Every year, Moe's Southwest Grill gives its fans something to celebrate by holding Free Queso Day. Throughout the years, this event has taken on a variety of cheese-inspired names, furthering the legacy of its fans' favorite side. But in 2015, Moe's decided to brand the Free Queso Day celebration as Quesopalooza. The Moe's name stands for "Musicians, Outlaws and Entertainers" and — fittingly enough — the brand wanted to make sure that the event stayed true to Moe's' identity and goals as a restaurant. Because Moe's isn't just another restaurant. It's a place where people can come together in an atmosphere that allows them to be themselves. And what better way to achieve this goal than with Quesopalooza?
In July of 2015, two months before the event, Moe's came to Moxie to increase awareness and buzz around its nation-wide event. The brand's true dream: That Quesopalooza would go viral. Through the use of media, a real-time social engagement strategy and the development of consumer-informed social content ranging from static to video, Moxie brought Quesopalooza to life in all its rock-n-roll and free cheese glory. This Lollapalooza-inspired experience was created to inspire customers to be themselves. It ultimately did that and more.
To build awareness around Quesopalooza, Moxie pushed Moe's (literally) to live up to its name. Together, we would create a campaign designed to celebrate the musician, outlaw and entertainer in all of us.
Knowing that Moe's fans are famously engaged across social and mobile, content would be key to bringing our vision to life. Enter Moxie's Unit3C, a nimble, cross-specialty team focused on creating original, buzz-worthy content for our clients. Moxie's Unit3C developed a socially driven campaign featuring animated GIFs and two featured videos — all focused on elevating Moe's social pages and engaging its fans. And the star of the show — the "Chip Guitars Rock!" video — put the heart and soul of Moe's at the center, making music the focal point of this guitar-smashing spot while hyping the event across social channels and media.
"Chip Guitars Rock!" required us to think beyond the standard chip and queso dip promo. A chip as a guitar was initially a dream concept — one of those fleeting ideas thrown out in a room and initially deemed almost impossible. But with Unit3C's passionate and agile creative team at the helm, a life-size chip guitar was born and — in under two weeks — the video was scripted, shot, finished and served up to hungry Moe's fans. The "Chip Guitars Rock!" video was a smashing hit with Moe's and its fans. It not only brought to life the concert theme of Quesopalooza, but it also put the heart of the Moe's brand on center stage by celebrating originality in an environment that rocks.
With the video as a successful social driver building hype around Quesopalooza, the Moxie team focused on the final phase of the campaign. Recognizing that success in social requires multiple touchpoints with fans, our social team developed an all-inclusive social strategy culminating with a Queso war-room setup to deliver on real-time engagement around Quesopalooza day. Leveraging a 3-tiered Surprise and Delight model, we delighted fans talking about Quesopalooza across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with Moe's swag, gift cards and custom content, thereby deepening the conversation and Moe's' relationship with its customers. From start to finish, Moxie worked side by side with the Moe's team — and ultimately the brand's fans — to create and deliver honestly awesome experiences.
The partnership between Moe's and Moxie went beyond just the numbers. We worked seamlessly together — from the video shoot to the war room — to bring Quesopalooza to life. And at the end of a very cheesy day, Quesopalooza crushed and exceeded all goals and benchmarks:
* Twitter drove over a half a million video views and 4M impressions across 15 posts between August 25 and September 18, 2015
> During Quesopalooza on September 17, #FreeQuesoRocks was trending nationwide
* Across the 13 Facebook posts, there was a 22% interaction rate and over 1.4K shares
* Social channels saw a massive spike in followers, including 1.5K on Facebook, 1.1K on Twitter and over 400 on Instagram during this event time period
* Video:
> "Chip Guitars Rock" is now the 2nd highest video viewed on Moe's YouTube channel with 44K views, while Facebook drove over 240K views, and 270K total views on Twitter
> The video was also picked up by Adweek, MTV, Guitar World and a variety of media publications
