Dairy Queen Plays it Sweet with Bloggers

International Dairy Queen may be onto something. The fast food chain, which specializes in frozen treats, recently used a promotional product to "bribe" bloggers to write about its new Sweet Deals Menu. After receiving more than 200,000 mentions in the blogosphere at other sites, the chain decide to debut its first blog at www.blog.dairyqueen.com. To get the conversation rolling, it offered gift cards to the first 250 bloggers to answer the question: "What deal would you make with us to try our new Sweet Deals Menu?"

The menu offers 20,000 combinations of food, beverages and treats at value prices. The most creative blogger will win his or her choice of a Sweet Deal for free every week for a year. DQ rep Dean Peters says the launch of the "Creating smiles and stories" blog in conjunction with a national advertising campaign was a two-pronged approach to get people talking about the menu.

The blog, in particular, "was a natural opportunity for bloggers to earn incentives to get out there and talk about the sweet deals," Peters says. "It got people to not only talk about DQ and the DQ brand, but it also was a great way to speak about our first value menu."

The chain selected $5 gift cards for the effort "because they are fairly easy to give out and they drive people back to DQ,”" Peters says. DQ is promoting the effort through its year-old Facebook fan page as well as via its traditional Web site, www.dairyqueen.com.