Client: Burger Shack (559 Bukit Timah Road #01-01 King's Arcade)

Team: Min Cheong, Elenora Errico, Seek Leong, Paul Ong, Angeline Yang, Emily Wang

Overview of Burger Shack

Establishd in mid-2009, Burger Shack was conceived off the success of its parent brand, Island
Creamery, a boutique ice cream parlour famed for good confectionary and a relaxed ambience.
Island Creamery saw much effectuation catering to students of schools in the vicinity as well as
families and the occasional young couple. Word-of-mouth acclaim led to a favourable reputation
and a growing pool of customers.

Island Creamery’s same formula was applied to Burger Shack: placing the most emphasis on the
food and creating a similar youthful and vibrant atmosphere. The regular clientele of Island
Creamery and acquaintances of the owner and his family were the first to get wind of Burger
Shack. New customers visited as a result of being exposed to word-of-mouth recommendations,
online reviews written by hobbyist food critics as well as a smattering of newspaper articles.
Burger Shack’s marketing efforts were kept to a minimum, only printing a few posters but
relying mainly on word-of-mouth.

Why Social Media?

Given the phenomenal evolution of social media over the years, many businesses are tapping on
its vast power to connect with their existing and potential customers or trade partners in an all-
new manner. Apart from creating awareness of its products and services to the customers,
businesses can also use the social media platform to motivate them moving across the various
stages in the marketing funnel (awareness, consideration, preference, action and even loyalty).

With reference to the national statistical data on the top sites in Singapore1, a great number of
social media websites dominate the list and this includes Facebook, Youtube, Blogger,
Livejournal, Wordpress and even Twitter. All these further illustrate the prevalence of social
media among the local netizens. Additionally, based on our on-site observation, Burger Shack’s
customers are mainly students and young adults, which are these same active Internet users.
Thus, it would be crucial for Burger Shack to consider using social media to reach out to them.

Furthermore, as shown by our survey results, more than 50% of the existing customers use
Facebook daily and more than 33.3% of them would always obtain information on eateries via
word-of-mouth. For survey results, please see APPENDIX 1.3. As the key features on social
media are about two-way interaction and mass influence, it would be highly beneficial to create
an integrated social media presence to connect with the customers, be it creating awareness on
their business or enticing them to visit Burger Shack during their special promotions which can
be advertised on applications such the Facebook or Twitter.

Burger Shack would greatly benefit from its online presence because of the easy access to
information necessary to adapt to the consistently changing food and restaurant preferences.
Burger Shack could also be more aware of competitors’ marketing and sales efforts to stay
profitable; this would be of great importance as Burger Shack’s customers are noted to obtain
1
Alexa, The Web Information Company, Top Sites in Singapore,
http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/SG
information from mainly word-of-mouth and food review websites.

Social Technographics Model and Data Collection

A survey was conducted among a random selection of 53 Burger Shack clients during the
lunchtime hours of 12:00pm-3:00pm. Survey form and results can be found in APPENDIX 1.2
and 1.3. Additionally, an interview with the storeowner can be found in APPENDIX 1.1. The
survey, interview, and online research provided significant insight into our social media plan.

Social Media Plan for Burger Shack

The management and staff would primarily be responsible for the servicing of the social media
platforms employed because of their intimate knowledge of the business and its goals while also
allowing for the community to influence the content so different extents, depending on the media
tool, which would also enhance interaction between Burger Shack staff and Burger Shack
community and allow the former to constantly monitor and better understand its customers’
needs and wants, which is likely to benefit the business. Within a week all accounts should be set
up, and all analysis to determine effectiveness would be carried out a month after the initial
implementation of Burger Shack’s social media ecosystem. For further analysis of the benefits
and risks of implementing social media platforms, please see APPENDIX 1.5.

Key Themes – across all social media channels

Beach & Cozy Community
Given the laudable success of Island Creamery in the local F&B industry, Burger Shack aims to
tap on its brand equity by placing great emphasis on its affiliation with Burger Shack. Based on
its existing interior design of the eatery and as the both companies’ names literally suggest, the
main marketing theme revolves around the beach and island concept – a casual and fun eating
environment with your spouses, friends and family. In order to create a consistent image
throughout its social media platform, Burger Shack could consider using a beach theme for its
applications’ wallpapers and definitely, Burger Shack’s official logos for all its profile pictures.

