Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s are targeting consumers who got new phones for Christmas with a proprietary program that lets them earn rewards for checking in at the fast food restaurants.
Happy Star Rewards, an app available for the iPhone and Android platforms, includes GPS-driven checkins, social media interfaces, a restaurant locator and rewards. The first and fourth checkin at the restaurant gives a user the chance to take a spin on The Wheel of Awesome, an app on both restaurants’ Facebook Pages. When you spin the app with your finger, you get the chance to win discounted and free menu items, branded gift cards and other merchandise, including tickets to the film The Green Hornet. The more users check in using the app, the higher value the offers they’ll get on the Wheel of Awesome.
Citing fraud-protection and efficiency, Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s opted not to go with Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook Places and instead created their own location-based app, which meant that agency 72andSunny had to outfit 3,000 stores with point-of-sales software. “If they’re successful, this will be a pretty important development,” says Erik Thoresen, director of research for fast food consulting firm Technomic. “It opens up opportunities for chains to do their own [location-based media] development.”
The sibling chains claim this is the first location-based rewards program in the fast food industry, but McDonald’s worked with Foursquare in September on a program that randomly rewarded $5 and $10 gift cards to diners. That program resulted in a 33% increase in checkins, according to McDonald’s.
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