One Does Not Simply Walk Into A Denny`s (Mordor) (The origin of the famous meme)
In the Land of Denny`s , where the Calories Lie. Denny`s has partnered up with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey to bring forth a Hobbit-themed menu. Being a Tolkien Fan at the age of 9, I was all geared up to watch “The Hobbit“ when it was announced to be released in December of 2012. It was not long before I saw a Denny`s ad being satirized by The Colbert Report (Stephen Colbert is a Tolkien fanatic).
“Eat like a Hobbit, because at Denny`s`, you cant eat like a human“ -Stephen T. Colbert
With that, I decided to YouTube Denny`s `The Hobbit`ads and came upon this:
Fair enough, it looks `relatively legit` . So as a Tolkien fan, I took it upon myself to further investigate this `so-called` Hobbit-menu , released by Denny`s (with a touch of skepticism in the back of my mind; Another marketing ploy? This is gonna be bad) The entire menu was designed with a `Middle-Earth` touch, and I was impressed by the thoroughness of the menu designs. The Hobbit menu consisted of 10 items :
-Hobbit Hole Breakfast
-Shire Sausage Skillet
-Frodo’s Pot Roast Skillet
-The Ring Burger
-Gandalf’s Gobble Melt
-Dwarves’ Turkey & Dressing Dinner
-Lonely Mountain TreasureRadagast’s Red Velvet Pancake Puppies
-Bilbo’s Berry Smoothie
-Lone-Lands Campfire Cookie Milk Shake
After carefully examining the menu, my skepticism did not ease, YET, ironically, I was so hyped up in anticipation of the movie, that I was tempted to allow my taste buds to go on an Unexpected Journey .. to Denny’s .. There have been mixed reviews of Denny’s campaign as of today, and it is still too early to tell whether it was successful from a marketing perspective(although I suspect that it was). Relating one’s product to someone/ something else is usually a good idea, as I have recently learned 🙂 Having never tried the menu items myself, I confess to being immune to Denny’s marketing ploy, perhaps 19 year old University students with healthy diets in mind were not a part of Denny’s target segment?
http://www.brandchannel.com/home/post/2012/10/29/Dennys-The-Hobbit-Movie-Tie-In-102912.aspx