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Dairy Queen starts Blizzard social media battle

Dairy Queen starts Blizzard social media battle

The brand pits its apple and pumpkin flavors against each other in a new marketing campaign.

Dairy Queen’s executive vice president of marketing, Barry Westrum

Dairy Queen is pitting its Apple Pie and Pumpkin Pie Blizzards against each in a social-only marketing campaign.

Tapping into such platforms as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the Minneapolis-based brand has pitted two towns in what it calls a #BlizzardBattle, urging social media users to #VoteApple or #VotePumpkin through Sept. 29.

Barry Westrum, Dairy Queen’s executive vice president of marketing, said in an interview that the brand has reached a level on social media where it can promote products solely on those platforms.

“We’re just starting to get traction now where we can market products almost exclusively via social and get transactions in our restaurants in a way that in the past only national television has done,” Westrum said.

Westrum said Dairy Queen has grown its Facebook base over the past year by more than a million fans, to 9.2 million, and increased its Twitter followers fourfold, to 237,900.

As of Sept. 17, more than 603,000 fans had voted at the dedicated Blizzard Battle microsite. “Apple Capital” Wenatchee, Wash., lagged behind “Pumpkin Capital” Caro, Mich., by 10 percentage points, at 45 percent to 55 percent.

Sprinklr survey

Data from social media analytics firm Sprinklr, which powers the NRN Social 200, indicated that 35.3 percent of the social conversation was dedicated to pumpkin, while 19.2 percent was focused on apple. On Wednesday, Dairy Queen ranked No. 5 in the NRN Social 200 index.

Dairy Queen has offered the Pumpkin Pie Blizzard for several years and this year created and introduced the Apple Pie Blizzard, Westrum said. Dairy Queen has units in both towns and featured residents of each in YouTube videos that accompany the social campaign.


Mayoral promotions

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The mayors of the two towns are also getting in on the promotion.

On Sept. 5, when #ApplePie was 20,000 votes behind pumpkin, Frank Kuntz, mayor of “Apple Capital of the World” Wenatchee, Wash., penned a letter to cable-television comedy-show host Stephen Colbert imploring: “The taste of freedom is on the line. Our national dessert is in jeopardy.”

Mayor Dick Pouliot of “Pumpkin Capital” Caro, Mich., is also helping the effort.

“We are promoting this on Instagram, but what we are finding in this digital-social age is that fans are platform agnostic,” Dairy Queen’s Westrum said. “We might promote something on Facebook but it might get responded to on Twitter. All of these sites, including Pinterest, Vine, YouTube and Google+, are all places where our fans are spending their time. We are happy to have the conversation in any of these channels.”

The #BlizzardBattle campaign went live on Sept. 1, with the introductions of the Blizzard flavors into the restaurants. Voting concludes on Sept. 29, Westrum said.

While apple lags in voting, “Right now in our restaurants, apple is actually out-selling pumpkin,” he said. “Pumpkin may have had a head start, but we think apple will be up there with some of the greats.”

Dairy Queen said it has been pleased with the results.

“Fans are interacting with our brand on all these available social channels,” Westrum said. “It’s a wonderful way to promote our products in different ways than television. We’ll certainly continue to play in this space.”

Westrum said he’s also been heartened by the rivalry between the two towns.

“It’s playful, good-natured ribbing,” he said. “People in the towns are uploading their own videos to YouTube.”

The #BlizzardBattle, which was created by an outside agency, “was originally conceived as a television idea, but we thought it might work better as a social idea,” Westrum said, adding, “so far, so good.”

Dairy Queen, a division of Berkshire Hathaway, has more than 4,500 restaurants in the United States and a total of 6,300 globally.

Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @RonRuggless

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