The burgers may not be better, but the marketing is.

In deciding which organization to target for this blog I thought I'd take inspiration from Justin Yung's brilliant second blog, where he compared social technology use in Pepsico and Coca-cola, and I would consider an organization we all know.

Starting last year,  my son would eagerly get out his mobile phone whenever we approached a certain fast food outlet, to see what freebie he could score. Obviously Hungry Jacks were successfully using Enterprise 2.0 technologies in their functional area of marketing and sales. I thought I'd like to investigate whether giving away all this free food actually helped.

I found that, well, yes it did.

The campaign's success was acknowledged by Hungry Jack's winning a 2013 Australian Mobile Award. Their "Shake and Win" campaign, launched mid 2012,  saw a 25% increase in profit and a 1186% return on investment.

The brief on the AMI awards site, states

"Executed through owned media, mobile banners and earned media, primarily via Facebook check-ins, the app remains one of the most downloaded branded apps and number one in the free Food & Drinks section. The pilot project has since become a permanent pillar of the business without any subsequent investment and is still delivering additional, exponential profit. "

 

Hungry Jacks is a fast food outlet, in a competitive market in Australia. In 2006, the Australian government in comparative analysis of food chain outlets, recorded Hungry Jacks with 594 of 5234 fast food outlets (11%).

Before introducing this campaign the company described itself in Marketing Mag as
"Outspent and outnumbered, and with declining revenue and share of voice, Hungry Jack’s needed help. Clemenger found a new-world solution to an age-old problem which delivered ROI of 1186% and became a permanent part of Hungry Jacks’ marketing mix."

The Xfactor consulting group describes how the app works:
"Upon downloading the app, consumers were invited to “shake their phone” within a 1 km radius of a Hungry Jacks store to receive a prize. They then had 20 minutes to redeem the prize. Facebook users who “checked in” at Hungry Jacks were also rewarded. More than 200,000 prizes were on offer, including freebies, two for the price of one and discounted products. The app also features a store locator and the first nutritional calculator from a fast food restaurant."

The benefits of this campaign can be categorized under two levers aligned with marketing and sales by the 10 Social Technology value levers published by McKinsey Global Institute in 2012.

Value lever 5. Use social technology for marketing communications/interaction:

The benefit immediately identified here is use of customer's existing channels of social media communication and provision of a low cost app to gain extensive coverage amongst the appropriate target group for the organization's products.

The McKinsey report states that "unless individuals receive value from using social technologies, they won't use these technologies."

I know from personal observation that the Shake and Win campaign provided a popular interface for Hungry Jacks target audience. Not only my son, but all of his class would go home via Hungry Jacks. The benefit of this is short term, in gaining customers, and long term, in developing habits in people.

In Marketing Mag, Kathy Hatzis, director at AMI says, “It is so easy to continue on the traditional route in a highly competitive market place and simply fight on price. However, providing an extremely tactical traffic building campaign that allowed for a fun, interactive way to experience the brand and get a deal proved to be a winner.”

Value lever 6 : Generate and foster sales leads: The benefit to Hungry Jacks here was that consumers were using facebook to tell their friends about the special offers.

 On a socialmediaoverflow, the blogger gives insight into why this app was so successful.

"I am pretty sure I got this app the day it came out or soon after (it was a Friday), one of my friends made me download it and we all got free Whoppers on our way out to a bar. We were very happy and posted about it on Facebook and told people at the bar to download it and try it out as there was a Hungry Jack’s nearby.

Over the next few days the newsfeed was littered with people checking in to Hungry Jack’s and people were commenting on the posts asking what it was, or if people were familiar, everyone was asking “What did you get?”.

 

So, Hungry Jacks, introduced a low cost app, that got all their customers rushing (in the 20 minute  time allowed) to their restaurants and telling their friends exactly where they were.

In the Australian,  January 24 this year, the company that owns Hungry Jacks reported a near tripling of their annual profit to $21 million.

Impressive.