Bar changes name for Super Bowl

Posted by ianmara on Feb 3, 2012 in Bar Marketing | 1 comment

Here’s a nice little marketing/PR story in advance of Sunday’s big game:

Those of you who follow American football are aware that the New York Giants are playing the New England Patriots in this year’s Super Bowl. Even if you aren’t much of a sports fan you probably have heard of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

(Hint: He’s the guy you’ve seen standing next to Gisele wearing the Uggs.)

Not surprisingly, Upper East Side watering hole Brady’s (named after the owner) is also keenly aware of the best player on the team opposing its beloved Giants this weekend. And they’ve noticed his last name. In a rather ingenious marketing ploy, Brady’s decided to do something about the unfortunate coincidence.

Normally, the front of Brady’s looks like this:

But for the weekend of the Super Bowl, the bar is renaming itself in honor of Eli Manning, the Giants quarterback who will be opposing Tom Brady. For the next three days the bar will be known as Manning’s.

To complete the change, the bar gave itself a facelift on Friday:

It’s a neat piece of community engagement that seemed to resonate with the locals almost immediately. Quotes from this DNAinfo piece included:

“It’s amped up. I like it!”
“I think it’s hysterical. It’s great. It’s very smart and clever.”

Another nice boost is that Mayor Bloomberg was scheduled to make an appearance Friday to help with the unveiling.

But most important is that Brady’s made a point to connect with its neighborhood and make itself a topic of conversation leading up to a potentially lucrative weekend. With media outlets looking for reporting angles prior to the game, it was a move almost sure to grab the free publicity that goes along with TV/newspaper/internet attention.

A twitter miss from McDonald’s

Posted by ianmara on Feb 2, 2012 in Bar Marketing | 0 comments

By now you’ve probably heard about the, um, difficulty the world’s biggest fast food brand had during a recent stab at targeting a new Twitter hashtag. We’re big proponents of bars and restaurants making use of hashtags whenever possible, but the recent McDonald’s fiasco illustrates that social media is done well only when it’s done right.

In case you missed the story, here’s a quick rundown. Last week McDonald’s unveiled a promoted hashtag it hoped would get Twitter users telling positive experiences at the restaurant. They called it #McDStories.

But instead of sharing warm and fuzzy memories of time spent enjoying Big Macs and McRibs, Twitter users began flooding the stream with negative tweets.

Read more..

Will saying no to guns mean lost business for Ohio restaurants?

Posted by ianmara on Jan 24, 2012 in Bar Management | 2 comments

It is looking like bar and restaurant owners in Ohio are having to make a decision between allowing guns in their business and losing a few paying customers.

Last summer the state passed a piece of gun legislation the Cleveland Plain Dealer called “one of broadest in the country.” Senate Bill 17 made carrying firearms into any so-called “Class D” establishment legal. The Class D list includes includes bars, restaurants, nightclubs and shopping malls.

The law allows those with conceal carry licenses to possess firearms but not to consume alcoholic beverages or be drunk. Violation of the provision is a felony and results in revocation of the conceal carry license.

It also is illegal to carry a firearm into any establishment that posts a sign saying it does not want guns on its premises. Which is where this story begins.

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Bar owner takes a scary ride

Posted by ianmara on Jan 19, 2012 in Offbeat Bar News | 1 comment

Here’s a story to keep in mind the next time you’re deciding how important it is to chase after a customer you think has stolen something from the bar.

Back in December the 62-year old owner of Lincoln Karaoke – “Chicago’s premiere Private-Room karaoke” (duh) – followed outside a patron he believed had walked off with one of the microphones. The customer proceeded to get into his BMW and drive into the older gentleman (presumably the owner was standing in front of the car, though reports aren’t clear on logistics), sending him onto the hood.

That’s when things got crazy.

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Atlanta restaurant demonstrates the wrong way to use social media

Posted by ianmara on Jan 13, 2012 in Bar Marketing | 0 comments

The appropriately-named Boners BBQ recently conducted a clinic on the worst possible way to handle social media as part of a bar or restaurant’s advertising/marketing efforts.

When owner Andrew Capron discovered customer Stephanie Stuck had left a less-than-positive review of his establishment on Yelp – Stuck called the food “tepid,” the flavors “odd to bland” and the atmosphere “a bit lackluster” – he responded by going on his restaurant’s Facebook page and unleashing an obscenity-riddled tirade.

Capron posted a picture of Stuck he found on her Facebook page and advised other restaurant owners that if they find her in their establishment they should “tell her to go outside and play hide and go f$#% yourself.” He also called her a name that rhymes with stitch.

Not surprisingly to those of us who know a little something about social media, the response blew up in the face of both Capron and his BBQ joint.

Initially Capron faced a backlash of fans who did not agree with the tactic of calling out Suck so publicly. Boners took the post down by the end of the day. But that didn’t stop word of Capron’s behavior from making its way across multiple social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

Capron ended up issuing a Facebook apology that included the offer of a free meal. But that didn’t stop the story from going viral, drawing negative publicity from outlets ranging from ABCNews.com to Huffington Post to the New York Daily News.

Stuck told her story to all manner of media and in almost every instance the restaurant came across looking like a mean-spirited bully. Emotional and ill-advised as it was, Capron’s response to negative feedback further illustrates a point about social media we’ve been making in this space for some time.

Had Boners jumped on Yelp and/or Facebook and sounded genuinely concerned one of its customers wasn’t completely satisfied, public sentiment would have swayed towards the restaurant. Even those who might have been swayed by Stuck’s assessment would have been impressed that Boners cared so much about every person who walked through its doors – even the ones who make their displeasure public.

Not only did Boners fail the cardinal rule by not taking advantage of an opportunity, but it doubled down by creating a situation that didn’t need to exist: Bad review on Yelp (deserved or not) = bad. National news story where your establishment comes off looking evil = worse.