December 28th, 2015

2015 Top Restaurant Brands of the Year

Author

Ace Metrix

Desire is a Key Driver of Brand Performance for Longhorn Steakhouse and Pizza Hut

In the Casual Dining category, Longhorn Steakhouse is the Brand of the Year for the second year running with an average Ace Score of 666. The category has 15 qualifying brands out of a total of 21, with five different brands making up the top 10 ad list. Longhorn had the two highest-scoring ads of the category (“Get Steak Pairings” and “Turf and Surf”) the only two ads to break the 700 mark. While powered by Desire, each ad in the portfolio effectively captures attention and holds on with stunning sizzling steak imagery and frequent new product couplings and alluring offers.

Brand of the Year honors are awarded to brands earning the highest average Ace Score for their 2015 body of work. See qualifications below.

Brand of the Year: Casual Dining

Brand of the Year Longhorn Steakhouse
Category Restaurants – Casual Dining
Average Ace Score 666
Percent Above Category Norm  9 percent
Dominant Power Desire

Taking a closer look at Longhorn Steakhouse’s three highest scoring ads, “Great Steak Pairings”, “Turf and Surf”, and “Can’t Fake the Steak”, we see all perform well over the category norms for Desire and Relevance. Desire component scores for these run 12 to 15 percent above category norms, while Relevance scores range 12 to 14 percent above norms. In each of these ads, the “Visual Scenes” and “Product Itself” are overwhelmingly named the Single Best Thing about the ads, once again showing the brand’s ability to drive emotion with tantalizing imagery.

Ad effectiveness runs high with consumers who currently visit the restaurant, have in the past, or would consider it in the future, as seen here:

Longhorn Chart 2 Similarly, Longhorn Steakhouse ads perform best with casual dining intenders:

Longhorn Chart 1

For a glimpse into what’s on the minds of consumers after viewing “Great Steak Pairings”, just look at this word cloud from comments:Longhorn word cloud

Top Performing Longhorn Steakhouse Ads of 2015

brand

category

air date

score(s)

Great Steak Pairings

Longhorn Steakhouse

Casual Dining

10.28.2015

703

Turf and Surf

Longhorn Steakhouse

Casual Dining

11.19.2015

701

Can't Fake The Steak

Longhorn Steakhouse

Casual Dining

09.07.2015

688

Brand of the Year: QSR 

Brand of the Year Pizza Hut
Category Restaurants – QSR
Average Ace Score 615
Percent Above Category Norm  7 percent
Dominant Power Desire

The QSR category is the second largest, behind only Retail, both in sheer ad volume and competing brands. With ads from 33 total brands, and 21 that qualify for Brand of the Year, Pizza Hut proved that when it comes to food and restaurants, a strong Desire score is the way to consumers’ hearts (and stomachs). QSR Brand of the Year winner in 2012, Pizza Hut earned the title once again this year with an average Ace Score of 615. Pizza Hut introduced nearly two dozen new ads in 2015 and took a few different approaches to creative in its vast portfolio, incorporating humor, product promotion, deals and even Michael Bolton. Proving how competitive the category is, nine brands are represented in the list of top 10 ads, with only Papa John’s appearing twice. It also bears mentioning the the number one ad in the category was McDonald’s Super Bowl ad, “Pay With Lovin’”.

While Pizza Hut’s highest scoring ad of the year centered on their Hershey’s Triple Chocolate Brownie dessert, and a deceitful Grandmother who tries to pass them off as homemade (humor ensues), the majority of ads feature close-ups of warm cheesy pizza and breadsticks. Featuring football stars, Tony Romo and Rex Ryan, and Michael Bolton in the holiday spot that brings a family together for dinner, Pizza Hut finds the winning combination of product and celebrities to drive Desire, Information, and Relevance. In all except one of their ads this year, the “Product Itself” was named the Single Best Thing About the Ad. For the one standout, “Deal or Offer” was named the Single Best Thing.

Overall scores for Pizza Hut’s top three ads are significantly higher for current customers, though their ads also perform well with lapsed customers and brand considerers.

Screen Shot 2015-12-28 at 4.47.23 PM

 

Additionally, Pizza Hut’s top three ads are very persuasive, as these scores by Purchase Intent Intender show:

Screen Shot 2015-12-28 at 4.49.30 PM

Top Performing Pizza Hut Ads of 2015

brand

category

air date

score(s)

Grandma's Secret

Pizza Hut

QSR

05.31.2015

658

Any

Pizza Hut

QSR

05.21.2015

634

Amazing Creation

Pizza Hut

QSR

10.07.2015

631

No Problem

Pizza Hut

QSR

01.25.2015

630

Incredible Price

Pizza Hut

QSR

11.15.2015

629

Curious how other Casual Dining and QSR brands stack up to Longhorn Steakhouse and Pizza Hut?  Contact us to request a category discussion.

Check out all of the Top Brands of the Year here.

Brand of the Year Qualifications

Ace Metrix scores every nationally airing television advertisement and the majority of digital video ads across 24 industries, 96 categories and is therefore uniquely qualified to report a brand’s overall effectiveness across the entire video advertising industry’s body of work over a year, as well as year-over-year. To qualify for Ace Metrix Brand of the Year, brands must have debuted five or more unique pieces of creative within a category containing more than 100 pieces of creative and five qualifying brands. Ace Metrix gathered more than 3.5 million responses, including nearly 2 million verbatim comments left optionally for the 6,500+ new television video ads in 2015. Each ad is scored against a unique panel of 500+ consumers, demographically balanced to the US census for age, gender and income. The Ace Score is the holistic measure of ad creative impact and includes data on attributes such as Persuasion, Likeability, Information, Attention, Change, Relevance, Desire and Watchability. Hundreds of qualitative consumer verbatim responses are collected for each ad and inform additional measures such as the Emotional Sentiment Index.

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