How to fill your restaurant through clever use of video
Editor’s note: Shamil Thakrar, MBA from Harvard Business School and now Founder-wallah at Bombay-style café Dishoom (@DishoomLondon) in London, kindly wrote this post on how their use of short video clips has contributed to their restaurant business. With a willingness to experiment, and a fair measure of creativity, he shows that using video in your restaurant marketing neither needs to be expensive nor about food.
Conversation overheard in Dishoom. Late January this year. Planning ahead.
RB: What shall we do for Valentine’s Day?
ST: Blimey. Not sure. Do we have to do anything?
RB: We should, really. It will be good for business.
ST: Yes, but I hate love-hearts. The whole Valentine’s day thing is naff, surely?
RB: What about something light-hearted? Subversive.
ST: Well, there’s an old story about Indian wives whacking their husbands over the heads with rolling-pins that does the email rounds with Indians every year about the origins of Valentine’s Day. Complete nonsense, of course, but somewhat amusing. Not sure what to do with it though.
SW: How about dolls?
ST: Dolls?
SW: Yes – I did see a video once of the Karen Carpenter story filmed with Barbie dolls.
ST: ??
SW: Honestly. Google it.
And that’s how it was. We decided we didn’t really want to do Valentine’s Day, so we came up with Velantimes Day.
Watch our little video on the Dishoom website:
http://www.dishoom.com/2011/02/velantimes-day/
We filled out both floors of Dishoom very nicely on Valentine’s evening after having the clip go viral over the previous two weeks. We had approximately 7,000 views to the clip – on Facebook and on our website, as well as many re-tweets.
In the restaurant, we gave each table an Indian rolling pin and a little postcard explanation of Velantime’s Day. People still celebrated the occasion, but I think we managed to be a bit more fun and subversive. Certainly it made our guests smile!
Most interestingly we managed to increase our website traffic. Before releasing the clip, we were averaging 3,000 visits per month. After the clip this increased to 4,500 visits per month and stayed there. I’m positive this helped our sales over the next few months.
We also had taken the deliberate step of promoting the clip only on our website and our Facebook page – specifically to drive traffic to these places. Youtube may be the more common solution – but we were much more interested in driving traffic to our website, than just providing people with a funny viral.
Since then, we’ve made a few more of these clips. Check them out on:
http://www.dishoom.com/category/desi-couple-videos/
In total, we’ve had approximately 15,000 views. They’ve increased traffic to the website further and helped us launch the Dishoom pop-up on the South Bank.
But here’s the thing. All of this was very spontaneous and low-budget. It really felt like guerilla marketing. I wrote the script in a couple of hours. Ian (one of our barmen) and I filmed it at Dishoom after buying a couple of dolls from Hamleys and throwing some props together, and then we edited it together. We couldn’t find Indian dolls, so we used hot chocolate. Budget about £50 for the dolls and props.
Of course, marketing in general, and specifically online, needs to be systematic and thoughtful. But there’s an enormous amount of room for fun, creativity and innovation. Just try it. Don’t hold back.
