Foodservice brands get creative with social

When it comes to social, a view is great, but a conversation is better. To capture customers’ attention for a longer period of time, restaurant brands are trying some outside-the-box ideas with Facebook’s live video tool. Using the feature, they’re not only rewarding guests for engaging with the brand, but keeping them tuned in instead of scrolling on.

Quirk works
More than once, Moe’s Southwest Grill has used Facebook Live to engage with guests via videos that don’t have obvious brand intentions. This year, to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, the Tex-Mex restaurant chain set up a pinata in its corporate office and let a staffer dressed as a giant burrito take a swing—keeping true to its quirky, playful brand voice. Viewers guessed how many swings it would take for the “burrito” to knock down the pinata, and winners were given branded shirts.

Keep them on ice
For National Iced Tea Month, the Sonic Drive-In restaurant chain created a life-size ice sculpture of rapper Ice-T holding a mic to promote its new Frozen Teas. A live video trained in on the ice statue as viewers hypothesized when the mic would drop, and Sonic engaged with them through comments on the stream. When the sculpture melted enough for the mic to drop, the first 100 fans to comment won a T-shirt.

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