New 360 campaign uses Twitter to banish boring food

At a time when most people are rediscovering the thrifty joys of a packed lunch or home-cooked meal, restaurants are having to work harder than ever to get people through the door. That's why US agency Hill Holliday has pulled out all the stops for its latest campaign for family restaurant chain Chili's. Their 360 campaign includes TV spots, web film, Twitter, and even a fictitious rival chain, P.J. Bland's.

To help Chili's stand out from competitors, the agency came up with the concept of focusing the campaign on P.J. Bland's - a restaurant chain so dull and mediocre that they serve cardboard food.

One of the key elements of the campaign is P.J. Bland's online presence. And since 2009 is the year of Twitter, the fictional P.J. Bland is encouraged to tweet away on conversation threads regarding bland food. "The real challenge was the fact that Twitter never sleeps. Sustaining P.J. on Twitter is a lot of work but it's also lots of fun," says Mike Proulx, vice president of interactive marketing.

"From a social media point of view, our goal was to give this campaign a 360 degree life. In addition to the website and Twitter channel, it extends to dozens of media sharing sites, is featured in rich media display ads, and in duelling text ads through Goggle search. Our aggressive content-seeding effort gave P.J. Bland instant credibility with influential users," he adds.

The TV spots and internet films form the cornerstone of the campaign. The deadpan TV spots from Smuggler's Chris Smith introduce beige-clad Bland as he wanders round one of his restaurants, listening to customers commenting on his cardboard food.

Dave Gardiner, executive vice president at Hill Holliday and the campaign's creative director, says that Smith was keen to tone down the jokes and ramp up the blandness to make sure the humour was not just dry but parched.

"He loved the boards right from the start, but he was determined not to let us fall into the trap of making a joke-on-a joke. His humour is very dry and reality-based. His casting instincts are superb and the hundreds of other choices he made with us in pre-production were spot on," said Gardiner. "This may be the broadest humour Chris has directed to date, but obviously, with another director the campaign could have turned out extremely broad."

The online films then go behind the scenes of P.J. Bland's fictitious shoot and interview the unenthusiastic crew - a food stylist smoothes the fries down to make them look as dull as possible, while a dispassionate cinematographer confesses that he's only doing the job to get his kids through school. The web films were directed by Charlie Short of Exopolis.

And that's not all from the campaign. In the summer they will run a fictitious franchise video on the P.J. Bland's website. The man himself spends a minute and a half trying to persuade the viewer that anyone who buys a P.J. Bland's restaurant will be rewarded with untold riches.

"We did some homework and found some (unintentionally) hilarious videos on the web," explains senior vice president and group creative director Joe Berkeley, who was CD on the campaign alongside Gardiner. "Of course, they all promise the moon to anyone watching. We had a great time parodying the genre," recalls Berkely. "Our editor, Grant Gustafson from the Whitehouse, got to use cheesy devices for animating type that a man of his talent might never get to use otherwise."