Buffalo Wild Wings gets brand lift

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Buffalo_Wild_WingsMore than one-fourth of the world’s ad dollars spent are on fast-moving consumer goods like quick-service and casual dining restaurants, and new ad formats are constantly coming to market.  For the 2012 season, Buffalo Wild Wings saw it  as the perfect opportunity to implement a cross-device advertising campaign to capture more consumer time and drive in-store traffic, and a recent study from Nielsen tracked the campaign’s success.


U.S. consumers spent more than 129 billion minutes on mobile apps in 2012, twice the amount in 2011, making mobile an opportune space for advertisers to reach an always-connected audience and get their message across on a mobile screen. So, moving beyond traditional advertising, Buffalo Wild Wings worked with space150, a digital innovation agency, to create “Protect the Football,” a game in which fans avoid game day distractions to get to the nearest Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant. The advertising was directed toward males ages 18-35, and Buffalo Wild Wings and space150 made the game available across online and mobile platforms. Buffalo Wild Wings and space150 wanted to understand how their online tactics were performing in a mobile space, and needed relevant brand lift metrics to evaluate how effective the campaign was at driving intent brand lift across both platforms.

Buffalo Wild Wings and space150 used Nielsen’s Brand Effect suite of solutions to measure and optimize online and mobile brand lift in intent to visit the restaurant while the campaign was still running, and maximize ROI. Nielsen Brand Effect gave the agency and advertiser the opportunity to review online and mobile overall, by site and by lifetime performance while the campaign was still in progress. Both sides were able to determine that performance across both platforms was exceeding expectations, and they were able to optimize campaign performance in-flight.

Specifically, says Nielsen, they were able to:
•Use one consistent metric, brand lift, to evaluate both online and mobile performance.
•Review online and mobile overall, site, and lifetime performance in real-time. They also reviewed online creative, frequency, and audience segment performance in real-time.
•Identify the lowest performing creatives online—animated banners—and optimize by removing them from creative rotation.
•Drive 26% brand lift in intent to visit among users who were exposed to the online campaign.
•Drive 45% brand lift in intent to visit among users who were exposed to the mobile campaign.

The Nielsen Brand Effect suite is part of Nielsen’s 3Rs framework—Reach, Resonance, and Reaction— and provides solutions that measure ad resonance across TV, computer, and mobile screens. Nielsen Online Brand Effect and Nielsen Mobile Brand Effect are the first real-time enterprise technology platforms that allow advertisers to collaborate with their digital media ecosystem around optimizing brand lift metrics.

Using a web-based dashboard, Buffalo Wild Wings and space150 were able to get a real-time understanding of the brand building effectiveness of their online and mobile campaign using a consistent, brand relevant metric – brand lift. In addition to measuring the campaign’s performance against their primary marketing objective, key campaign elements driving overall brand lift – creative, site, and frequency– were also highlighted, providing opportunities to improve performance in-flight and across campaigns.

The bottom line: Studies like this show local advertisers and media outlets how to use national research to their advantage.

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