Introduction

Sonic, the American drive-in fast-food chain, is one of the few businesses that have thrived during the restrictions of the pandemic. The restaurant’s unique format lends itself to success when dine-in is less popular, jumping from the 22nd most popular chain to the 5th in a matter of weeks according to foot traffic metrics captured by Ubermedia.

Sonic’s unique format lends itself to success when dine-in is less popular. How can Sonic understand who their new customers are and retain that audience as the economy moves back to a new normal?

To understand that, we must understand:

1. Who their customers are.
2. Why they came.
3. How to retain them.

Step 1: Identify Sonic's Unique Customer Base Before COVID

With PersonaLive, we can segment store visitors captured from the mobile movement data to build a ‘Sonic Customer Profile’. This profile provides insights into the types of people visiting Sonic locations prior to stay-at-home orders. In other words, this is the restaurant’s original customer base.

By matching the Sonic visitation data with Geosocial segments, we immediately see ranked patterns emerge:

• Urban & Rural Mix: #JohnDeereCountry and #Southern Cross are rural segments while #UrbanDetermined and #UrbanFashion are more urban.
• Fast Food Affinity: #JohnDeereCountry, #FlourishingFusion, and #OldTownRoad have a strong affinity for fast food restaurants like Whataburger, Chick-Fil-A, and Sonic.
• Families: #FlourishingFusion’s prominence indicates people are coming from neighborhoods where family plays a prominent role.

Now that we know Sonic’s original customer profile, how has their customer base changed since stay-at-home orders were given? Are they getting more of the same customer or a totally new audience?

Step 2: Quantify the Change In Customer Base After COVID

Sonic’s Loyal Customer Base

We don’t see a heavy indication of change in the top five segments. The people coming to Sonic before COVID continue to go to Sonic afterwards.

‍Therefore, to the extent that Sonic is already focusing on their core segments in site selection, local marketing, and broad advertising, they should continue to nurture these segments in the same way.

A New Emerging Audience

When we look at the customer segments with the greatest change, a clear story emerges; one that is nearly diametrically opposite of their Georgia core customer:

• Family segments gained share of visits. #FlourishingFusion’s share of visitation increase, #Family&Faith broke into the top 10.
• Rural consumers drove further. #Kids&Country and #DirtRoadDynasty had significant growth in visitation.
• Breaking fast food norms. Higher income segments, which typically opt for healthier food options, are choosing to eat at Sonic more.

Step 3: Design Strategies To Retain the New Audience

So, how can Sonic capture and retain their newly found audience? We’ll now discuss possible strategies informed by these new insights.

• Target emerging areas: The geography of visits changed. Focus advertising on areas contributing the most to store and those emerging.
• Messaging and personalization: Create unique copy and ad sets to select segments. Change store design and menu to visitor types.
• Deploy segment ads across channels: Export segment audiences across Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, etc. Geotarget and personalize.

Conclusion

Sonic has an opportunity to benefit from changing consumer behavior. Sonic’s meteoric rise in popularity during COVID is a great test case for how a brand can stand to benefit from rapidly changing consumer behavior. Using PersonaLive, it is possible to capture the nuanced changes in customer profile and magnify that opportunity by designing strategies around customer interests.