Three Takeaways from the Brand Insider Summit on QSR

Last month, I had the pleasure of representing Pixability at MediaPost’s Brand Insider Summit QSR in beautiful Scottsdale, Arizona. The conference gathered quick-service restaurant marketers from across the country to talk about how brands and their agencies can adapt their strategies for the changing digital landscape and world. We heard from Burger King’s Jorge Oliveira on how the brand prioritizes the moments that matter to drive incremental traffic and build the brand, and from Ryan Murrin of Pancheros regarding how the burrito leaders completed a digital-first brand makeover. Liz Bazner, director of digital at A&W Restaurants, also shared an in-depth presentation about how the brand rebuilt their advertising strategy around digital, with fully 100% of digital advertising tied to geotargeting.

Throughout the event, QSR executives kept circling back to a handful of top-of-mind issues. Here’s the three that stood out to me:

Attribution of Sales Results to Tangible Marketing Efforts

The age-old problem of attribution continues to be a thorn in the side of marketers. How much of my marketing spend is working to drive sales? What incremental sales revenue is being driven through marketing efforts? Could my marketing dollars be reallocated to reach more people, or reach the right people? One thing is for certain, with marketers across the industry searching for deeper insights, platforms and third party partners are moving to help brands understand deeper attribution. On YouTube, where Pixability specializes, we worked with a QSR brand recently to optimize their video campaigns to drive in-store traffic — and through a highly targeted strategy, we ended up delivering a 30% lower cost-per-in-store-visit than the vertical benchmark.

All Eyes On Digital

Marketers are increasingly wary of buying linear TV ads, as this strategy can often be very, very costly — but most importantly, TV ads don’t always deliver directly measurable results. So, QSR marketers are rethinking their strategy. While many extended their strategy to digital media through display, mobile and video in recent years, more and more marketers are focusing on video, as they’re seeing the best measurable return on their investment through this medium.

Competition Is Driving Brands To Seek Out New Ways To Connect

Across their marketing efforts, QSR brands are searching for new and innovative ways to connect with their target audience. Recently, when we helped a QSR brand drive their video strategy on YouTube, we found that retargeting with snackable, 6-second-long Bumper ads was highly effective at driving frequency and converting viewers into store visitors. But as the industry changes so rapidly, marketers need to work with partners that can keep them up to date on the latest products, trends, and strategies to stand out and connect with their audience.

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