JOHN MACALUSO
Writer/Filmmaker/Best Friend
Denny's Gets Way into Gaming
Press Coverage: Rhys' Pieces, Ad Week, Mobile Marketer, Switch Player, Trend Hunter
With the pandemic keeping customers indoors, Denny's was having trouble completing their 2020 brand mission to use the diner booth to bring more people together. So... My partner and I looked at how we were connecting with people. We're two giant nerds and so for us, that's mainly video games. So, we tweeted out a gamertag and invited people to friend us. In less than an hour we had maxed out friends on Playstation and Nintendo Switch. Everyone wanted a chance to game with Denny's.
While we played a lot of Call of Duty: Warzone with fans, we noticed Animal Crossing: New Horizons was the clear favorite. We started by designing out island, dubbing it Dennopolis, then we created a bunch of in-game SWAG to give to fans.
Fans had already started setting up their own Denny's diners on their islands, so, we decided to make them official. We put out a call for fans who wanted to be digital franchise owners, and after getting flooded with literally thousands of responses, we started doing in-person island inspections. We even got the chance to stream live with Failboat, a major Switch Streamer with a giant following.
Once island inspections were finished, we sent staff-only uniform designs and mailed out real-life, official letters to each of the new team members, signed by Denny's CEO.
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