Ruby Tuesday Demolition: A "Cheeky" Viral Marketing Stunt

I was intrigued when I saw the following Ruby Tuesday commercial on TV on Monday night, and made a mental note to myself to go check out their website at 3pm on Tuesday.



I should learn not to depend on mental notes, because I just now remembered (on Wednesday!) that I was supposed to go watch the live Ruby Tuesday demolition. I went to the Ruby Tuesday website to see if they'd posted the demolition there for those of us with memory problems, but it appears that this was a viral marketing stunt by Ruby Tuesday, and a disappointing one at that.

The premise was that the newly re-branded Ruby Tuesday, which recently adopted a new logo







and more upscale interior design for their restaurants (which is a big improvement, if you haven't been there lately...still not a huge fan of the food though!), was going to demolish their last "old" store live on the internet to symbolize how different they had now become from other casual dining restaurants. Here's a video of the result:



Apparently, the demolition crew "accidentally" blew up Cheeky's Bar & Grill next door instead due to its "sameness," but now, because of the "sweeping changes that have taken place within (the Ruby Tuesday) organization, it's extremely unlikely that a Ruby Tuesday restaurant will ever be confused for another casual dining establishment again." Hardy har har.

They have an apology letter up to Cheeky's Bar and Grill on the Ruby Tuesday website, but of course the whole stunt was just a gimmick. I appreciated the symbolic nature of what Ruby Tuesday was trying to do when I saw the commercial on Monday, but I'm very disappointed with the result, as are others and others to say the least.

Had they actually demolished their last restaurant instead of the fake Cheeky's Bar & Grill (for which they even created a website), I would have had a lot more respect for the marketing stunt, because it really did seem like an interesting idea. I was definitely intrigued after seeing that initial commercial for the Ruby Tuesday demolition, but now I'm just disappointed. To quote the Serious Eats blog, "Ruby Tuesday arguably botched what could have been a complicated, humorous campaign, and this whole debacle shows how talented and clever you need to be to successfully pull off viral marketing stunts." Amen.