Brand Burnishing Warren Buffet Style: Dairy Queen Case Study Includes Social Media

Below extract courtesy of Stuart Elliot, New York Times

THEY are not long, the days of wine and roses. Nor, as Madison Avenue knows, are the days of summer selling, which are vital to companies in areas like fast food, beverages and tourism that must gather their rosebuds — and revenue — while they may. For marketers, summer typically runs from Memorial Day through Labor Day; this year, that makes 99 days to wheel and deal.

A marketer that may be a symbol for those whose sales surge in the summer is the American Dairy Queen Corporation, a division of Berkshire Hathaway that has 6,450 Dairy Queen stores in 27 countries. A campaign to begin on Tuesday for the American market, where Dairy Queen has about 4,800 restaurants, has one goal: to make those few summer days count at the cash register.

To that end, the campaign will focus on promotions of what the industry calls L.T.O.s, or limited-time offers: a menu item, the S’mores Blizzard, returning from last summer; a second item, the Chips Ahoy Blizzard, new for this summer; and a free bacon upgrade for the $5 Buck Lunch, Dairy Queen’s value meal. The campaign will carry a theme, “Fan food, not fast food,” that was introduced last year and is the handiwork of the Kansas City, Mo., firm Barkley, which became Dairy Queen’s creative agency in December 2012.

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Brand Burnishing Warren Buffet Style: Dairy Queen Case Study Includes Social Media