Dairy Queen Swaps Gift Cards for Blogger Posts

Dairy Queen is rewarding bloggers who spread the word about its blog with free gift cards.

Dairy Queen International is serving up a brand new item: a blog for company employees to post threads and spread the word about its new value menu items and promotions.

The blog, called “Creating Smiles and Stories,” rolled out this month. DQ’s blogger bios are available on the site. Posts include entries about Dairy Queen’s Sweet Deals, the company’s first value menu, and fun facts about the brand.

“We just want to have some fun,” Dean Peters, Dairy Queen spokesman said. “It’s one more way we can communicate with our fans.”

In a related promotion, non-company bloggers will be encouraged to blog about the new menu items in exchange for a $5 DQ gift card.

The bloggers will be asked to answer the question, “What deal would you make with us to try our new Sweet Deals value menu?” and to post their responses on their own blogs. The first 250 bloggers that then send an e-mail to blog@idq.com with a link to the post will receive a gift card. Dairy Queen will award the blogger with the most creative response free food for a year.

Pierson Grant Public Relations, Dairy Queen’s AOR, is handing PR efforts for the promotion. The agency is reaching out to the blogosphere to spread the word about gift card promotion.

Dairy Queen plans to post the bloggers responses on its blog, Peters said.

The company is promoting its new blog via PR efforts and through its Facebook fan page, which the company launched about a year ago. Soon, a button will be added to Dairy Queen’s home page to link to the blog. That site receives more than 200,000 visitors each month.