07/28/2014
The U.S.A. won against Belgium in the World Cup game.
Well .. not really .. but sort of.
The Waffle House, an American, iconic, southern, restaurant company, walked away with the social media trophy.
Paying not one of the 75k dollar sponsorship fees, the Waffle House's followers organically helped score them the win via a social media waffle battle: sweet versus Belgium waffles.
Many saw the battle unfold on Twitter but I wondered ... what was the back-story? How did it begin and what course of action did the Waffle House plan? Meghan Irwin, Waffle House, agreed to tell us what it was like during the heat of the Belgium Waffle Battle. Some of her answers might surprise you.
About Meghan Irwin - Our story teller, Meghan, has been working for the Waffle House, Inc. for almost three years.
She is part of the Communications Department where her role focuses on social media management and event execution.
About Waffle House® Restaurants - Headquartered in Norcross, GA, Waffle House restaurants has been serving Good Food Fast® since 1955. Today the Waffle House system operates more than 1,700 restaurants in 25 states and is the world’s leading server of waffles, T-bone steaks, hashbrowns, cheese ‘n eggs, country ham, pork chops and grits.
Toby/Diva Marketing: I read that the now famous Belgium Waffle House Tweet wasn’t planned. In fact, there was no committee or even social media team brainstorming on how to get into the World Cup social conversation. Would you fill us in on the who-what-why of the back-story?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Goodbull Hunting actually initiated the idea by tweeting at us upon hearing Team USA was moving onto the next round in the World Cup. When asked for our opinion of Belgian waffles, we replied with “We dominate them.”
TMZ Sports got word of this tweet then contacted us to ask more about it. On Monday June 30th, TMZ published the story and we kind of ran with it. So yes, this wasn’t planned.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Not only was Waffle House the darling of the social media world but main stream media picked up and moved your story along. Who was the first media outlet that contacted you?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Van Lathan from TMZ Sports reached out to us on Friday June 27th. Boycotting all things Belgian was a hot topic, so they asked if we would support that. Of course we would! We’re America’s place to eat!
Toby/Diva Marketing: What was it like at work when you began receiving calls and requests for interviews?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Surprisingly, we weren’t in the office for the majority of the day. The team was at a press conference for our valued partner Smithfield. We took most of the calls in our Waffle van to avoid any background noise. It was actually pretty amusing. We’d see emails for requests and we’d take turns by hopping in the van.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Did the excitement and buzz trickle to the field restaurants and if so what was their reactions?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Yes, we received positive feedback from Area Vice Presidents. We also educated the public and our customers that our waffles are not Belgian waffles. They’re sweet cream.
Toby/Diva Marketing: With all of the conversation and RTs that were happening, did the Waffle House tap additional people to monitor the conversation?
Megan Irwin/Waffle House: We work as team in the effort to engage in conversation with our fans.
Toby/Diva Marketing: We saw you were engaging with your community in RTs and responses. For many companies listening is a struggle in terms of the right tool and the time commitment. Would you share how the Waffle House approaches tracking, listening and reporting?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: We are one of those companies. We struggle just like everyone else in terms of time commitment and listening. We’re in the process of doing a trial with a couple companies now to see what fits best with our company.
Toby/Diva Marketing: There didn’t seem to be a unique hashtag from @WaffleHouse. Was this intentional?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: There wasn’t a need for a unique hashtag. This was an organic conversation with a fan. By adding a unique hashtag in this mix, we feel you lose the genuine feeling of the conversation.
Toby/Diva Marketing: Interesting idea Meghan. Perhaps we can encourage brands to be less "hashtag happy."
In addition to Twitter and Facebook were other social media tactics were included and if so which networks and which worked best to move the engagement?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: We focused on where the majority of our community is. We have a strong, vocal fan base on both Twitter and Facebook therefore our efforts to engage was focused on those two channels.
Toby/Diva Marketing: What was the most surprising aspect of the experience?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: The fact that our community responded with this playful boycott and ran with it. Also, we saw media outlets that don’t normally cover Waffle House, ending up covering this tweet.
Toby/Diva Marketing: To put your responses in context, what does social media mean to the Waffle House in terms of branding, awareness and customer loyalty?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House:
- To us, social media means continuing the conversation with our customers after they have an experience with our brand. It continues well after they leave the restaurant.
Toby/Diva Marketing: How large is your social team and who does it report up to?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: As it falls under Communications, we work as a team.
Toby/Diva Marketing: As we discussed, the response Waffle House received was fantastic. What do you have in mind to build it?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: We want to stay true to the brand’s personality and maintain the engagement with our fans. Like I mentioned before, it’s all about keeping the conversation going with our customers.
