests and every of the demographics in a way that’s relevant and fun and brings across the Applebee’s brand in ways in which they expect.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the variety of parts within the content series based on misinformation provided to Marketing Dive. The article has been updated to reflect this.
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