Casual dining classic Applebee’s recently enjoyed a clear and positive brand mention in the finale episode of reality TV juggernaut Vanderpump Rules, wherein the group heads to San Francisco for a glamorous evening celebrating a close friend’s business launch. The magical earned moment happened when spotlight star Ariana Madix and a subsection of the partygoing crew joyously proclaimed their after-party would be at Applebee’s. Their guttural excitement was paired with a botched but deliberate recital of the Applebee’s jingle. The unexpected yet relatable choice by the group to lay low and grub on comfort food and more booze at a casual dining chain, versus the more expected option to continue at a swanky SF haunt, is pure gold for Applebee’s.
So one of the highest-rated shows on cable TV surprises your brand with fashionable, high-exposure figures in your target growth segment, claiming your brand as the trophy moment of the evening and a bona fide source of their elation—what do you do?
As marketers, our first reflex is a good one: React, and react swiftly, by extending an earned moment into an owned brand conversation. But is that all? It shouldn’t be. Extracting both quick and long-lasting returns from these earned moments is truly realized through a curiosity mindset with structured testing and learning.
There are two core factors to consider—how ambitious your experiment is and what aspect of the earned moment you seek to act on. In our strategic checkerboard below, we see that the aspects of the earned moment (on the y-axis) are tiered, representing the actual Direct moment (Madix mentioning Applebee’s on the show) as well as Category, Segment and Context opportunities. Paired with these tiers is the scale of ambition (on the x-axis) with which we can test against each tier, from simple iterations of our current tactics to new, high-investment explorative commitments.