Toby/Diva Marketing: In retrospect, is there any thing that you would have done differently?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Nothing at all. This tweet allowed us to grow our community and spread the word that Waffle House is on social.
Toby/Diva Marketing: What lessons did you learn that you can share with our community?
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House:
1. Be responsive.
2. Talk back to your fans if they engaged with you.
3. You never know what ideas you’ll come up with when engaging with fans. We were able to use the USA waffle photo by engaging with one of our fans. 
Toby/Diva Marketing: It’s become a tradition to toss the virtual Diva Marketing mic to you and give you a chance to add anything else you’d like.
Meghan Irwin/Waffle House: Our community is the reason this happened. We enjoy engaging with our fans and customers and will continue to do so.
- Getting to know your community is the best thing you can do on social media.
- We do it for the fans and for the bacon.
More About The Waffle House - Website, Career Opportunities, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest
Toss of a pink boa to Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe for her help in arranging the interview.
07/17/2014
"Always in motion is the future”– Yoda
She was the daughter. That meant she was a second generation newspaper publisher.
Diane Everson, publisher of The Edgerton Reporter in Edgerton, WI wasn’t the only one whose newspaper spanned generations at the 2014 Inland Press Mobile and Social Solutions Conference last month.
In the room, where I had the pleasure of talking about social media in newspapers, were people who had a passion for their papers and their industry.
As I quickly learned, running a weekly or small community newspaper is not unlike owning a small business. Except ... whatever you do is always front and center in the town you serve.
Like many small business owners, nonprofits and yes, larger brands, publishers struggle with how to critically and strategically enter the 21st century digital and social content world. Except ... they face an interesting dilemma when it comes to online content. As do radio and TV.
Actually, digital content strategy is a challenge facing any company whose ‘product’ is information. In the Interweb and social media, where free content is expected there is a haunting question.
- How much do you ‘give away’ and what do you hold as a revenue stream?
Even before you can answer that question there are foundational aspects of social media that must be in place. I built the deck to, as they say in the foodie world, deconstruct the elements.
- Each element in a digital/social media plan must beautifully stand alone before it can be (re)constructed or as marketers might say integrated.
We looked at social through the lens of the brand, journalists and advertisers. I led the group through an exercise that I called “What is different?” We reviewed four media websites: newspaper, TV, radio and online publisher. Our conclusion was the content was so similar we couldn’t identify the media type and it didn't matter which site we were on to just get information.
Lesson learned: Online content of media companies appears to be all-the-same.
Question: How can the strengths of the newspaper industry at-large and your specific newspaper be used to created “Now I care content or stories” that are so unique and audience-relevant your community wants to socially share?
We looked at how newspapers, as a brand, engages with their communities. We discoved - not so much. Traditional culture of the media is to identify and tell the stories they feel are most important.
Social media takes radio, TV and newspapers into a far different and often uncomfortable world. It shouldn't be a big surprise to find many, especially smaller newspapers, challenged in how to balance those worlds.
Lesson learned: Social Media is used as a content distribution channel not as a ‘community communication channel.’ Newspaper publishers were reluctant to step out and ‘talk’ with their readers .. people-to-people.
Question: How can the brand step out from the behind the logo and talk to their readers online -- as they do offline at events and networking meetings?
In 1884, the Boston Globe's Confidential Chat was building community among women, and a few dudes in the greater Boston area. So I say ... go even further back to your roots newspaper peeps and learn from yourself!
Sidebar: This a real clip that I found in my mom's recipe box. She saved it for many years so I assume it must have held meaning for her. How long does your content 'stay around?' Or is it the digital equivalent of newspaper used to wrapped fish and chips?
We looked at journalists and their special challenges in producing social content and community engagement. We saw engagement but on a closer review it was frequently among their peers not with their community.
Lessons learned: Passion about the topic is important to sustain long-term participation on the social web. Social media writing especially, short tweets, can be a challenge of long-form story training.
Questions: How can journalists sustain a social conversation over time while holding true to the values of their newspapers and their personal brands? How can opinion tweets and posts be included .. or can they?
And there was more so I'm happy to shaing the deck with you. There are several worksheets that might be helpful as you build out systems and process for your plan. Some will help to align with what social media means to your company and how it can support overarching goals.
Hat tip to Mr. Ray Marcano, CanisDigital, for recommeding me for this exciting gig; and Patty Slusher, Inland Press for her support.
Read More: Amy Gahran, How Early Newspaper to Web Technology Crippled News Industry's Thinking
Now that we've gone through some deconstructing the next question is -- How will you construct your social media world? Let me know if you have any questions or need any help.
