IHOP Flips to IHOb and Gets People Talking about the Business of Burgers
The pancake-burger brouhaha began on June 11. On its official Instagram account IHOP, also known as the International House of Pancakes, posted this: “We’re flippin’ from pancakes, pancakes, pancakes to burgers, burgers, burgers. #IHOb.” And with that, the “P” became a “b,” at least temporarily, and the food started flying.
The pancake house (a favorite flapjack destination at every meal) has always served burgers, but this bold rebranding move – really a teaser campaign launched on social media to gauge interest in the idea – was meant to draw attention to the restaurant chain’s other culinary delights, like its new “steak burger.”
Wall Street Responds
IHOP lovers and haters flocked to Twitter, FB and Instagram to weigh in on the flip. Puns were prevalent: “IHOBe they’re kidding.” It seems that Wall Street also weighed in. Stock in IHOP’s parent company, Glendale, Calif.-based Dine Brands Global, Inc., has gained 30% during the IHOb hub-bub, to a high of more than $80 per share.
In the end, this name change is not a company-wide reality. But it has led to some interesting discussion about rebranding, pancakes vs. burgers, and how a restaurant might use its newfound social media cred to sell more stuff.
According to experts at Wharton (visit Related Links for the full Knowledge@Wharton story and to listen to the podcast on the Knowledge@Wharton show on Wharton Business Radio on SiriusXM channel 111), IHOP could see big gains if it can invest in product improvement (read: better burgers) and ensure quality control at its 1,650 locations. It also has to find ways to overcome the declining popularity of sit-down casual food restaurants and compete more effectively with fast-casual and quick-service restaurant chains like Chipotle, Shake Shack and Five Guys Burgers, they said.
More immediately, the social media momentum IHOP has gained is of course a boon that money cannot often buy. “Just the sheer volume of talk about IHOP and IHOB is a fantastic win for that company,” said Wharton marketing lecturer Jason Riis. IHOP should find profit in the talk about it, even if what’s said is not always complimentary.
In the days before the “b” in IHOb was revealed to represent “burgers,” “it created all kinds of speculation, and the new social media environment thrives on that kind of thing,” Riis said. “They got people guessing, and lots of people making fun, but their campaign has been goofy and playful and lighthearted from the beginning. On the manipulation or playing with social media, they did that brilliantly. I don’t think there’s any way they could have predicted this level of success.”
A worry for IHOP is that it is getting into the more challenging part of the burger market. “A lot of the headwind they’re facing is that broad category of fast-casual where you can go in and just pick up a burger or a meal without table service that’s reasonably high quality,” said Riis. That category is growing, he added, and cited Chipotle and Shake Shack among the chains in that space. “Casual dining is where you sit down and order, and that category is declining – that’s where IHOP sits.”
That said, it does make sense for IHOP to make a bid to enter that market and compete with the entrenched brands there, Riis said. “They don’t have to win. They just need a basic level of parity [with the other brands] that gives people another reason to go in there.”
Any meaningful impact on IHOP’s sales “is not going to happen unless there has been some kind of substantial change in the product,” said Riis. “All good rebranding programs, brand refreshes and rebrands start with a fundamental and also symbolic change in the product…Maybe now that they’ve got enough momentum, they can start to put their marketing dollars into product development and find ways to get a better, more consistent burger than they’ve had in the past, and find ways to compete better on a product basis with some of these successful chains,” said Riis.
Unlimited Fries
IHOP needed to do something to address declines in casual dining restaurants, pancake consumption and in revenues at its own chains, Riis said. Dine Brands Global, which also owns the Applebee’s chain, posted losses of $330 million for 2017 on sales of $605 million that were a big drop from $681 million in 2015. The company expects IHOP revenues to stay flat or grow 3% at most in 2018, but it has to contend with longer-term trends that aren’t exactly helpful. Riis noted that “pancakes are all about carbs, and the low-carb diets are up.” And for a chain that counts on families with kids, it isn’t promising when “people aren’t having kids as much as they were in previous [years].”
IHOP’s “Ultimate Steak Burger” is priced at $6.95, with unlimited fries. Rees found that pricing policy smart. In their “mental accounting, people may attribute the cost to endless fries.” He said it might be a smart idea to offer unlimited fries because margins on those may be small in any case, like with unlimited refills in sodas, and “there are only so many servings of fries a single person can eat, anyway.” The $6.95 price also sets higher expectations of quality on par with a Five Guys, so that it is not seen to be in the same space as quick-service restaurants like Wendy’s, Burger King and McDonald’s, he added. “Of course, now IHOP has to deliver on that value proposition in terms of how consumers perceive the actual quality of their burgers.”
Riis noted that a handful of others have attempted rebranding, such as Pizza Hut calling itself The Hut or Pasta Hut a decade ago. With IHOP, “it really was a fundamental play on the name, and the part that they got right was creating a little bit of suspense and a teaser,” he said.
Rebranding generally brings positive results, noted Riis. “Brands have to do some amount of refreshing on a regular basis to slightly change the meaning or tinker with what it is that consumers are coming in for and having new offerings,” he said.
