The Campaign

As the market leader with over 118 restaurants in Korea, Outback felt the dire need to differentiate and stand out beyond its store presence due to growing clutter of category-generic menus and services. After extensive consumer research, Outback planned to rebuild the brand image around its Australian roots and creating new menus inspired by the vast wilderness of the Down Under. First, we needed two men – a celebrity and a chef – to make the trip around Australia. Two young hunks who can capture the attention of our core target – young females in their 20’s, but, in addition to looking good, they had to travel and create dishes to meet different cooking challenges at each destination. And, most importantly, these dishes would be featured in all Outback restaurants in Korea as special seasonal menus.

Success of the Campaign

471 qualified chefs applied to enter the chef contest and win the top prize. Since the campaign launched, we’ve averaged close to 13,0000 visitors to the campaign micro site and to track and engage in the Australian journey. Also, through QR code, nearly 23,000 people participated in our online event and downloaded coupons during one month of launch promotion. Sales continued to increase 8-11% vs. previous year after the TV campaign went on air. And, consumer engagement and purchase intent scores soared to the highest level ever recorded in the history of Outback Steakhouse.

Describe how the campaign/entry was launched and executed across each channel in the order of implementation.

We started off by advertising and recruiting young, promising chefs to compete in a reality show contest. After several rounds of competition and elimination, the final winner was selected, and, in addition to the panel of judges, consumers were also invited to cast their votes online. The chef contest show – ‘Outback It Chef’ was broadcasted on cable and enjoyed high viewership and caused a lot of talk. Then, the second and the main reality show – ‘Daniel Henney Goest to Outback’ featuring Daniel Henney himself aired with the local heartthrob touring the Australian wilderness discovering new dishes with the winning chef. The clips from the reality show were re-edited and broadcasted as TVC’s to create synergy between advertising and content. The reality show and SNS drew heavy traffic into our microsite where they were able to watch any old episodes, enjoy many bonus contents, and participate in events and promotions. And, there was further integration into the store space with merchandising.