07/11/2014
Picture this.
It's been a stressful week and you're looking forward to a night of vegging out. The telly goes on and perhaps there is an adult beverage or two nearby. It's a scene played-out in many homes for nearly 70 years.
Over the past few years a there have been a few changes in How we watch TV.
On goes the TV set, you flip open your tablet and smart phone ready to watch. Only now you can chat with your friends about the show, play a few Walking Dead games and perhaps even buy that cute dress one of the actresses is wearing. Welcome to Second Screen TV and SocialTV. .
A couple of weeks ago Joel Rubinson, President and founder of Rubinson Partners, Inc., and CivicScience took to the reseach road to learn more about second screen viewing. The results, which they shared with the industry, TV Viewing and the “Second Screen” – What Audiences are Doing with Mobile, Tablet Devices, is a report based on the CivicScience data collection and research platform. Joel conducted the analysis and partnered in formulating the research questions.
Joel kindly agreed to answer a few questions and give us his views on the future of second screen TV and socialTV.
Diva Marketing: The Insight Report you did with CivicScience indicates that multitasking is the name of the game for 45% of respondents who acknowledged using a ‘second screen’ (smart phone, tablet or computer) while viewing traditional broadcast TV.
It was also interesting to me that 80%, were not engaged online with content related to the show.
In your opinion is this a trend and if so, where does it leave content producers in terms of advertiser value?
Joel Rubinson: Hi Toby, thank you for your question. First, let me clarify that it is 45% of everyone watching TV who multi-task so it is actually a higher percentage of those who own an internet access device and watch traditional TV.
The fact that 80% or more of multi-taskers are doing so in unrelated ways means that media might have the wrong idea about what people want to do with the device in their hands. They are more interested in passing dead time than they are in enriching the TV experience.
- Will this change? Perhaps, but media will need to offer more enticing experiences to get viewers to engage.
The value of this research we did using CivicScience’s data is understanding that the current crop of synchronized tools are not yet substantially changing viewing behaviors. Yet media and marketers desperately want it to work because it would add value to media ad inventory and impact to marketer advertising efforts. In the meantime, marketers should look for synergistic opportunities for their advertising on unrelated websites.
An exotic sounding but quite doable idea is for marketers to use real time bidding engines to bid for inventory at the precise moment that their advertising is airing on TV. Hence, if I’m seeing a commercial on Judge Judy and happen to be on a news site with RTB inventory at the moment, an advertiser could make sure I am seeing a display ad for the same brand.
Diva Marketing: In the report there was mention of “synchronized second screen experiences.” Would you please explain the concept and the opportunities as you see them?
Joel Rubinson: Synchronized experiences refers to using your internet device in a way that is related to the TV program you are watching.
This could be answering quizzes about what you think will happen to Rick in Walking Dead as he is face to face with a horde of Zombies (via an app for the show), or voting on Twitter for who should get kicked off American Idol or The Voice.
In contrast, unrelated multitasking is when I’m checking e-mail or messaging a friend on Facebook while watching a show.
I think the biggest opportunity is to build interest in real time viewing rather than recording the show on a DVR and potentially fast forwarding through the commercials. Synchronized experiences only work in real time.
Diva Marketing: How do you see the intersection of broadcast TV and online content being mutually beneficial for (1) audience/ratings growth , (2) advertisers and (3) viewer experience … or do you?
Joel Rubinson:
I believe that over the past 5-10 years all networks had to decide if online content was a threat to program ratings.
- I believe they all came to the same conclusion that online viewing does not cannibalize TV viewing appreciably and actually builds ratings indirectly by getting someone more into the show.
This has been presented by Alan Wurtzel the research lead at NBC regarding the Olympics.
Online content was mostly viewed by those who wanted to relive favorite moments and seemed to go hand in hand with more TV viewing hours, not fewer, for the Olympics. Overall, the great majority of video content is still viewed in real time on the TV even with 5-10 years of significant growth of DVR use and live streaming over the internet.
TV watching is still the 800 pound gorilla (or at least 720 pounds) but watching content online is also a reality, it is growing and all progressive media companies need to embrace it and make it work for them.
The researcher in me wants to point out that one simple payback is realizing that the dot.com parts of TV networks have the ability to better track viewer interests via online digital behaviors, yielding first party data that can result in very powerful insights and promotional targeting.
Diva Marketing: Thanks Joel! I'm off to make sure my ipad, iphone and laptop are charged and I know the Twitter handle of the show.
