Advertising Case Study

Bob Evans
Company Background
Founded in 1953, Bob Evans Farms is a Nasdaq-listed, $1.7-billion restaurant and retail food products company. It operates nearly 600 restaurants in 18 states and distributes a wide variety of refrigerated and frozen foods across the United States and Canada.

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

Agency:

Objective
In July 2010, Bob Evans set out to drive awareness of its Facebook Page the free public profile that enables companies to share their business and products with Facebook users on an ongoing basis. National French Fries Day provided a fun and uniquely engaging platform for Bob Evans, says Diane Walter, Digital Strategist at Brunner, Bob Evans digital marketing agency. The holiday was a reason to celebrate with our fans, while also driving awareness and trial of our Sweet Potato Fries. The company was looking to increase in-store traffic for National French Fries Day by giving away a free Sweet Potato Fries appetizer with any purchase on the day itself. This was the first giveaway weve done that was specific to Facebook, says Anne Leonard-Palmer, digital marketing manager at Bob Evans. We wanted to grow the number of fans for the brand and, above and beyond all that, to see if the idea would resonate with our audience. Objective: Drive awareness of Bob Evans Facebook Page and increase in-store traffic for National French Fries Day Solution: Ads offering users a coupon to receive a free Sweet Potato Fries appetizer with any purchase on the Day Key Lessons: Facebook provides an excellent hub for in-store as well as online promotions An ad with a strong call-to- action, placed with relevant geographic-targeting, can create great interest and participation

Approach
The campaign took place between July 6 and National French Fries Day on July 13 with a strong call-to-action: Free

The campaign taught us that we have a large, ready-made audience on Facebook thats receptive to the things Bob Evans is promoting.
Anne Leonard-Palmer, Digital Marketing Manager, Bob Evans

Advertising Case Study

Sweet Potato Fries With Every Purchase on July 13. Bob Evans made use of Facebooks target filtering by targeting users located in major Bob Evans markets in 17 states. We explored age and interest targeting, but we thought that might limit our base too much, says Adam Miller, Digital Media Planner and Buyer at Brunner. So we went with very granular geotargeted approach by sitting down with a map of each Bob Evans location and typing each town into Facebook. Those with only one or two locations received a zero-mile radius, while larger clusters received a 10-mile radius, and so on. And the brand is such an Ohio institution that we just targeted the whole state. The ads drove users to the Promotion tab on Bob Evans Facebook Page, where users could print a coupon to redeem in-store.

The Future
Bob Evans is now intent on building a community for the brand on Facebook. Our campaigns will be strengthened by our Facebook community. Instead of pushing information via TV or radio, we now have a lot of back-and-forth and daily conversations on our live Wall feeds, says Anne, referring to the place on the Page where brands can communicate with their fans through status updates. There are a lot of feel good things about the brand farm heritage, nostalgia that the Facebook community can tap into. We have a new tab on our Facebook Page that acts as a hub for all our promotions. The only challenge for us, going forward, is to have enough room to talk about all the things we want to address with our Facebook audience.

Results
The campaign generated nearly 85 million impressions, nearly 6 million of which were social The campaign generated 21,352 clicks, with an average cost-per-click of well below a dollar The number of people clicking to like Bob Evans grew by 12,000 during the week of the promotion and by another 5,000 during the 10 days following it. During the two-week period, the number of people who connected to Bob Evans Page by liking it rose from 22,000 to over 40,000 The campaign saw a return on investment of between 200 percent and 300 percent. According to Anne, the campaign more than paid for itself 2,181 coupons were redeemed

The campaign taught us that we have a large, ready-made audience on Facebook thats receptive to the things Bob Evans is promoting, says Anne.