IHOP Confirms It Didn’t Actually Change Its Name to International House of Burgers
It was just a marketing stunt
Remember when IHOP freaked out the entire internet after announcing it would no longer be called the International House of Pancakes and instead would become IHOb, International House of Burgers? It feels like years have passed since then, but it’s only been a month since that fateful day. The good news is that the name change is (surprise!) not permanent after all. It was just a marketing stunt.
IHOP confirmed the news on its social media channels today while also promoting an upcoming deal on 60 cent pancakes for the brand’s 60th birthday on July 17.
There was some speculation at the time that the IHOb announcement (and changing of all of the brand’s social media accounts from IHOP to IHOb) was a stunt to get consumers associating the brand with more than just pancakes, but the company didn’t shed any light on the matter at the time.
No word just yet on how successful the stunt was in terms of burger sales, but the effort clearly got people talking on social media. Between June 1 and 11, there were over 489.4k mentions of IHOb on Twitter, per Sprinklr. The switch also drew feedback and commentary from plenty of other brands in the days following the announcement.
We’re giving away 60¢ short stacks on July 17 from 7a-7p for IHOP’s 60th birthday. That’s right, IHOP! We’d never turn our back on pancakes (except for that time we faked it to promote our new burgers) pic.twitter.com/KsbkMJhKuf
— IHOP (@IHOP) July 9, 2018
“When we launched our new Ultimate Steakburgers last month, we were blown away by the public’s reaction to our IHOb campaign since, ultimately, it demonstrated how much love there is for the IHOP brand an our pancakes,” Brad Haley, IHOP’s CMO, said in an emailed statement. “Millions and millions of people had a lot of fun ‘blaying’ along with the idea of flipping the ‘P’ in our name to a ‘B’ and guessing what the ‘B’ could be. However, we are, and always will be, the International House of Pancakes.”
RIP, IHOb. We hardly knew ye.
Read the original article HERE.