"Data is not a scorecard" - IHOP VP of marketing talks digital success
Listening and responding is key to successful marketing, according to Kirk Thompson, Ihop’s vice president of marketing at an Ad Club of New York conference earlier today
Thompson shared the secrets to the successful pancake chain’s journey from being a household name among baby boomers to being a household name among millennials.
In order to make this shift relatively seamlessly, brands need reevaluate how they gather data, and what they do with that data, he said.
“Data is not just a scorecard,” Thompson said. “It’s insight to us.”
Simply knowing the basic demographics—location, age, gender-- of consumers is no longer very helpful. Rather, Thompson said that advertisers need to know consumers act, and how they influence each other.
“The customer journey is important,” he said. “We want to be part of their decision making, and we want to be part of their conversation.”
While many bands echo this sentiment, Thompson said that the misinterpretation of data hindered a brand’s ability to “influence discussions.”
Simply having followers on social media, doesn’t cut it, he said. Rather, he explained, brands need to find a way to move followers, or consumers, to becoming fans.
“A fan is influence,” he said. “A fan is influencing.”
A hypothetical example he gave in reference to his own industry was a young woman who saw an IHOP spot on television and suddenly craved pancakes. This woman then shared her pancake craving with her friends on Snapchat, or Twitter, who then wanted pancakes as well. Essentially, it was a chain reaction of what Thompson called “power eaters.”
He reminisced on a time before Ihop had mastered digital marketing.
“We knew about [the consumer], but gave [him] a bunch of promoted information,” he said. “We didn’t listen terribly well from a guest and customer relations standpoint.”
Then, Ihop pushed to build a “social voice” by “listening and learning.”
An example of this, he said, was the “pancake artist.” The pancake artist was an individual who went viral last year after sharing videos of himself creating pancakes of The Beatles.
Ihop took note that the public loved and shared this artist, so they brought him on board to assist with one of its commercials.
Thompson stressed that “it’s not enough to just socialize.” Rather, he said, brands need to know what people are talking about, and what’s important publically and socially.
“It seems very intuitive,” he said, “but the fact is, it’s really hard for most client orginazations…I think to get to this, by listening, and actually responding, not in the moment but thinking long term. What are [consumers] telling me about my business, about my catergory, about what they want me to be?”
Ihop's strategy has been so succuessful that it trended online during both its birthday, and National Pancake Day.