Proposed Channels and Content

Youtube
As reported to be the 4th most frequented website in Singapore, Youtube has an immense
capacity as a marketing and communication tool for businesses. Given the high level of Internet
activity among its customers, Burger Shack should consider using the approach of transmedia
storytelling to create an engaging publicity video on the company. Transmedia storytelling
represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across
multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment
experience2. In addition, there will be an increasing amount of video contents for uploading
contents as Burger Shack organizes more promotional and fun competitive events such as the
Fastest Burger Eating Showdown or Stack Your Burger Competition in its compound.
Additionally, it can be cheaper alternative to TV commercials. Burger Shack management and
customers would produce their own Burger Shack videos to promote the café and lifestyle it
encapsulates. As mentioned earlier that Facebook will be the key social media channel, there will
be hyperlinks on its Facebook fan page for the users to link to its Youtube videos.
2
The Official Web-blog of Henry Jenkins, Transmedia Storytelling 101,
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
As the TV switching effect becomes increasingly prevalent among people today, it is less
effective for businesses to do publicity through TV advertisements. Rather, businesses could
leverage on Youtube for greater viewership and almost instantaneous feedback at almost zero
cost. However, in order for people to view Burger Shack’s videos, the company needs to
publicize and extend the video hyperlinks through other social media platform.

Official Company Website

In this day and age, every business needs to have at least a working website. The basic website
usually serves various purposes depending on the type of business or organization (online store,
channel for information, downloadable material etc), but for the Burger Shack, the website will
serve two main purposes:

1. To be the base of Burger Shack’s social media platform and ecosystem

2. Serve as the base for Burger Shack’s standard and necessary information such as
official contact information, history, and a menu.

Social Media outlets are excellent in every way, except the lack of opportunity for good visual
design. Therefore, the Burger Shack website should be a visual explosion - photos of Burgers
and the food, the outlet etc. This is so spur the imagination of customers, and to provide a
different aspect of media as compared to the social media channels.

Facebook Fanpage
According to the survey that we conducted, the results clearly show that Facebook is the number
one social networking website used in Singapore, with users spanning a wide demographic.
Therefore the use of Facebook cannot be ignored. A Facebook Fan Page will be a good space to
collate “fans” of Burger Shack, or rather people whom we know already love the product. This
allows for the first filter to help direct customer retention activities. The Fan page also serves as a
very quick and easy method to get information out to the right people, without the unnecessary
people getting annoyed at what they would perceive to be ‘spam’.

Besides being able to contact your “fans” in a quick manner, we can also use the Facebook fan
page to foster a community. At the Burger Shack, there is a wall dedicated to customers who
visit the eatery and choose to take a photo of them and hang it up. We can use the Fanpage and
website to create a digital version of this wall, allowing for themselves to be tagged and to have a
voice. Community contests can also be carried out via the fan page such as:

1. Create your burger contest

• Fans of the Burger Shack can create and describe a fantasy burger of their own, and share it
on the fan page wall.
• The most creative will have his/her burger created and sold on the menu for a select period
of time under the creator’s name i.e “Angie Yang’s Victorian Veggie Burger”, as well as
receive some promotional incentives.
2. Sign ups for a burger eating competition via the Fan Page
• Contestants sign up online to take part in eating competitions that are to be held at the
eatery.
 • Post coverage of the contest will be uploaded and featured on the fan page.
3. Free burger fan scheme- Involves becoming a fan of Burger Shack’s Facebook fan
page and printing the evidence out to show service staff in order to receive a one-off free
burger meal. This would be instrumental in attracting curious first-time customers to Burger
Shack.
4. Fan Entitlements- Upon or before ordering, customers would give their names to
Burger Shack staff, who would verify said customer’s fan status by checking Facebook.
Fans would be entitled to certain privileges (determined by Burger Shack management) and
discounts on regular menu items. Wi-Fi infrastructure could be installed to facilitate online
activity such as, clicking to become a fan, on the spot.

The Fan Page can also be used to conduct polls and get important information and analysis from
the existing customers, such as the most popular burgers, and what customers would like to see
more of, and this would allow the management at Burger Shack to make better and more
informed future decisions.