IHOP’s core business of pancakes will likely be unaffected if the restaurant chain fails to capitalize on the current social media buzz around burgers. At best, the chain’s patrons might shrug off the burger experiment as unwise. “They will be lauded for trying something different” and loyal IHOP customers will continue visiting its restaurants, said Americus Reed, a Wharton marketing professor.
“It’s not like the pancake narrative has been lost,” Riis said. “Lots of the social media discussions [about IHOP] still revolve around how great or how lousy the pancakes are, but a lot of people are having nostalgic feelings for the chain. And that’s all money in the bank, at least short term.”
Related Links
- IHOP to IHOb: Will the New Marketing Strategy Work?
- CNN Money: IHOP Reveals the Mystery of IHOb
- Pizza Hut Plan to Change Name Meets with Ridicule
- Jason Riis in Knowledge@Wharton
- A Lesson in Viral Marketing from IHOP
- Foursquare Says IHOP’s IHOb Rebrand Was an IFLOP
- Jason Riis and David Bell Harvard Case Study on Red Lobster
- Business Insider: Successful Rebranding Campaigns
- Posted Losses at Dine Brands Global
Conversation Starters
Are you an IHOP customer? What do you think about the company’s online IHOb campaign to focus more on its burgers?
How do you think IHOP should capitalize on the buzz around its IHOb burger campaign on social media? How might the company really maximize all the talk about the restaurant chain right now?
Rebranding is an interesting concept: making over your brand and having success with a fresh new look or approach. What companies do you recall rebranding for successful outcomes? If you need some help, visit the Related Links in the side toolbar. Report to a group or to your class about a company that had an effective rebranding. How might you rebrand yourself? What changes would you make to show the world a bold, new you?
IHOP flipped its p to a b and switched to its polar opposite in the food it serves as well. A name change decision as this one can incur huge losses; but IHOb clearly knew this and calculated the risks. I believe this was quite a smart decision: so much talk has erupted regarding the situation. People are for and against the change, and what happens when people talk about a situation via social media that titillates their interest? They make memes.
I think these memes are quite possibly the best things that could have happened to the now IHOb. And they know this. They share and circulate these posts criticizing the name change on their twitter account. In fact, IHOb even created the account @IHOP just to redirect twitter users to @IHOb!
IHOb remains very active and interactive with users on social media and, according to me, succeeds in maximizing talk about the restaurant chain.
It seems to me IHOb intends to lure customers through their memes to taste their burgers, and then impress the customers to ensure they come back for a second bite.
Sure, it was a bold decision. But what’s to say against it when you’re making millions more than before?
This article serves as an important reminder of the increasing importance of perception and the garnering of attention in both the current geopolitical landscape and the business world. I believe that a significant part of this increase is the result of rise of social media and the increasing democratization of information.
IHOb’s capitalization on the power of free advertising and media attention parallels the strategy used by the Trump campaign early in the 2016 election. Now-President Trump masterfully used the media attention surrounding his outrageous comments to propel his message above that of dozens of his competitors, many of whom were seasoned political candidates. Even if Primary voters disagreed with or were ideologically opposed to what he said, the shock and awe surrounding his comments ensured that his name and policies dominated the headlines and social media posts. Similarly, IHOb, which is largely known for pancakes (as the name suggests) and not for burgers, needed to distinguish itself from entrenched burger giants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and Dairy Queen. To do this, it could either undergo a lengthy and costly advertising campaign or attempt to generate free interest in its brand by doing something shocking. It boldly chose the latter, changing the name of its steadfast, decades-old brand. By merely flipping a letter of its name and fueling mystery and speculation by not revealing what it meant, it turned the public’s attention to its burgers and made it clear that IHOb is more than just a breakfast place. IHOb’s free, simple use of social media may have outdone even a massive television campaign. By understanding new mediums of communication and the value of free press, IHOb (like Trump) was able to put its brand in the attention of the public while spending hardly a dime.
However, IHOb now faces a challenge that politicians do not have to endure to the same extent: it has to deliver. Unlike government policies, burgers are tangible, so people can physically taste them and accurately determine whether they are good or not. Furthermore, IHOb is an old, classic diner serving traditional American cuisine and is perceived this way by the public, so it cannot justify bad taste by touting its food as “exotic,” “unique,” or “healthy,” as many boutique restaurants do. Moreover, because of the ubiquity of the burger, customers can quickly compare the taste of their burger to that of the multitude of other places that serve it, and, given that IHOb burgers are offered with slower service at higher price points than at competing burger places, if IHOb burgers are not significantly better than those of fast-food places or at least as good as those in comparable sit-down restaurants like Denny’s, they will likely lose their customers to other chains.
Ultimately, IHOb has surely succeeded in bringing additional customers to its doors for lunch and dinner and has illustrated the power of new mediums of communication in influencing the public. However, as a business in a cutthroat industry with a physically tangible, tasteable product, it will be held fully accountable for the quality of its product, so it remains to be seen if it can keep burger fans hungry for more in the long-run.
so pretty much Ihop switch the letter p to a b and that made alot of controversy because alot of people dont like change because they get used to it being a center way an when its not they flip out like when musically changed there name to Tik Tok that cause sum controversy because yet Aegean some people were just used to it. its pretty much like this situation because each one got good feedback and bad feed back it just counts in personal preference