Arby’s Campaign a Success

By way of background, my role in the podcast was to judge the effectiveness of the cross-media campaign that ran in the U.S. to promote/launch the Arby’s Roastburger sandwich. The campaign kicked off with a high-profile pitch to viewers of Jimmy Kimmel Live (a popular late-night talk show in North America) to text the word ROASTBURGER to the short code 27297. This triggered an exchange that rewarded consumers with a free sandwich with the purchase of any drink. More importantly, is allowed the brand (in a national campaign) to request and receive customer data through an opt-in process that was clearly explained via text message.

Arby’s created 172 local databases and that allowed Arby’s to handle the SMS response traffic from its TV and mobile promotions. Of consumers who started a text interaction through in-store signage, more than 89 percent opted to join their local database. In the case the TV spots, more than 90 percent opted in to join the database. This is impressive considering there are many marketing campaigns that report much lower response rates. Overall, the campaign gets high marks in my book. (Little wonder that this campaign is also a finalist for an MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) award.)

Read the rest of Peggy’s insight about this at her blog, MSearchGroove.