Dan Holm and I at Outback Steakhouse HQ

When social becomes personal engagement, good things happen.

Today, I had an incredible opportunity to connect with one of my favorite brands in a new way. For the past 18 months, I’ve spent a lot of time using social media to connect with Outback Steakhouse, one of my favorite brands. Just a few days past a year ago, I wrote specifically about my history with the franchise, which began in my adolescent years as my family went to Outback Steakhouse for Easter Dinner to avoid the hassles of cooking, cleaning, and other terrible things that the Lord surely hates on Easter Sunday. While I didn’t win the Outback Bowl competition that was at stake (pun intended), I did receive an encouraging phone call from the Outback team and some goodies in the mail that I cherish. As my Campus MovieFest team hit the road, we found ourselves stopping at nearly every Outback we saw for our team meals, connecting with Mercedes, Shawn Haney, and an amazing staff at the San Mateo location. It seemed like the love for Outback continued to grow throughout my network, which really began under the spark of friend and mentor, Dave Parsons. 

Last night, my fellow coffee-lover and Atlanta-fanatic, Jason Dominy, joined the family of brand advocates after a few rapid and witty responses from Outback.  What started as a joking response to my question turned into a customer interaction from heaven. Jason was so intrigued by the timing and content in these interactions, that he posted on his own website sharing his new appreciation of the brand.

Today, work took me to Tampa, Florida to setup for our upcoming CMF Tour. I knew that Outback was based in Tampa, so I sat up a meeting with Dan Holm, the Consumer Engagement Manager at Bloomin’ Brands to finally meet one of the great people behind all of this interaction. After the greetings of a hug and the gift of an unbreakable coffee cup (coffee snobs united), I sat down and got to hear more of his story and the philosophy behind the brand movement; a successful story of social integration into customer engagement and marketing strategies. We spent over an hour talking about their brands, our brand, as well as others out there that just haven’t grasped the unique conversation available on social media. 

Hand-breaded chicken bites come with a creole sauce. More on that later.

Nishant came along & represented CMF better than anyone else I know. He bashed on the meal with me.

Fun stories involving the infamous cheese fries. Dan really said it best.

My regular, as usual: Outback Special, loaded baked potato

The final course was the new Nutter Butter Peanut Butter pie. I hate crust but loved this crust.