TGI Friday offers location-based adverts

American food chain TGI Fridays has launched its first location-based advertising campaign, which will run until the end of November. It is targeting people who are looking for somewhere to eat on a big night out. McDonalds and Burger King have tried it, but only with limited success; so could TGI’s be the first chain to show how it should be done?

When users are searching for things to do, in particular cinema fans, an advert will popup suggesting they visit TGI’s for food as they are only a certain distance from the store. A nice concept: but will it pay off?

The adverts will only appear during people’s lunch time and evening browsing as this is when TGI believes most of its customers will be searching for things to do that night. If the user is close enough to one of TGI’s 46 UK restaurants they will be shown an advert for something off their menu, or just a simple text advert saying how far they are from their nearest shop.

TGI has called the campaign “Make It A Premier Night Out”. It has no web presence beyond mobile handsets – it isn’t even referenced on the official website.

The idea strikes me a very good campaign. When I’m looking for things to do, I will do it on the day rather than in advance. And when hunting for cinema times / tickets I will use a web browser over an app any day – so in my eyes the targeting is great.

I think it will pay off and increase the number of guests in its eateries; but whether it will work as a long-term strategy is debateable.

It might be that this campaign is more about dipping their toe in the water of location-based adverts – something bigger might be in the pipeline and they want to estimate people’s reception to it.

Alternatively they might be doing it to become more competitive with other fast food restaurants that are bringing out apps but no location-based ads for their companies. All the big players including Burger King, McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Dominos have applications that show off their menus and help their prospective customers find their nearest restaurant – but no adverts, yet.

This campaign is one of the first of its kind and should give TGI’s a good return on their investment. In the short run it should help bring in more customers, but in the medium to long term they’ll need to get more inventive.