John Dillon
Vice President, Marketing
Denny’s
To promote its recent bacon “celebration”—Baconalia—Denny’s partnered with funny photo and video site FAIL Blog and parody song performers Rhett & Link. John Dillon, vice president of marketing at Denny’s, spoke with eMarketer’s Lauren McKay about the Baconalia content hub and why the restaurant chain took a native advertising route for this campaign.
eMarketer: Let’s hear about the Baconalia campaign.
John Dillon: Our tagline is “Don’t let bad luck get you down. Bacon makes it better.” We have a partnership with FAIL Blog where we sponsored some of their content—different examples of epic fails. We also integrate some of these videos and other content on a hub, Baconalia.Dennys.com. We feature ecards and memes, all about various fails and how bacon makes things better.
We also partnered with musical comedy duo Rhett & Link, and they created a special song and music video to celebrate the love of bacon.
We also created our own infomercial and are selling our own commemorative plates. We think because it’s fun, and because we have a sense of humor, the video will be passed around. We are targeting millennials [the most], but we’ve noticed it has spread well beyond that already.
“We partnered with musical comedy duo Rhett & Link, and they created a special song and music video to celebrate the love of bacon.”
eMarketer: Why did you decide to take the native advertising route, rather than just running paid ads?
Dillon: We want to be relevant and be where people are. We don’t want to necessarily just advertise to them. We want to be a part of their lives.
It may not lead to a direct sale that very day, but we’re hoping we’re planting the seeds. We’re showing that we’re relevant in their lives, that we understand what they’re after and what they’re seeing every day, and we are a brand that is relevant to them.
eMarketer: What considerations did you make when sponsoring the FAIL Blog content?
Dillon: We did it in a way where it wasn’t too intrusive. We’re cognizant that people aren’t on there to watch commercials. There was fairly subtle branding at the end of the video content. We said, “What can make it better? Bacon at Denny’s.”
eMarketer: It sounds like for both the videos and the memes, all of these are built to be shared. Was social sharing the main KPI?
“There was fairly subtle branding at the end of the video content. We said, ‘What can make it better? Bacon at Denny’s.’”
Dillon: We do look at clickthrough rates. We look at the pass-through rates, as well. We’ve seen the sharing of our content has expanded well beyond just the millennial target. Bacon is something that everybody loves, and everybody appreciates, and everybody likes to talk about and share.
eMarketer: Do you have any best practices for native advertising?
Dillon: I think it goes back to keeping the content relevant. Don’t try too hard. Make it a natural connection between what you’re trying to promote and what the viewer is actually going to that site for. That’s where we’ve had the best success.
We did a series of videos a year or so ago called “Always Open.” The series featured celebrities having a meal at Denny’s. It did very, very well for us. The magic was we weren’t trying to overly sell Denny’s. The video stars were enjoying Denny’s food, but they weren’t necessarily advertising it. The viewer was essentially watching a 3-minute video of a couple of celebrities talking to each other about everyday stuff. They viewed it as entertaining content “brought to you by Denny’s.”
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