As celebrations of overachievers goes, the second half of 2024 promises to be a doozy.
The Summer Olympics will have many of the world’s top athletes pushing the limits of human capability in their quest for gold. Then come the November elections, or what’s expected to be a particularly rough-and-tumble contest to determine who’ll lead the world’s most powerful nation through what many fear will be a fractious time.
The stretch could also prove a test of the restaurant industry’s mettle, along with the dependability of strategies and tactics the business now counts upon as fundamental endeavors. The next six months or so could be the medal round that determines just how effective loyalty programs and social media truly are.
Then there’s the question of whether the industry can adjust as well as it did at the start of the pandemic to a game-changing surge in off-premise business.
The driver this time won’t be a shutdown of dining rooms and fears of a potentially lethal virus. Consumers will be more likely to order a couch repast via phone because they don’t want to miss Simone Biles humbling her Russian counterparts or Steph Curry reminding the world that basketball started and remains at its best in the United States.
The phenomenon, known as the Olympics Effect, has stung the U.S. restaurant industry before. In years where some competitor caught the public’s fantasy, as the U.S. basketball squad (the so-called Dream Team) did in 1992, or the U.S. women’s gymnastics team managed to do in 1996, consumers couldn’t be pried out of their living rooms. Instead of going to restaurants, they popped a frozen pizza or Lean Cuisine into the oven without turning their heads from the TV.
That, of course, was before the pandemic made delivery and curbside pickup a viable option for restaurants of all stripes, not just pizza and Chinese-food joints.
Now consumers have all sorts of options for dining recliner-side, but they may need to be reminded of the possibilities. And that’s where the marketing power of social media and loyalty programs will be put to a test.
With the presidential election shaping up to be a close one, and control of Congress also at stake, conventional marketing channels like TV will be clogged with political spots. The clutter everyone vows to break through will be at a particularly dense stage. Even if airtime is available, the cost is certain to be bid up significantly.
The industry has already been pivoting away from traditional marketing channels to digital media. But look where that shift was when the Summer Olympics were held in 2021, or even the Winter Games commenced in 2022. TikTok was still new when the world’s elite swimmers, runners and hoopsters met in ’21. X was still known as Twitter.
Similarly, loyalty programs hadn’t made the inroads they have in the last two years, and the ones in place were a faint cry capabilities-wise from the platforms that consumers are using today.
The Olympics will likely be the most pointed test to date of whether one-to-one marketing works on a preoccupied public.
The games will also likely test the marketing benefits of a simpler technology that’s swept through the industry: the flat-screen TV. Can consumers be coaxed off their loungers and couches to watch the world’s greatest athletes on a restaurant’s screens?
Restaurants, obviously, won’t be the only businesses vying for consumers’ attention and advertising airtime on TV and radio. It’s what could make the competition for consumer attention more intense than a bid for a gold by the U.S. women’s basketball team.