International House of Pancakes president Darren Rebelez addressed the company’s name change gimmick in a new interview, telling CNN Money, “Literally everyone on the planet now knows we’re in the burger business.”
If you missed the media blitz, last month IHOP changed its name to IHOb and announced that it would be selling steakhouse burgers—to the shock of pancake lovers everywhere.
The swap was not permanent though, but rather a short-lived PR stunt to launch the fast food joint into the burger arena.
“We knew if we were going to really get into the burger business in a meaningful way that we were going to have to do something bold and creative,” Rebelez said in the interview released on Thursday. “We came up with the idea of flipping the ‘b’ to a ‘p’ to really grab everyone’s attention.”
And it worked. According to Rebelez the company garnered “32.3 billion earned media impressions, 20,000 news articles,” and made them the “number two trending topic globally for Twitter, just behind the North Korea summit.”
For those still confused about what the brand is hawking—pancakes? burgers?—it serves both. And as of this week, via a partnership with DoorDash, it will deliver either to your door.
