Click on the photo to watch the video from Fox 13 Tampa.

Ahhhhh, State Fairs!  If Michigan had this in it’s “food court”…we’d have a budget surplus for the fair!

In my morning email from “Ad Age“, they had a link to their story on the Denny’s FREE BREAKFAST  promotion that ran yesterday.

In case you missed it, Denny’s advertised for the first time ever in the Super Bowl this year.  They tagged about the last 5 seconds of their ad with a offer for everyone in America to get a free Grand Slam breakfast from 6a – 2 p on Tuesday, Feb. 3rd.  (I’m a marketer by trade so I love stuff like this, but the Grand Slam also features sausage and bacon…so I deem this appropriate bacon related news.)

In the article, Denny’s estimated their costs at $5 mil. for entire promotion.  They claim to have served over 2 mil. people.  Going with their announced totals, I believe this is incredible on so many levels…

Let’s look at some of my quick, fuzzy marketing math…

98 mil. people watched the Super Bowl.  Average spot cost was $2,2 mil. (guessing here)  This delivered a rough CPM (cost per thousand) of $0.02.  IT COST DENNY’S TWO PENNIES TO REACH A SINGLE CONSUMER!!!  Kind of makes advertising in the Super Bowl worth it for a national brand / chain.

Then 2 mil. took part in the sampling.  Let’s call this costs $2 mil (total spent less media – assumes an additional $800,000 spent on TV the following Monday as well).  That’s simple math – 2 mil. people / $2 mil. = $1.00.  The overall sampling program cost them $1.00!!!

But, this wasn’t just a simple “have a sample” type program.  These people had to make a conscious decision to drive to a destination, wait in line and the wait to be served!  Total up the amount of time an average customer would have spent getting to Denny’s, waiting at / in the restaurant and then finally sitting down and having breakfast…for sake of my fuzzy math, let’s call this average combined time 1 hour.  WOW!!  They provided a complete brand experience, including a sample with a retail value of $5.99, for what amounts to pennys!!!

Total cost = $5 mil. / 2 mil. served = $0.40 per person / 60 minutes brand exposure = $0.006 per minute!!!  What type of advertising/marketing provides a cost of less than a penny per 60 seconds???

Not to mention all the PR coverage and good will this generated (810 related articled found through my google machine this morning).

How many people were reacquainted with Denny’s yesterday?!  If you are thinking about going to breakfast this weekend, what’s on the top of your mind?

Now while my fuzzy math surface level analysis looks great…this completely rides on the quality of food, level of service and general cleanliness and condition of your specific Denny’s!  We’ve been to good Denny’s and we’ve been to bad!  That’s the big old wild card!

I admire this not only from my fuzzy math results, but just the willingness to do something this big!  It was an 8 hour window for the FREE breakfast!  Much longer than most sampling opportunities like this.  It was advertised on the BIGGEST stage, not limited to some web promotion or sponsorship tie-in.  They weren’t trying to limit exposure, they wanted to blow this out of the water! 

I can see the one perosn in the room who when asked for ideas said “Let’s give everyone in America a FREE Grand Slam breakfast!” and I applaud him/her for putting it out there…not limiting themselves.  I also applaud Denny’s for accepting the idea and really running with it!  So often, ideas like these get killed quickly, either through individual self-editing or corporate unwillingness. 

You can quibble with my math (in fact I am sure my numbers are not accurate…so I’ll save you the trouble) but you have to admit this was the right promotion at the right time with the right support.

Kudos Denny’s, kudos indeed!