Look, my *very brief and quick and exciting* trip out to Austin, Texas had a few eccentric things happen. And the trip to Austin was incredible.
The Raising Cane’s PR team, the folks shooting the commercials for Raising Cane’s, Kirk Herbstreit, Todd Graves, Ben Herbstreit (do dogs automatically get the last name of their owner?) and Cane III pulled off a pretty exciting event and they deserve a lot of credit for this.
After falling asleep late Thursday night (actually probably early Friday morning) after writing about what led up to this adventure getting underway, I got up around 6, promptly decided that I didn’t need to wake up that early, and fell back asleep for another hour. And then I did the same thing for another 30 minutes.
It was great.
I got moving, showered, dressed, and then headed down to the hotel lobby to meet up with my best friend, who had graciously agreed to join me for this adventure as my photographer. Daniel McFarlane, ladies and gentlemen, takes these sorts of fun adventures very, very seriously. Or, well, he has a lot of fun and makes sure that he produces high quality work. And I love that about him.
The dude rocks.
And so, we grabbed breakfast, caught up on life, enjoyed chatting in the wonderful hotel restaurant, headed to my hotel room to draft up a quick plan for covering this event (and for me to finish an unrelated work task that involved me sending a few quick emails around to my boss for my day job).
And then we headed on over to Raising Cane’s.
Let me tell you, we were far from the only folks who ended up making it out to this event.
The Raising Cane’s event brought out a ton of folks (and even a few dogs other than Ben and Cane III)
Young families with their 7-month-old daughter who was wearing bright pink socks on her feet to frat boys hanging out looking to grab a bite to eat all while meeting one of the most prominent names in college football. I spotted fans in Maryland Terrapins jerseys, Auburn Tigers t-shirts, and West Virginia Mountaineers pullover jackets.
A red F-150 with a backseat full of dogs drove past the event and I wasn’t sure who was more enthusiastic to check out what was going on, the driver (seemingly a middle aged man who appeared interested in trying to get a picture of Kirk Herbstreit who was in the parking lot at the time) or the three large dogs in the backseat who all were fighting to shove their heads out of the window when they saw Ben and Cane III.
Shortly thereafter, there was a gray Jeep Gladiator that drove by with a chihuahua mix of some sort in the backseat that was seemingly much less interested in the event, but the driver of this particular pickup certainly made up for his pup passenger’s lack of enthusiasm as he seemed as intrigued by what was going on as the driver of the red pickup who passed by the event just a moment prior.
Oh, and then the red truck drove back by. He did a u-turn or something just up the road and made sure that he (and his backseat full of overly enthusiastic dogs) got another chance to check out the event from the road.
Parking was scarce and the line was long. I don’t totally blame him for checking it out in the manner that made the most sense for him.
A few dogs also made it into line as well. I saw at least two dogs arrive with their owners for the event. I loved it. Families were present with kids who were clearly playing hooky so they could get prepped for College GameDay and the football and Formula 1 racing weekend that this happened to be (these parents rock and I’m all on board with occasionally taking some time to, as a family, experience cool and unique things from time to time as long as your children are still thriving in their educational pursuits).
Various other folks who were seemingly simply walking by the restaurant and were visibly confused as to what was going on also walked up and took a glance at the event. The Uber driver who picked me up from the restaurant to take me to my friend’s apartment in South Austin was confused as to what happened after seeing the remnants of the crowd in the parking lot along with the armed security presence from Austin PD.
This event drew a fascinated and engaged crowd. And it really seemed like a brilliant move by the folks working for Raising Cane’s.
The Raising Cane’s PR team absolutely crushed this event
From the outside looking in, there were a few minor hiccups here and there (as is the case with quite literally any event ever, including each and every one of my son’s birthday parties up to this point), but it really seems like the Raising Cane’s media and publicity folks nailed it with this event.
They assembled a press corps that featured a variety of different types of media folks, some who seemingly came in from all over the place.
It seemed like they had social media influencers, local news reporters from the Austin and San Antonio media market, me and Daniel for The Underdog Tribune (I think we may have been the only independent media folks in the room, which is pretty cool to think about, but I can’t totally confirm that), and then a few folks from outlets like Athlon Sports, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, Awful Announcing, and UT college sports coverage.
I don’t know who all was flown in for the event the way that I was (again, shoutout to Raising Cane’s for making my travel for this trip possible by sponsoring that). But it was clear that they were invested in making this event work for them in as many ways as possible.
Todd Graves, Kirk Herbstreit, and their respective dogs got to chat with some customers and fans. They filmed some commercials. They did a press conference. It was lively, engaging, and just a ton of fun.
Raising Cane’s nailed it.
And they deserve a ton of credit for making this event happen.
The press conference portion of it all was brief, and I think I would have appreciated it if there was a bit more time to that, but I get it. I also would have liked to see more time dedicated to Kirk and Todd (and their dogs) getting to chat with the fans who waited in line to see them at this event. But the event actually ran long.
I’ll have more about what Kirk specifically said during the press conference here in a bit. He touched on everything from his dog Ben’s fight with three different types of cancer to the plight of D2 and D3 football players to how the Dallas Cowboys are struggling.
But for now, what I want you to know is that Raising Cane’s does media and PR really well. And as a marketing professor and an independent and freelance journalist, I have a lot of respect for that.
Leave a Reply