Twitter
A Twitter account is highly interactive, and it would enable the management of Burger Shack to
interact with individual customers. Twitter would likely be used to disseminate information on
promotions and new dishes, as well as to communicate with the Burger Shack community to
foster a genuinely personal business-customer relationship. Twitter also allows for spontaneous
response, and feedback can be almost immediate. This social networking channel can also be
used to run promotions whenever the management of Burger Shack feels like it is necessary (off-
peak hours, slow moving sale days etc). However, this might not be as successful as expected, as
the adoption rate of Twitter is not as high as the United States or Britain. Our survey results also
show that Twitter is not as popular as Facebook.

Measurement/Return on Investment
To measure and determine if the efforts have been successful, the key is to consistently monitor
the channel statistics using Google analytic. For a Burger Shack, we recommend to measure
within a month after implementation. To analyze the impact of social media, search the number
of mentions of Burger Shack using Google Search and Google Blog Search, assess the level of
participation in Burger Shack events as promoted through the social media platforms, interpret
attitudes of virtual community towards the restaurant by reading client comments and observing
online behavior, conduct online brand awareness surveys on clients at restaurant, and compare
the overall sales figures before and after the integration of social media tools.

Social Channels to Avoid

Blogs
Enlisting popular bloggers and riding on the coat-tails of their influence could well be effective
for Burger Shack in terms of creating awareness through celebrity-status endorsement. However,
it also can come across gimmicky, and any ill feelings existing and potential customers might
have toward the selected blogger(s) could have an undesirable impact on their impression of
Burger Shack. Furthermore, celebrity-oriented publicity stunts runs contrary to the spirit of
simple authenticity that Burger Shack was foundered upon.
Friendfeed
According to research conducted, Friendfeed is not very popular in Singapore, and it would be
inefficient and not very impactful to use it as a component in the social media mix to foster an
online community for Burger Shack.

Wikipedia Entry
A Wikipedia article on Burger Shack would not be a bane, but because it does very little in terms
of sustaining an active online community, is not an element which would be included as part of
the social media plan.

Friendster, MySpace
Low rates of adoption locally would render these two forms of social media platforms
ineffective.

Case Studies: Social Media in the Food and Beverage Industry

Coffee Groundz
With Starbucks hogging most of the limelight related to coffee houses using social media, it is
easy to forget the smaller independent coffee houses that pepper the urban landscape. Houston-
based coffee house Coffee Groundz3 is probably best known for its clever use of Twitter’s direct
messaging feature to facilitate operations such as drive-thru orders and table reservations4. With
close to 8,000 Twitter followers to date, the café has cultivated a loyal and engaged fan base and
generates close to 30% of revenue this way.

Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company

Hailing from Florida, Joffrey’s5 took a slightly more targeted approach to social media.
Targeting bloggers (who, incidentally, enjoy their daily coffee), Joffrey’s mailed out free sachets
of their very coffee powder for these bloggers to conduct their own taste tests. Response was so
positive that it spilled over to numerous popular review websites such as Mashable and CNET,
generating immeasurable buzz around the café and its coffee products6.

AJ Bombers
AJ Bombers is a once-flailing burger joint in Milwaukee. And while they maintain all the
popular social media channels, AJ Bombers credits their success (and a significant 30% of sales)
to Twitter above all else7. Together with using Twitter as a means of building relationships with
loyal followers, Joe Sorge, owner of AJ, also features their Twitter account on physical menus
and chalkboards, encouraging dine-in guests to follow them and look out for promotions there.

For more case studies, please see APPENDIX 1.4

APPENDIX

3
http://twitter.com/coffeegroundz and http://thecoffeegroundz.com/
4
http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_coffeegroundz
5
http://joffreys.com/
6
http://thefuturebuzz.com/2008/06/03/case-study-building-buzz-blogosphere-joffreys-coffee/
7
http://www.socialgloo.co.uk/2010/02/25/ajbombers-interview-how-a-small-business-can-
use-social-media/
1.1 Interview with Ian, Owner of Burger Shack
Contact Information: ian@island_cremery.com
Date: Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Time: 1400 – 1430

Q1. Could you please give us an overview of Burger Shack’s business

structure?
Burger Shack is a casual restaurant with great focus placed on the quality of food
served to our customers. Our burgers are homemade, using the best ingredients
like the Wagyu and New Zealand beef. To make sure that our quality food is made
available to our customers at an affordable price, we choose the lower grade high-
quality beef that is also at a relatively lower cost than the usual wagyu beef. There
is minimum service and ambience in the restaurant right now as we place greater
emphasis on giving customers a great meal at a great price. Burger Shack was set
up 4-5 months ago. It is also a subsidiary of Island Creamery, a highly popular ice-
cream joint with homemade ice cream and with local flavors.

