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Thomas' Bagels leverages mobile recipes to push new flavor

Thomas? is celebrating the convergence of National Pizza Day and National Bagel Day with a series of recipes housed on a mobile-optimized site, along with a social media campaign and sponsored hashtag.

The recipes are an incentive for consumers to purchase and experiment with some of Thomas? new flavors, including a limited run of Pizza Bagels. Likewise, the sponsored hashtag and social campaign serves to get the word out about the promotion on the mobile channel.

"Bagels and pizza have always been a dynamic culinary duo and with National Bagel Day and National Pizza Day converging on the same date, we felt there was no better way to celebrate than by introducing a flavor that brings these two classics together," said Jon Silvon, senior marketing director of Thomas' products. 

National Bagel Day
Over the years, marketers have concocted a whole host of holidays meant to celebrate a certain product or activity ? National Ice Cream Day, National Bowling Day, etc.

Over the years, as these National Days have proliferated, it has become inevitable that eventually they would begin to overlap.

So it happens that on February 9 of this year, National Pizza Day and National Bagel Day are converging.

To celebrate this alignment of the stars, Thomas? bagels unveiling its newest flavor: pizza bagels.

Thomas' Pizza Bagels

While pizza bagels may be familiar to some who enjoyed the snack as a child, many customers may be unfamiliar with the union of pizza and bagels.

To remedy this, and to encourage sales of the limited run flavor, Thomas? has created a series of recipes involving the pizza bagels that are hosted on a mobile-optimized Web site, encouraging customers to try out the new flavor and experiment with some ways to prepare it.

Social media contest
Thomas? is also making use of social media to promote the flavor and campaign.

Consumers can post on Facebook or Twitter with the sponsored hashtag #PizzaBagelin, for the chance to win a pizza bagel party prize or one of 5,000 coupon prizes.

The sponsored recipes are an excellent way to get consumers interested in a product not just for its own sake, but for what they can do with it to personalize it even further.

Thomas? customers are encouraged to buy the bagels and experiment with how to prepare them, with these recipes offering a jumping off point for consumers to explore their own creativity.

Some brands have already caught on to this trend, such as Honda when it partnered with BuzzFeed and Amazon to make shoppable recipe videos (see story).

Quaker Oats tried a similar campaign, leveraging social media to get the word out about its recipes (see story).

The mobile site has numerous recipes using the new type of bagels

These recipes are a great way for brands to capitalize on customers? desire to make the products their own and personalize the experience to fit themselves.
 
Thomas? is likely to reap the rewards of this campaign as consumers gear up for the convergence of National Pizza Day and National Bagel Day.

"The authentic, Italian pizzeria flavors of our new Pizza Flavored Bagels lend themselves perfectly to your next pizza bagel meal or snack,? Mr. Silvon said. ?With Party Cake Mini Bagels also joining the celebration, we know this will be a day our fans will savor!"