Sitting alongside the bustling NH – 17 at Amrita Jn., Edapally in Ernakulam, Cafe 911 is a refreshing sight for weary travellers and people seeking a getaway from the mundane routines of life, alike.
Step inside and the interiors will remind you of a typical cafe in London or Manchester. The walls are warmly decorated with photographs of The Beatles, the iconic Porsche 911 and so on. The coffee bar, which borrows its swanky looks from the bar you’d find in Rome’s Ducati Caffè, and the fancy blinds which opens up to a wonderful view of the world outside, adds to the charm of the small and cozy cafe.
In September 2013, Cafe 911 approached us with a requirement to give a boost to the number of footfalls in their outlet. We proposed an online-offline integrated branding strategy, with a distinct focus on promotions using Facebook. This seemed wise, since a vast majority of the cafe’s target audience had a Facebook profile.
The name of the cafe being popularly associated with sports car Porsche 911, the cafe aims to position itself as a motorsport enthusiast’s cafe. With this intent in mind, the voice of the entire promotional activities was decided to be based on speed, elegance and exotic motor sports.
One of the major reasons why businesses embrace social media is to connect, interact and grow conversations with their customers. Case in point, Cafe 911 had already made a loyal customer base, and so it was essential to draw them to the social page and ensure their participation too.
This outlandish posters which are strategically placed at multiple points in the Cafe, were designed with a sole purpose to poke curiosity and to encourage customers to go online and ‘like’ the Cafe’s Facebook page.
To bring to pass, the brand association of the cafe with the international coffee brand ‘Lavazza’, which they use, paper tents like the one above were placed on all serving tables.
Coffeeology
Custom designed artworks with informative facts and trivia about Coffee were periodically posted to the Facebook page, in an infocard model. Purpose of this campaign was to share knowledge to the followers on the subject, and grow their interest towards the page.
Coffee talks
Custom designed artworks with testimonials from customers were periodically posted to the page. This was based on the ideology that testimonials from real customers would help boost the credibility of the business and in turn, draw more loyal customers.
Special Promotions
One of the finest offerings of the cafe, are their scrumptious burgers. The chef was tenaciously positive that once the customers tried out their burgers, they wouldn’t settle for anything less. Thus took shape, one of the initial in-shop campaigns we proposed – Burger Rush. A combo meal of a burger, fries and unlimited Pepsi was offered from a tempting price of INR 149 onwards. This campaign was promoted online and offline, was well received and eventuated in a lot of 911 Burger fans.
A fine example for the merging of online and offline integrated campaign – Tuesday Treats was a particular offer in which, the customers could order a club sandwich of choice and get a free drink of choice. Facebook fans could claim the offer via Facebook Offers from the Cafe’s Facebook page and, they could redeem it from the outlet on tuesdays. This campaign was done towards the last month of the project, based on an analysis of the daily sales for the past 2 months and realizing that it was at the least on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, in a typical week.
Coffee Moments (Major Campaign)
For this Facebook based online photography contest, a custom Facebook page app was developed and by liking the page, anyone could upload their coffee themed photos through the app. From amongst the 100+ entries received, 18 photos were selected for the public voting round. These photos were uploaded as an album in the cafe’s page and the contestants were intimated to promote among friends and relatives, to get maximum likes on their entry.
Gladwin Rinosh Xavier from Ernakulam, won the contest with an unrivalled 508 likes for his entry.
The winners of Coffee Moments contest were given these custom merchandises and coupons; which were also designed by us.
The above graph shows the increase in the Facebook page’s Daily People Talking About during the major campaign. (The red arrow denotes commencement of campaign) Overall, the 18 photos amassed a sum of over 1500 likes and even after considering a fair 20 per cent of repeated likes, the entries still managed to reach at least 1200 people of high relevance. This major campaign was a huge success and the daily conversations about the page on Facebook, increased by almost 80%.
Building a loyal customer base had always been the focus of Cafe 911′s social media strategy. And so, when the page hit the 5000 likes milestone, we thought it best to reward the lucky customer with a delicious dinner from the Cafe.
Below, the dinner voucher which was received by Roy Thomas, resident of Ernakulam.
Result: One more loyal customer.
Besides the custom artworks for the campaigns and posters mentioned above, other artworks which were in accordance with festive days and other occasions were also periodically published on the Facebook page.
Page Likes
The following line graph shows the change in the total number of page likes on Cafe 911′s Facebook page before we took over their page and during the duration of the project. (The red arrow denotes the commencement of our project)
Relevance of these Likes
One of the interesting highlights of the campaign was the demography of the likes and activity on the page.
