Seeking ways to engage younger audiences, Pickle Barrel turned to the decidedly offbeat.
The casual-dining chain, which operates 12 (primarily mall-based) restaurants throughout the Greater Toronto area, recently launched an out-of-home, online and radio campaign built around the theme “find the pickle.”
A series of 100 billboards and another 50 transit shelter ads appearing throughout the GTA feature a deliberately amateurish image of a pickle in a jar, accompanied by message reading “Lost pickle” and offering a $5,000 reward.
The ads drive people to the micro site FindThePickle.ca, which houses three videos in which people are shown treating pickles like pets: pampering them, training them for pageants or walking them in the park. The videos have garnered more than 1,800 combined views on YouTube.
Each video – created by a new agency-start-up called New Guard Media – ends with the voiceover “Pet pickles may not be for everyone. Luckily, Pickle Barrel is” and the restaurant’s tag: “Something for everyone.”
The site also urges visitors to visit a Pickle Barrel location, take a picture with a specially created table display reading “I found the lost pickle” and e-mail it to Found@FoundThePickle.ca for a chance to win $5,000 in catering services. (No word if this guy was one of the people who found the pickle.)
Adam Gilbert, who joined Pickle Barrel as marketing and media manager in March 2011, said the company is currently receiving about 100 e-mails a day. The addresses will go into a database that Pickle Barrel will use to entice potential customers with a free appetizer offer.
The company is also urging users to share the videos on Twitter using the hashtag #findthepickle for the chance to win one of five daily prizes of a $10 gift card. The Pickle Barrel has garnered approximately 200 new Twitter followers as a result of the campaign, said Gilbert.
“We just wanted to make something funny and memorable, not necessarily something about our products and services, but targeting a younger audience that is more engaged [online],” he said.
