Remember the 2013 Super Bowl and the 34-minute power failure? It has a special place in football history. 

It was also a legendary moment in marketing. Somewhere in those thirty-four minutes, the marketing guru’s for Oreo tweeted a simple graphic—a photo of an Oreo cookie on a semi-darkened screen and the words “You can still dunk in the dark.”

It’s called moment marketing – marketing that takes advantage of unique circumstances. What if your restaurant, during that power failure, had tweeted, “You can still order online in the dark, and we deliver in case the lights come back on.” It would likely bring your NetWaiter online ordering site some action. 

But how can you prepare for moment marketing?  Here are some tips:

Have a plan. We just concluded the Olympics, a true global event. Imagine sending your customers a message in Facebook or Twitter—“Need a pizza to get you through the lady’s figure skating finals?” or, “How about celebrating the U.S. sinking the Russian hockey team with one of our submarine sandwiches?” If you prepare for an event, when the unexpected happens, you’re that much closer to being ready to pounce. 

Choose the best channel. Email might not be the best vehicle to reach folks during a weekend event. It is primarily a business tool, and after hours and outside of work, people are not as tuned into it. Facebook or Twitter are more appropriate. In the middle of a weekday, though, email might well be the best way to reach someone. 

Be authentic. Be part of what’s happening. If you can make people laugh with the cleverness of your promotion, you are apt to be more successful. Oreo didn’t send out an ad for their cookies. They suggested that their cookies would be appropriate for the moment, and they did it in a humorous way.

We've seen rumblings of this in a few places across the media - as the economy crawls out of recession, diners are shifting back to the casual dining segment. Nation's Restaurant News cited this in an online article in late May.

According to the article: "Respondents devoted 37.7% of their restaurant spending to limited-service restaurants during the quarter, a decline from 41% - 42.1% during the previous year.  Meanwhile, consumers said they spent about 41.1% of their dining-out dollars on casual dining restaurants, up from 38% - 39.4% seen in 2011."

The market for casual dining is coming back and casual dining is a huge user of online ordering services like NetWaiter.

Also, according to Restaurant Hospitality, 84% of those restaurants that have a stand-alone mobile website see an increase in new business activity.

"We're starting to see the beginnings of a perfect storm for online ordering," said Jared Shimoff, a Sr. Director at NetWaiter.  "The market is shifting more towards the casual dining sector, and at the same time, we are seeing an explosion in the popularity of smartphones."

"All the data we've seen tells us that mobile websites, with the ability to place orders, continue to increase as a major influence on the restaurant market.  Thankfully, we’re able to keep our clients on the forefront of this growing trend."