Q2. Could you give a short description on your targeted group of

consumers?
Our key customers make up of students on weekday, families on weekend and
generally the young couples for our dinner crowd. We have a high inflow of students
because of the cluster of schools nearby. The schools include Hwa Chong Junior
College, National Junior College, Methodist Girls School, Singapore Chinese Girls
School, Nanyang Girls High and Raffles Primary School. With that, it also means that
our business, especially during lunchtime can be greatly affected by the school
holidays.

Q3. What are Burger Shack’s existing marketing and publicity efforts in
both traditional media and social media?
Because we are a new start-up eatery, we have restricted funds and thus, there are
minimum marketing and publicity efforts. Our inflow of customers is mainly a result
of word-of-mouth through the community in the Bukit Timah area and the existing
customers at Island Creamery. As for our corporate website, it is currently under
construction and is expected to be ready in 3-4 months’ time. As for the social
media aspect, we are not engaged in any at the moment but we are keen to explore
the uses and benefits of social media channels.

Q4. What are some of the challenges facing Burger Shack at the moment?
Our business is particularly poor during the school holidays as the students make up
quite a significant bulk of our customers. Also, our sales can be quite low during the
quiet days in the midweek like Tuesday and Wednesday.

Q5. What would be some of the key objectives if the company adopts
social media channels in its marketing and publicity efforts?
It would be good if the social media channels can help to boost our sales during the
off-peak hours. Maybe we can use Facebook and Twitter as our advertisement
platform for off-peak promotions. Also, we aim to use the social media channels to
help us connect with our existing customers, especially those of high customer
loyalty to Burger Shack. Other than that, I am also very open to other benefits that
social media could bring to my business. Just a note that I am not very keen on
going to blogs and having bloggers to review about Burger Shack because of their
possibly biased views.

1.2 Survey Form

Hello! We are implementing a project for SMU regarding a social media framework
for Burger Shack. Your input in this survey will help a lot in making this restaurant a
much cooler place to eat at. Thank you and enjoy your meal!

Age & Occupation _____________________________________________

1) Do you go to school or work around the Bukit Timah area? Y / N
2) Which day of the week do you usually come here? (please CIRCLE your choices)
Mon / Tue / Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun
3) What time of the day are you usually here? _______________
4) Do you usually takeaway / eat in when at Burger Shack? (please CIRCLE
your choice)
5) Do you use mobile phone apps? Y / N If yes, which ones most often?
_______________________________
6) Which methods do you use most often to get basic information about eateries
when deciding to eat out?
How often? (please )
Method Moderat If always, which ones?
Never Seldom Always
ely
Food review
websites
Blogs
Mobile phone
apps
Restaurant’s own
website
Twitter
Word of mouth

7) Which methods do you use most often to get info about promotions at eateries?
How often? (please )
Method Moderat If always, which ones?
Never Seldom Always
ely
Food review
websites
Blogs
Mobile phone
apps
Restaurant’s own
website
Twitter
Word of mouth

8) Which social network platforms do you use most often?

Social Network How often? (please )
 Never Monthly Weekly Daily If daily, why?
Facebook
Twitter
Blogs
Friendster
Friendfeed
Blogs
YouTube
Wikis (not
Wikipedia)
1.3 Survey Results
1.4 More Case Studies: Social Media in the Food and Beverage
Industry

1. Mobile Restaurants

Big Gay Ice Cream Truck and Kogi BBQ

Both American businesses operate out of vehicles and specialize in selling their
products as takeaways. That said, their locations tend to be unpredictable and they
attract customers who are mobile and strapped for time.

Indeed, tech-savvy customers have come to embrace Twitter as a means of keeping

track of where the trucks are parked at any given time and how long they will be
there for, communicating directly with management, as well as fun events taking
place on their homepages.

