Bubba Watson! You just won the Masters, what are you going to do now?
I’m going to… Waffle House?
Um, OK, if that floats your boat.
Watson is your 2014 Masters champion and the Waffle House should thank him by buying his next round, or 12, of waffles.
In case you didn’t hear, Watson headed to an Augusta area Waffle House for his championship dinner after donning his second green jacket in three years. He then proceeded to tweet out this info, which in turn was re-tweeted over 13,000 times.
Waffle House couldn’t have asked for better PR.
I tuned into a local radio show Monday morning (in the interest of full disclosure, it was the one I produced for over 17 years), and there it was.
A Waffle House mention.
I can guarantee that this particular show wasn’t the only one mentioning it either, locally or nationally. ESPN’s website has a link to the story on the home page, which garners over 91k site views per month.
I proceeded to Google. I typed in Bubba Watson Waffle House and a slew of stories came up in the search.
A similar event happened in 2010 when Phil Mickelson won his green jacket at the Masters. The day after his victory, he drove through at a Krispy Kreme in Augusta with his family, wearing the jacket while ordering his doughnuts. That story went viral as well and everyone was talking about Krispy Kreme doughnuts the next day.
This is unexpected, yet welcome, promotion. Aside from Perkins Restaurants (hello, Tiger Woods!), what company wouldn’t love a professional athlete tweeting about them just because they like the place?
Bubba proved himself to be a regular guy who just wants to enjoy an affordable and delicious waffle, especially after all the energy he used up crying after sinking that final putt on the 18th green at Augusta National.
If Waffle House is smart, its management will find ways to take advantage of Bubba’s fame and notoriety. One idea, for example, might be to connect with the golfer and see if one patron of a Waffle House could be Bubba’s caddy for an event.
Whatever these promotions might be, Waffle House needs to act while the griddle is still hot.
Yup, I went there.
