Millions of Americans have seen Olive Garden’s family-focused TV ads or the ones featuring close-ups of Red Lobster’s endless shrimp.
But Darden Restaurants, struggling with declining sales, plans to revamp its strategy and invest more heavily in marketing through email and on the Internet.
Orlando-based Darden’s digital initiatives will “enable us to have much more robust one-on-one conversations with guests,” Chief Executive Officer Clarence Otis told analysts last month. “And as those scale up, we would expect our television marketing expenses to scale down dramatically.”
Many companies are emphasizing digital marketing more as computers and smartphones play a bigger part in our lives. Year-over-year worldwide Internet display advertising spiked 26.6 percent in the first half of 2013, according to market-research firm Nielsen.