For our latest project, we aimed to develop a practical and hands-on social media strategy for the young company The Big Cheese (TBC). The new f&b concept is focused on customizable takeout Mac & Cheese, and located at Sunshine Plaza in Singapore. The company aims to offer a cheap and convenient solution for all the busy students of the surrounding (arts) universities and young workers around town.

Currently, the company does not have a social media strategy in place. Therefore, we developed three strategies that will highlight TBC’s unique selling points (cheap, convenient, and customizable), and engage their target audience.

Social Media Listening: Can you hear me?

To get a better picture of TBC’s current shortcomings on social media, we decided to track their social media performance using an 8-month time frame from February to September of 2017. From this, we obtained the following insights:

1. There is little activity and presence on social media
2. There is no clear message strategy in place (content is static and boring)
3. There is a lack of customer engagement through social media (little to no interactions from customers in terms of likes and comments)

Secondary Research: digging deeper

To better understand TBC’s target audience (millennials 18-34 years old), we conducted secondary research and came to the following insights:

1. Millennials tend to follow their peers when it comes to making purchase decisions
2. Millennials value brands that tailor strategies based upon their interest
3. Millennials are used to convenience and increasingly use food delivery apps and instant messaging to order food (for takeout)

Plan of action!

Based on the social media listening and secondary research conducted, our proposed strategies will carry the overarching theme of customer engagement. This would be done through increasing brand awareness and the brand equity of TBC, while humanizing the brand as well.

Strategy 1: Mac-and-Choose Campaign

Mac ‘N’ Choose is TBC’s primary social media campaign for the year 2018 and our specific objective for the campaign is to increase the brand equity of TBC.  For TBC to improve its brand equity through Mac ‘N’ Choose, the campaign should ensure two things:

1. The campaign’s central theme should be based on the organization’s unique selling proposition of customization which gives TBC a competitive edge ahead of their rivals.
2. The campaign should be customer inclusive as that can increase the organisation’s online customer engagement.

This strategy consists of revamping TBC content through both offline and online channels. Firstly,  TBC can change the “Make-A-Mac” section of the Menu to “Mac ‘N’ Choose” and include an item called “Mac ‘N’ Choose of the Month – The ___ (Person’s name who makes the best Mac ‘N’ Choose for the month)”. Secondly, TBC can make a poster for the boundary wall outside the restaurant with an aesthetic display of the words “Mac ‘N’ Choose” to leverage on the success of instaworthy walls.

Strategy 2: The Big Cheese x TYC Streetwear T-shirt Design Contest

This strategy involves the collaboration between a Singaporean art collective called Tell Your Children (TYC) studios and TBC. Basically, TBC would host a streetwear t-shirt design competition in between the 3 neighboring arts schools which are School of The Art (SOTA), Lasalle College of the Arts, and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA). This contest would enable TBC to engage their target audience and draw a lot of attention. TYC would be invited to be part of the judging panel as well as advisers for students to make their designs into a reality.

Contest

This contest would require students to create a t-shirt with the theme of TBC and top winners will be awarded cash prizes. Students will be given a month to send in their designs and thereafter, TYC Studios would pick the top designs. There would be a workshop for TYC studios to mingle with the selected winners to discuss designs and provide some tips to improve their designs. Lastly, top designs will be posted on the Facebook page where  both students and the general public can vote for their favourite designs.

In order to boost such participation and engagement, a school-specific hashtag for each of the 3 schools (SOTA: SOTAxBigCheese; NAFA: NAFAxBigCheese; Lasalle: LasallexBigCheese) will be created. It would be mentioned in each post on the social media platforms that the more hashtags that is seen from each school in the comment section, the higher the chance for them to win the competition.

Strategy 3: SayCheese Telegram Bot

On examining TBC’s operations, we see that the prospective cheese lover must make his/her way down to the store, queue up, place the order, wait for the Mac N’Cheese to be prepared and then make his way back to the eating destination. Through our third social media strategy of using messaging channels as tools of ordering, we aim to decrease waiting times and optimize operations, increase customer engagement and ultimately, build a strong and unique brand equity. This objective will be achieved by capitalizing on the social media connect of Telegram, a popular messaging platform amongst the students.

The manual process of queuing up for a takeout meal deterred many customers from eating at TBC, as sourced through our conversation with the owner, as well as some existing customers. In accordance with the central theme of Customer Engagement for our social media strategies, we would be using Telegram as a platform for customers to place an order through TBC’s own user-interactive bot.

How does the Bot work?

This Telegram bot (Username- theBigCheese_bot), would be the forum where the customers would get the menu options displayed, select their desired ingredients and then receive an estimated time in which their order would be complete. To lend the process a more personal feel, and associate the brand with some human-like qualities, the Telegram bot would not send out automated messages confirming the order and providing the code number. Instead, we are personalizing the company as a friend.

Goals

Our proposed strategies aim to equip TBC with strategies that would ease its navigation through the social media landscape. By identifying the characteristics of the target audience of millennials, and the mistakes in their current social media strategies, the strategies proposed serves as a guide to revamp their messaging strategy and maximize their reach. As the main objective is customer engagement, we believe these strategies serves its purpose and might lead to the development of long-term relationships with their customers.