More About the methodology, CivicScieince, Joel Rubinson and Partners
CivicScience is the provider of the real-time polling and consumer insights platform used by Joel Rubinson in this study. The second-screen questions were added to thousands of other questions running through the CivicScience polling platform and published via hundreds of web and mobile websites, and the data from the anonymous respondents were aggregated and mined using automated data science technology.
CivicScience's platform is used by consumer brand and media clients to quickly and deeply understand consumer sentiment and behaviors.
Joel Rubison is President and founder of Rubinson Partners, Inc. marketing and research consulting for a brave new world and a member of the faculty of NYU Stern School of Business where he teaches social media strategy. Started in 2010, Rubinson Partners, Inc. (RPI) has already helped position several clients for success in a digital age.
07/04/2014
In the wee hours of the morning traffic challenged Peachtree Street in Buckhead (Atlanta) experiences a few quiet hours before the mad rush hour/s begin.
But not on the Fourth of July.
Today the 45th Peachtree Road Race brought out more than 250,000 (60k official runners) people who woke up the city to take part in the world's largest 10K race.
Unlike it’s cousin the Boston Marathon, The Peachtree, as it's fondly called, is not just a race for runners or even joggers. It’s a community experience where generations of family and friends often walk together to celebrate life. Even for the people on the sidewalks who cheer on the runners, The Peachtree takes on a carnival atmosphere.
For many, like my pal Joe Koufman, founder of AgencySparks, it’s become a tradition. With race number 12 completed (note Joe's 1-2 fingers!), I asked Joe Why he continues to run The Peachtree. 
"The Peachtree Road Race is more of an experience than a race. The sights, sounds, smells, and feel of the race make it spectacular.
Some of the highlights for me are walking to the MARTA station when there are few people setting up and the police are patrolling the course, then packing into the train like sardines with sticky runners, the costumes (this year I saw Hulk Hogan, Beer Maid, a banana, marching band in Speedos, and others), the official (and unofficial) bands every mile, and the thousands of spectators each celebrating the day with their unique styles.
I am never really trying to get a personal record (though I do train and run hard for the Peachtree). I like to soak in the entire experience."
A much anticipated part of The Peachtree tradition is the t-shirt that goes to all official runners who complete the race. The t-shirt design is a ‘crowd sourced’ voting competition.
The 2014 Peachtree Road Race t-shirt was created by James Balke. James is a two-time winner; his first was for the 1997 race. By the way, did you know there is even a book about the history of the Peachtree Road Race T-shirt?
Take a look at both of James’ designs.
Notice any similarities? The 1997 t-shirt includes multiple Peachtree street signs while 2014 is a detailed map of the race. Although very different styles both represent maps and direction of Atlanta. Both represent the values of the race.
4 Lessons learned From The Peachtree Road Race
1. The brand can create a framework but it is the community who builds community. The Atlanta Track Club set the rules and the course for the Peachtree Road Race.
2. Execution of similar concepts e.g. tactics can take on very different results .. and that can be a good thing. James Balke’s designs demonstrate foundational concepts can produce distinctive outcomes.
3. Tradition plays a role in setting expectations and repeat ‘buy.’ People look forward to running the race year after year often with the same friends and family.
4. Little things make a BIG difference and become a customer thank you/reward. The Peachtree Road Race T-shirt is a treasured prize for finishing the race.
Happy 4th of July!
07/03/2014
During my time heading social media at Cox Media Group I had the pleasure of working with some great folks.
There was a special journalist, from California Bay Area KTVU, that was an inspiration when it came to understanding the importance of social media, how to build community and the critical nature of engagement ... especially on Facebook.
Frank Somerville, main news anchor, topped 100K Facebook Likes; in fact as of this moment he has 120,059k Likes. As anyone who has built out a social network page can tell you this is no small feat.
However, as we also have come to understand, Likes without engagement are simply a bunch of numbers. Left alone Likes do not necessarily lead to significant shares, community or brand loyalty. Which makes the extent of engagement Frank has nurtured even more impressive.
How did he do it? Why did he do it? And how does it relate back to the brand? Frank tells his back-story in this video interview.
Frank's 7 Tips To Succeed In Social Media
1. Be Authentic
2. Be Honest
3. Let people see who you are behind the camera… or behind your 'business face'
4. Respond to people
5. Don't follow all the rules...take a risk. This is new stuff don’t be afraid to experiment.
6. Try to find your own way and what works for you.
7. If people like you it will carry over to your brand creating a win-win-win (for your customer, the brand and you).
And I'll add one more ... have fun! It is quite evident that Frank is having a great time. The energy carries over to his relationship with the community and back again to their involvement with Frank and with each other.
Any brand, media or not, can benefit from Frank's insights. The video is worth a click and a watch.
Frank - congrats! Well deserved.
