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SUMMARY:
Ever felt like your brand’s biggest challenge is holding you back? What if that very challenge is your greatest opportunity? After all, our companies’ greatest strengths and weaknesses are often two sides of the same coin. If your brand is smaller than your competitors, then double down on your nimbleness and ability to be more human and less formulaic. If your organization is big and unwieldy, focus your brand on the surety that your customers get from working with a major institution. To spark your next great idea, today we bring you a behind-the-scenes look at examples from the original family steak house and a compression sock startup. |
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In our first example, the team realized that the burden of being ‘old and irrelevant’ (and perhaps even people thinking, ‘it no longer exists’) can be an opportunity for ‘nostalgia.’
Sizzler was once a thriving fast-casual restaurant chain with 270 locations worldwide. By 2023, its presence was reduced to just 80 restaurants in the Western U.S. and Puerto Rico.
Its social media campaigns had become dependent on brand-owned assets.
For example, Sizzler's Facebook page primarily featured generic food photos and promotional offers, with little interaction or community building. The Instagram account, while showcasing menu items, lacked the vibrant, user-generated content that drives engagement on the platform. On Twitter, sporadic posts about daily specials failed to generate significant traction or conversations.
The brand’s traditional marketing tactics relied heavily on promotions.
Creative Sample #1: Ads from 2020
The top search query related to Sizzler was ‘Is Sizzler still in business?,’ highlighting the need to reassert the brand’s presence in the public consciousness.
The team brought in a new agency, and developed a comprehensive, seven-step campaign strategy that blended nostalgia with modern marketing techniques.
The team conducted extensive market research, including focus groups, online surveys, and social media listening. This research revealed three primary target groups:
The research uncovered a significant nostalgic connection among young adults who had positive childhood memories of Sizzler but were unsure if the restaurant still existed. This insight became a cornerstone of the campaign strategy.
“Nostalgia is more than just a trip down memory lane; it's a direct line to the emotional core of consumer decision-making,” said Duncan Smith, Global CPO, Journey Further (Sizzler’s performance marketing agency). “In an age of constant change and information overload, nostalgia offers consumers a comforting anchor to the familiar, making it an incredibly effective tool for building lasting brand relationships.”
Based on the research findings, the team developed a multi-channel approach to reestablish Sizzler's brand presence. The creative strategy focused on evoking positive emotions and memories associated with past dining experiences while simultaneously modernizing the brand's image.
The team revamped the paid search strategy, creating separate campaigns for each audience segment with tailored messaging:
Using Google Performance Max, they piloted ads across three ZIP code clusters, expanding to all relevant clusters as success increased. This hyper-local approach allowed for more relevant messaging and offers based on specific location demographics.
The team ran ads in English as well as in Spanish.
The team engaged regional foodie, family, and lifestyle influencers who were genuine fans to showcase their local restaurant through authentic reviews and experiences. This included asking creators to share their favorite ways to enjoy Sizzler’s cheese toast to create a buzz around ‘Cheese Toast Month’ and showcasing new menu launches and ‘iconic pairings.’
The activity was natively posted across both Meta and TikTok to reach the target audience as well via TikTok’s Partnership Ads and Spark Ads to drive customers to Sizzler’s website.
For example, sisters Joanna and Grace Park – exercisewithextrafries on TikTok with 24,900 followers – created a video that received 44,600 views in which they called themselves an iconic pairing, and discussed the iconic pairings at Sizzler.
Creative Sample #2: Paid influencer video on TikTok
In another example, James Alvarez – __jamesalvarez on Instagram with 141,000 followers – shared a Reel of taking his daughter to Sizzler as a reward for potty training. It received 61 comments.
Creative Sample #3: Paid influencer video on Instagram
“Early on, we saw that influencer content was outperforming brand-led assets on social – with 284% more engagements versus business as usual, a 13-point brand lift after 6 months of activity, and a 19% reduction in cost per engagement when utilizing combined brand and creator activity for ‘cheese toast’, compared to just brand content," said Lauren McFarland, Influencer Marketing Director, Journey Further.
She continued, “To capitalize on this success, we broadened our influencer framework to include family and lifestyle creators and broadened our messaging to include storytelling-style content which we know resonates with social users.”
The team is continuously adding new content creators, including Spanish-speaking ones, to diversify their reach and appeal to a broader audience.
The team prioritized consistency and accuracy across Google My Business profiles, ensuring customers could easily find up-to-date information about Sizzler's locations and offerings. They also implemented technical SEO improvements, including site speed optimization and regular audits to enhance the overall user experience.
