A consumer brand’s social media efforts are usually directed toward sharpening and humanizing the brand. It is instructive, then, to look at the recent “IHOb” campaign from IHOP, which took the exact opposite approach. It was designed from the beginning to confuse and sow doubt. For a day, the storied pancake restaurant chain was talking about nothing but its format change. The newly renamed IHOb had thrown away its name and its menus. The new smaller menu had little more than an array of international burgers.
There was no human touch in this announcement. It was all preprogrammed and done according to a formula, as if there was no one there at IHOP headquarters, like a radio format change done by machine while the entire on-air and office staff is escorted out. Even the IHOb Twitter replies intended to reassure worried customers that the chefs still knew how to make pancakes appeared to come from a bot.
Customers who saw the announcement were confused. As the change was repeated on Twitter and in the news, the stories ranged from “IHOP is shutting down” to “IHOP thinks it’s going to be the new McDonald’s.” Toward the end of the day IHOP officers tried to reclaim control of the narrative, but with limited success. The public statements that IHOP was not really changing its name came across as a panic move after the rebranding was seen as a failure, or even as an internal scuffle at IHOP headquarters with the outcome undecided. Now that the dust has settled and the story has faded, there probably isn’t anyone who can tell you what really happened at IHOP. No one knows.
This is bad for business. To take your family to IHOP now, you first have to persuade someone that the restaurant is still in business and still has a recognizable menu. If it turns out you’re wrong, you’ll have egg on your face while you walk everyone back to the car. It’s a risk — and is IHOP such a good restaurant that you’re willing to stick your neck out to take people there? In a town with more than one restaurant, the safer move is to go somewhere else.
The impression I am left with, after reading all the news I could find, is that IHOP is attempting a nostalgia angle leaning on the 1950s diner era, but without a budget for period furnishings. In other words, IHOP seems to be trying to take on the failed diner chain Denny’s. It doesn’t make any sense, but I can find no other story that explains the new menu items. I’ve seen photos so I believe the new menu items are real. It’s a move that might appeal to IHOP customers born before 1955, but those who are younger must be forgiven if they feel slighted. Why would a restaurant take such a large step backward in food quality and selection? Has IHOP lost its collective mind? As the McDonald’s and Chipotle stories attest, the American public has not been kind in recent years to restaurant chains that try to turn back the cultural trend toward better food quality. IHOP was selling a menu of near-average food quality, but that is obviously not the case with its new menu. The attempt to move downmarket, apparently without a price cut to support it, could not possibly end well.
Any way you try to parse the story, the result is FUD, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that may make potential customers hesitate. To be sure, there will be some IHOP regulars who respond with curiosity — “Let’s go over there and see for ourselves.” The broader public, though, no longer knows what IHOP stands for. If IHOP fails to recover from its name change and rebranding, marketing textbooks will record that it destroyed its brand in one day.