We have observed New York-based Big Gay8 to be depending heavily on Twitter to

maintain direct relationships with their followers through replies and occasional
promotional giveaways. In the case of Los Angeles-based Kogi BBQ9, which also has
a brick-and-mortar restaurant, they use in addition to YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, a
Facebook Fan Page10 to foster a growing community of more than 7,000 fans.

2. Brick-and-Mortar Joints

Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse11 in Massachusetts has credited at least 25% of

revenue to their use of social media platforms12 such as Facebook13, YouTube, Flickr,
Twitter, and most importantly their blog Prime Cuts14 where they feature personal
stories, recipes, and their inspirations behind the recipes. While each site is used
very differently, they are all bound by founder Justin Levy’s philosophy of honing a
relationship-centric community.

1.5 Benefits and risks of implementing selected social media platforms

o Facebook Fan Page

Using Facebook, a phenomenally popular social media platform, to reach out to

8
http://twitter.com/biggayicecream and http://www.biggayicecreamtruck.com/
9
http://twitter.com/kogibbq and http://kogibbq.com
10
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kogi-BBQ/69270921928#!/pages/Kogi-
BBQ/69270921928?v=wall
11
http://www.caminitosteakhouse.com
12
http://www.caminitosteakhouse.com/news/2009/10/justin-levy-of-caminito-argentinean-
steakhouse-discusses-social-media-marketing-for-restaurants.html
13
http://www.facebook.com/caminitosteakhouse
14
http://primecutsblog.com/2010/01/21/finding-heritage-in-sausage/
existing loyal customers, their friends and netizens in general, is the least risky of the options
proposed. The prevalence of Facebook in the lives of the people who frequent and who
would visit Burger Shack is undeniable. Creating a fan page would bring the Burger Shack
community together in a visible and measurable manner. Customers would be able to interact
with fellow Burger Shack fans as well as augment their sense of belonging to the community
by posting comments, photos and notices, further deepening loyalty to the café and people
involved in it as a result of the emotional and psychological attachment to its development.
Also, Burger Shack management would have a cost-effective means of monitoring their
customer base in terms of numbers and psychographics by viewing the profiles and
contributions of their fan base. In terms of the risks, the online community, due to their
freedom to add, change and shape the content of what appears on the fan page, could distort
the image of Burger Shack in a manner the management not only may not be partial to, but
also cannot control easily.

o Twitter Account
Integrating Twitter into the social media mix of Burger Shack would allow for
updates on Burger Shack activities and news to be quickly circulated; it is particularly adept
for people who appreciate getting information on-the-go, as Twitter can be rapidly and
effortlessly accessed on mobile devices vis-à-vis multifarious client platforms. Burger Shack
management will be able to use Twitter to communicate directly with customers and
potential patrons, strengthening the relationship between business and customer in a manner
congruent to its positioning as a fun and casual café. However, a Twitter account can be
difficult for a very busy team of staff to manage, and it might become neglected; where
updates are few and far between. This would create the impression that nothing much is
going on at the Burger Shack, and discourage people who aren’t regular customers from
dropping in.

o Youtube Channel
The use of Youtube would provide Burger Shack with a compelling visual means of
promoting itself through the production of their own material and sharing of videos
considered to be aligned with the café’s image and personality, which would be fairly novel
for a food and beverage establishment, and the potential for Youtube to be used for creative
advertising is extremely high and could be explored. That said, the resources (time, money)
required of the staff to make full use of Youtube as such render it not quite viable at the
moment.

o Mobile phone Application – Game

Developing a mobile phone application with relevance to Burger Shack would
definitely be interesting and initially pique the curiosity of people who know about it. The
originality of the idea would make the almost anyone want to find out more and perhaps play
it. This would be a clever tactic to use the game for branding and publicity; reinforcing
Burger Shack’s fun and youthful character, as well as capitalizing on the buzz to keep Burger
Shack on the tips of everyone’s tongues. Unfortunately, it is challenging to conceptualize a
game that engages users over a long period of time, and if it is not captivating enough or
considered silly, could be negatively associated with Burger Shack’s business, and will not
pay off as intended.
 Bibliography

Jenkins, H. (22 March, 2007) Transmedia Storytelling 101. Confessions of an

Aca-Fan: The Official Site of Henry Jenkins, Retrieved 22 February, 2010 from
http://www.henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html
Top Sites in Singapore. Alexa, The Web Information Company, Retrieved 22
February, 2010 from http://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/SG