Bringing people together
through flavor.
When I joined Qdoba, the brand had a serious awareness issue. Most people confused it with its main competitor. We needed to articulate a point of differentiation. And after a visit to the brands largest market, it became clear, the food, the people and the space made the Qdoba experience more flavorful than its competitors.
And we recognized that Qdoba brought all types of people together, making the experience even more flavorful. So, we overhauled the brand positioning and platform, giving the brand something to stand for - flavor, in all its forms, people, place, product and how they showed up in culture. We focussed on the interesting things that happen when people of all stripes connect over a fresh, flavorful meal.
And it became clear that the brand could also benefit from a refreshed stylistic POV, so we developed a more ownable design & comms system that emphasized a premium, but not too polished visual aesthetic and inviting, authentic tone of voice. This influenced every aspect of brand communication, from advertising to restaurant design, staff uniforms and packaging, to the HR hiring process, helping convey freshness and quality, metrics the brand did not historically score high on.
The platform resonated with customers, creating a more seamless, consistent, cohesive experience, where a glimpse of a TV spot delivered the same cues as a visit to a local restaurant, helping increase sales by 10% over two years, out performing industry benchmarks with 9 straight quarters of sales growth.
We also brought the brand to life in more flavorful real-life and digital ways, showing up in unexpected places to capture the attention of fickle customers.
By strategically inserting the brand into relevant cultural conversations and events that reinforced our value proposition of freshly-made, Mexican flavors, we helped differentiate from our competitors.
From “helping” Chipotle on National Avocado Day by delivering crates of avocados when they ran out, to starting a petition for all restaurants to give away guac for free, to using real fan social posts to capitalize on negative conversation about a competitor’s product, we created sharable, press-worthy content that drove trial and created massive buzz.
Supporting all these efforts, we used every opportunity we could as a moment for content creation, we activated our fan base to become micro-brand ambassadors, and developed thumb-stopping creative that inspired real-time conversations.
The social efforts focussed on bringing the brand promise to life in interesting, unexpected ways, and motivated trial with surprise and delight coupons and merch giveaways, strengthening bonds with super fans and so to be super fans.
The efforts paid off, increasing cultural relevancy and social conversation that fueled significant press coverage and earned media growth.
And we put our thumb on scale, developing limited edition merch capsules, surprising and delighting celeb fans, and developing partnerships with high profile media properties, all to meet customers organically where they were spending their time.
The efforts led to mentions during the SNL monologue, the Ellen Show and the a holiday segment during the Today Show, driving engagement metrics to levels the brand hadn’t seen in a decade.
And the marketing itself elevated the corporate profile with coverage in Ad Age, Adweek, Nation’s Restaurant News, and QSR magazine, in addition to winning Shorty and Webby awards, and being included in Social Media Week LA.