wagamama

Noodle Tour

A few years ago, wagamama made the wise decision to stop using discounts in marketing. It was a good move overall, but it put them out of sorts with their student customers. wagamama needed a new way to re-engage with the two million or so students in the UK.

Begin with insight. That’s the key. So Albert studied the audience and their habits. Social media is critical for students, but as a marketing tool it isn’t enough on its own. To reach this audience, wagamama needed a combination of social media with live and promotional tactics.

Our central idea was to send two carefully selected students on a road trip, serving noodles to the student nation. They blogged their trip to 12 universities, posting comments and photos, and invited others to follow them and get involved. This was the wagamama Noodle Tour

We put QR codes on all the pre-promotion material and sampling boxes. These codes took students to the Facebook site, and invited them to become wagamama members. We also gave away ‘Golden Tickets’, which got them free Tiger beer or branded gifts in local wagamama restaurants.

So we took great care in choosing our Facebook pair. We looked at their personality, understanding of the audience and ability to market the Facebook site. At a local level, we also employed students from each university on the Tour, to help in pre-promotion. And then it just snowballed.

In terms of results, longer term results are still pending but we know in the 4 weeks post activity, student custom in our target outlets rose by more than 80% and we had over 30,000 active members of our Noodle Tour community and 800,000 views on our Facebook page.

 

 

Added May 16th, 2011