"Free Pizza Night" at The Stable in Bristol - GWS Media

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Date

26th March 2014

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Author

GWS Team

1) Who & What is 'The Stable'?

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StableRestaurants‎

Twitter: @_TheStable

2) What was Free Pizza Night?

On 12th March 2014, The Stable decided to launch a free pizza night across all of their five restaurants, as a celebration of acquiring 1,000 new likes on their Facebook page.

Some of the team at GWS went along to the Bristol Free Pizza event (yum) and the evening was such a success for us that we thought we'd write a blog post about it.

In order to get a bit more information, we got in touch with the Stable's marketing manager, Andy Delbridge, with a few questions, here's what he said:

3) Why Did They Do it?

The aim of this short campaign was to say 'thank you' to their customers in the area, whilst obviously increasing awareness & social media presence online. The planning of this campaign also coincided with the new opening of their restaurant branch in Newquay.

4) How Did They Spread the Word?

This took around two weeks planning and commenced as soon as the company hit 900 likes on Facebook. They didn't have any advertising within the restaurants and the word was spread primarily through Facebook.

In the run up to the event , Facebook growth was primarily organic - just one paid for post on Facebook and Twitter steadily growing alongside that.

The public shared their posts, helping to get the word out across Bristol.

It was basic logistics and ensuring the restaurant managers were completely prepared - especially with staffing!

5) What Happened Online?

On the day of the event, the Stable's website crashed, actually a good indication of the amount of publicity the campaign generated. Luckily this was lasted for just an hour from when first reported. It wasn't ideal but it may have meant that visitors were diverted back to the social networking pages, meaning Andy was able manage any queries and spread the word further from there.

6) Was Free Pizza Night a Success?

Since Free Pizza Night, The Stable have organically increased their Facebook following by 1,500 and they gave away 1157 pizza's across four hours. They're still measuring the online effects of the campaign and whether any of their restaurants have been busier since the night.

7) What Obstacles Did they Experience?

Due to the event being such a success it meant that many people were left queuing for their delicious pizzas for quite a while - which could possibly have run the risk of being a negative.

Andy said they did the best they could to keep people entertained and happy by asking local buskers to perform close by and the presence of people from different charities (such as Send a Cow) were happily chatting away to people. In genera. hunger and determination for pizza seemed to ensure a happy queue.

GWS actually spoke to a lovely lady from Send a Cow at the Bristol restaurant, who told us about their latest project with Live below the Line. We're now arranging a group of us to raise money for the charity.

8) Our Thoughts:

We thought that The Stable had managed to execute a simple but very effective offline PR move with great management and strong online support. It would be interesting to see how the pizza sales do from a more long term perspective after the event and how the campaign might particularly affect customer thoughts towards their brand.

What should be highlighted is the fact their whole campaign has not cost a great deal of money- besides the free produce and a few additional staffing costs- all of the social media was free attention, creating word of mouth publicity and local promotion of their brand.

We're confident that The Stable will continue to maximise their post campaign attention, by interacting with additional fans and continuing to engage through their other social networks (Pinterest and Instagram). By visiting their website I found some great information regarding staffing and ethos, the images are attractive and the website is usable. In general, we loved our free pizza and we love the Stable's approach to marketing their brand!

Here's a link to a blog post that we previously wrote about 'outside the box' offline marketing tactics, how effective they can be and different ways in which you can approach this type of campaign.

Thanks for the pizza guys, see you again very soon!

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