Restaurant turned ad agency, Smugglers’ Inn, responded to a distress call from New Mexico recently. Local hamburger chain, Blake's Lotaburger, whose green chile cheeseburger had reigned unchallenged in the Land of Enchantment for 50 years, was taking a caning from a horde of national chains that had swept into the area with shiny new stores and 99-cent menus.
One of the assets that Lotaburger had was the funky burger joint ambiance of its 75 locations; no one was ever going to confuse them with McDonald’s or Sonic. Many locations were dominated by fifteen-foot metal representations of the founder, Mr. Blake, holding a sign. Some have remarked that Blake reminded them of an evil clown; others say he looks like George W. Bush. We dug the signs and were pretty sure they could be used for more than just trumpeting “best breakfast burrito in town” or “new blackberry shake”. (This latter message had been posted, at one store, for 3 years.) We wrote a dozen messages designed to stop traffic and, hopefully, generate some buzz for Lotaburger. In short order, pictures of the new signs were flying around the blogosphere. Local TV news ran stories on who was behind the strange messages, which was never revealed.
To see more from this campaign for Blake’s Lotaburger, as well as examples of our work for other client’s, click on our website link.
