The Waffle Shop

Great Content Marketing 2 Great Case Studies

The Conflict Kitchen

The waffle shop is all about content creation

and you can find that content system all over.

A retail experiment which takes a “content centric” approach to marketing

The term “content centric” doesn’t quite capture what it’s all about, a more correct

reflection would be to say that the content has become just as much one of The

Waffle Shop’s products as the waffles themselves

The philosophy behind the project is that innovative and great content creation will

ultimately drive consumers to their retail locations.

Open Talk

Cook Speak

Waffle Wopp

Video Archive and Channel featuring all the episodes from the shows.

Billboards on the roof supported with it’s own website:

www.waffleshopbillboard.org

Waffles, which are served between 11pm and 3am every Friday and

Saturday

Waffle Wopp: teenagers host and produce the show, focussing on eclectic

guests, live music and fun, “the interviews have become a favourite

among the Waffle Shop’s audience”.

Open Talk: allows anyone and everyone to take the to the Waffle Shop

stage where they can talk about any topic.

Cook Speak: presented by local Pittsburgh cook Tom Totin, who shares

his unique culinary commentary.

This spreads the Waffle Shop’s content far further than Pittsburgh itself and is

helping to spread the Waffle Shop messages.

… In fact, herein lies the true genius behind the Waffle Shop’s content, it is

content layered upon content (and context)…

Featured videos | A live feed | The chat function | Video archives | Photos

A 36 foot long billboard on the roof of the Waffle Shop.

Each month a different person is invited to use the custom designed billboard

Also known as “The Last Billboard”, it is curated by Lenka Clayton and Jon

Rubin and it was designed by Pablo Garcia and Jon Rubin.

The Waffle Shop is indeed a restaurant, but because of it’s content

production it’s also a TV production studio, a business and a classroom.

The Carnegie Mellon University students can express their ideas and

opinions and try them out in front of the waffle shop customers who act as

the panel of critics needed to push the boundaries of content creation!

The entire concept of the Waffle Shop content experiment was the brain

child of Carnegie Mellon professor, Jon Rubin who is reported by Andrew

Davis as saying that the experiment invited students to “create a cultural

experience that adds something new to the city” and to learn about

“working collaboratively with the community members”.

What this captures is the Waffle Shop’s true engagement with their patrons who were as much a part of it as anyone else - that’s the level of connection all brands should aspire to.

“The shop was a public lab that

brought together people from all

walks of life to engage in dialogue,

experimentation and the

co-production of culture. The

project functioned as an eatery,

a TV production studio, a social

catalyst, and a business. Our

customers were our funders,

audience, and participants as we

filmed during open hours, inviting

interested patrons to express their

unique opinions and personalities”.

The programmes have become an equal

reason, if not the primary reason why people

visit the waffle shop.

The shows are truly engaging and take their

lead focus from the customers taking part.

This approach to content creation ensures

they produce content that is constantly

original, new and exciting, and most

importantly their content is relevant to their

audience.

The content produced is of such a high

quality, it is able to stand alone from the

Waffle Shop restaurant and website, on it’s

own dedicated websites.

It serves to educate consumers about

the details of the country in question

and it’s conflict with the USA.

Directly linked from the Waffle Shop’s website, is the Conflict Kitchen.

The Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine

from countries with which the United States is in conflict.

• The take-out style storefront circulates identities every 6 months to

highlight a different country, and uses food and packaging to educate

people about the country central to each iteration of the project.

• With every change in the Conflict Kitchen’s cuisine, a new food wrapper is

produced relating to that country

• The project is also augmented by events, performances, and discussions

that seek to expand the engagement the public has with the culture,

politics, and issues at stake within the focus country. These events have

included live international Skype dinner parties.

• The wrapper is from the Cuban version of

the conflict kitchen.

• It introduces customers to the food,

culture, and thoughts of people living in

Cuba and those that have immigrated to

the U.S.

• This wrapper, take out boxes and stickers

used to package the food was developed

in collaboration with members of the

Cuban community.

• Therefore the packaging includes

interviews with Cubans on subjects

ranging from the U.S. economic embargo

to Cuba’s relationship with other global

players.

Live Skype Meal between Pittsburgh and

Tehran on April 28th, 2012 at noon.

The meal was held with the Conflict

Kitchen customers (USA) and people

involved with the Sazmanab Project

(Tehran).

The meal invited diners in both cities to

create an international dinner party -

connected via webcam.

The same Persian recipes were made at

each location, so food and conversation

was shared.

Just like the Waffle Shop, the Conflict Kitchen relies in the interactions between their

customers as heavily as the content itself, without the discussions and engagement about

the countries and cultures involved, the Conflict Kitchen is just a take out place.

Operating seven days a week in

the middle of the city, Conflict

Kitchen reformats the pre-

existing social relations of food

and economic exchange to

engage the general public in

discussions about countries,

cultures, and people that they

might know little about outside of

the polarizing rhetoric of U.S.

politics and the narrow lens of

media headlines”.

This close association between two content driven organisations, the

Waffle Shop and the Conflict Kitchen emphasizes the “content centric”

approach of each one individually as well as emphasizing it as a whole.

Like the Waffle Shop, the Conflict Kitchen is more than just a restaurant

it’s also a place of education and more importantly debate.

Every aspect of the restaurant is functional: the food, menu, wrapper and

signage all serves to better explain the conflict in question.

Debate, engagement and discussion is driven by the food wrappers

especially because they are compiled from the thoughts and opinions of

those directly involved or affected by the conflict.

As the content on the food wrapper come from interviews with real

people, it is often contradictory and complicated by personal perspective

and even history.

The Conflict Kitchen successfully embraces these natural contradictions

to balance and reflect a nuanced range of thought within each country

further driving questioning, conversation, and debate among their

customers.

The International Skype Dinner, serves to further the Conflict Kitchen’s

reach and influence by connecting with other organisations across the

world

It also allows the participants to gain a greater understanding of the

cultures, thoughts and opinions of the people living in countries that are in

conflict with the U.S. by directly connecting these people.

The events can be spread beyond just those who were present by posting

it on the Conflict Kitchen website for everyone to view and discuss.

This is an example of using one initial piece of content – the Skype

dinner, to create many more pieces of content e.g. a video, a blog post

etc.

The point to take on board from these two related examples of truly great

content creation is that when done cleverly, effectively and

wholeheartedly, content creation can be married with the retail

experience to such an extent, that that content can become a part of the

product just as much as anything else.

By relating, linking and connecting to the great content created by one

another, these 2 businesses are emphasizing the importance and power

of that content twofold. Greatness by associated helps build greatness by

default.

To end on a final quote from Andrew Davis’s article “What If You Sold

Waffle’s With A Side Of Content?”: Without the live streaming show,

there’s no Waffle Shop. Without a conflict that needs to be understood,

there’s no Conflict Kitchen.