Behind the scenes: Crafting a "Dinner & a Movie" campaign for Chevys "Fresh Mex" Restaurants
As we continue to add more advertisers to our MobileAd Xchange, we’ve just started running a “Dinner & a Movie” campaign for Chevys Fresh Mex restaurants in the San Fran Bay Area.
This is such a natural fit for the
movie applications we run, since studies have shown that about 50% of all movie-goers eat a meal out-of-home before or after a movie. So our pitch to restaurant chains is “We can influence 100 million people going out to a movie each year, fifty million of which are hungry. Would you like them to eat at your restaurant?”
Easy answer. So here's an example of how this local in-call advertising program works:
When someone calls for a movie show time on Moviefone or Movietickets.com and requests any theater in the Bay Area, we insert a targeted ad for a Chevys restaurant that is within 3 miles of the selected theater. A handful of the restaurants are providing a “buy-one-get-one-free” offer (BOGOF in restaurant parlance), while the rest of the Chevys are offering $10 off on a check of $30 or more.
For instance, if you ask for the Century 20 Downtown Redwood City Theater, you’ll hear the following voice ad:
“If you’re hungry before or after the movie, stop by Chevys on El Camino Real, just six blocks south on Woodside Road. Press 9 now to get a promo code text to your cell phone for $10 dollars off your meal.”
If you press 9, voila, the promotion code pops up as an SMS message on your cell phone a second or two later. The text also includes the restaurant address, phone number and details of the offer.
We’re testing four different types of ads to determine which gets the best response. The first we’ve rolled out is the Basic ad, mentioned above. The next option is the Aura ad, which adds Mexican music, sounds of sizzling fajitas and has more of the “feel” of a Mexican restaurant. The next is a Value ad, which twice emphasizes 
the fact that you can get $10 off an item when you show up. This might be the favorite in these tough economic times. The fourth is a Hybrid ad, which mixes the best of the Aura and Value ads.
Our task over the next couple of weeks is to determine which of these four approaches will work best over the phone with callers looking for a fun night out—and some free food to go with it!
As we do with most ad campaigns, we continuously tune and tweak the results to optimize the ROI for our client. For instance, once we determine which of the four ad types works the best, we’ll target even further. For example:
• When people call in for a G-rated movie, the ad will say, “Use your $10 off to get the kids a free meal.”
• For a PG-13 request, the ad will say, “Use your $10 for a big bowl of guacamole you can share with friends.”
• For an R-rated movie: “Use your $10 to buy a top-shelf margarita.”
So that will be three types of targeting: Mobile vs. landline, Geo-location, and affinity targeting. We expect to get strong results and learn a lot about what works with hungry movie-goers. And we’ll apply these lessons to future in-call advertising campaigns.
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