Glowup + TGI Fridays
Fall 2019
ROLE
Marketing Strategist/Designer
(Class Project at Northeastern University)
SKILLS
Strategy, Art Direction, Storyboarding,
Content Planning, Copywriting
In my final semester of college, I took a course called Advertising and Brand Promotion, taught by
Professor Jennifer Yule at Northeastern University.
For our final project, my team was assigned to pitch a marketing campaign for TGI Fridays.
My teammates, Aneri Shah, Rose Alawami, Haley Mitchell, Dharani Myadam and I focused on a data-driven brand refresh, leveraging the existing strength of the restaurants' bartenders and the execution of our creative promotional strategy.
The general plan, taken from our brief, was
as follows:
"We found that there is a place for TGI Fridays to shift the way people think about a night at the restaurant without causing harm to current regular patrons. By leaning into the strength of the bar and launching an effective promotional campaign, we believe the company can engage a previously untapped consumer segment in young professionals and millennials looking for a reliable place to get a drink."
Phase 1 - Expose
The cognitive stage in the hierarchy of effects, the goal of Phase 1 is increasing awareness and knowledge of the strength of the bars found in TGI Fridays. Through strong print and digital visual content, we are simply utilizing mere exposure and fleeting attraction to leave an impression.
Phase 2 - Engage
After re-familiarizing our consumers with the restaurant with new creative branding, we proceed to Phase Two. This second phase is all about engaging directly with our consumers. It still falls within the cognitive stage of the hierarchy of effects, as it attempts to grow the target audience’s knowledge of TGI Fridays, but by the end it is anticipated users would be in the affective stage as they begin to develop a preference for the brand.
The promotional avenue we have chosen to achieve this comes in the form of an invitation for consumers to put our bartenders to the test. We will produce a commercial
and with a variety of social content would-be bar patrons to come into a Friday’s, order any drink off the menu, and wait for it to be made perfectly. The leverage point comes as a game-like incentive; if the bartender doesn’t make the drink perfectly, the next one is on Fridays.
Featured here is the storyboard for the
initial commercial.
Phase 3 - Excite
At this point in the hierarchy of effects, we know customers have had a good experience on TGI Fridays. The main goal of phase three is to excite consumers and make them want to engage with the TGI Fridays brand. This is, without a doubt, the conative stage of the campaign. Our goal is to have consumers develop a preference for TGI Fridays, or better yet, conviction in making the business their bar of choice for all occasions.
Now, we want them to feel like they have a trusted relationship with the brand, so much so that they wanted to share this excitement with others. The task of consumers in this campaign is simple: share photos of themselves having fun at the Fridays bar on social media for the chance win TGI host their next event. This grant the opportunity for brand exposure on two fronts.