The campaign's pièce de résistance was a collaboration with Full House and Fuller House star Jodie Sweetin, recreating her Sizzler shrimp commercial from 36 years ago. This clever nod to nostalgia not only captured media attention but also resonated strongly with the target audience who grew up watching Sweetin on television.
The new commercial featured Sweetin playfully recreating scenes from her childhood ad, interspersed with modern footage of the updated menu and dining experience. This juxtaposition of past and present effectively communicated that while Sizzler had evolved, it still maintained the core elements that customers loved.
Creative Sample #4: Beginning of TV commercial, showing Sweetin’s original Sizzler commercial from 1987
Creative Sample #5: TV commercial then shows Sweetin today, discussing Sizzler
The campaign also won the brand earned media, like a People magazine article by Erin Clements titled “Jodie Sweetin Pokes Fun at Sizzler in New Commercial: It’s ‘Still Open’”
“The biggest highlight has been observing the increase in organic, positive feature articles about the brand within the media – showing that strategic efforts to help turn the tide of the news and brand perception around Sizzler have been both positive and effective,” said Laura Naegele, Digital PR Associate, Journey Further.
Throughout the campaign, the team conducted ongoing A/B tests on ad copy, imagery, and targeting to fine-tune performance. They also monitored social media sentiment and engagement metrics to adjust their strategy in real-time.
“By leveraging nostalgia while modernizing our message, we were able to reconnect with lapsed customers and attract new ones,” Sasha Shennikov, Marketing Director, Sizzler.
The integrated marketing campaign and brand relaunch yielded these results for Sizzler:
Here’s another example where a ‘burden’ can be an opportunity. Some companies look at customer complaints as a burden and customer service as just a cost center that they want to minimize.
But what if you looked at customer support as an opportunity to better understand your customers? It might look something like the next case study.
Wellow’s name draws from Edward Sapir’s sound symbolism research. In a 1929 experiment, Sapir demonstrated that people often associate certain phonemes with particular attributes, such as size. For instance, in one experiment, participants were more likely to associate the word ‘mal’ with a larger object and ‘mil’ with a smaller one.
Using the sound symbolism approach, the team came up with Wellow which they felt evoked feelings of mellow relaxing comfort.
The company offers compression socks with an 18-25 mmHg, which means ‘millimeters of mercury,’ the standard measurement of pressure. This level of compression is meant for extended wear.
Their products are marketed with a focus on precise compression levels: 25 at the bottom, 18 at the top. The team chose to market precise claims instead of general ones based on research they found.
In the published paper It Seems Factual, But Is It?, Richard Yalch and Robert Schindler found that sharp numbers – i.e., numbers that are not round – increased belief that an advertised claim is evidence-based (however, it should be noted for the marketers and entrepreneurs reading this article, they did not find that sharp numbers increased the general perceived credibility of the claim). In a later paper Is The Devil In The Details? by Guang-Xin Xie and Ann Kronrod, the authors reported somewhat similar findings.
Willow originally launched with one-size-fits-most socks.
Creative Sample #6: One-size-fits-most compression socks
“At the heart of our brand is listening to consumer feedback,” said MichaelAaron Flicker, CEO and Founder, Wellow. “Listening closely to your customers always improves the brand and can unlock incredible value.”
The team began hearing a growing percentage of customers experiencing issues with uncomfortable fit. Engaging deeper, they learned that these customers had wider calves. Pregnant women, diabetics, people suffering from obesity, and those with circulation problems – all of whom stood to benefit from wearing compression socks daily.
Monitoring of customer feedback gave rise to a line extension: ‘Wide Calf’ socks.
Multiple prototypes were created, tested, refined, and retested. Through this iterative process, the goal was to create a sock that didn't just fit better but was also comfortable and stylish.
Creative Sample #7: New ‘wide calf’ product line
The team launched the new product line with emails to customers who had previously expressed sizing concerns: ‘We listened. We acted. Witness the transformation.’
They also made changes to the website to support the launch.
“We created dedicated product pages rather than simply adding new size variants, which meant that the wide calf socks had to be intricately woven into the shopping experience. This included improved site navigation, cross-linking on product pages, and adjusting UX/UI elements throughout the website,” said Kyle Hoffman, Director, Growth Strategy, Function Growth (Wellow’s growth accelerator agency; Wellow and Function Growth are both wholly owned by XenoPsi Ventures, and Function Growth also works for external clients).
The demand surpassed expectations, resulting in the initial run of wide-calf socks selling out in just a few weeks. Here’s a look at the results:
Target Audience Analysis: The 13 steps three brands followed to get results
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