How An Ad Agency Used LinkedIn Harassment To Win A&W Restaurants As A Client

By jetalone on FlickrA small ad agency in Kentucky somehow managed to win a new client — rather than a restraining order — after "LinkedIn bombing" the company's president.

When A&W Restaurants moved headquarters from Louisville to Lexington, local shop Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions saw potential for a great partnership.

The means Cornett used to gain the chain's attention, however, were unconventional.

One day in April, the shop had every single employee send A&W Restaurant's president Kevin Bazner and director of marketing Sarah Blasi LinkedIn messages titled "Welcome to Lexington" at the exact same time.

Hey, it is a networking site.

"We were not actively ‘looking’ for a new agency partner," Blasi said in a press release, but they were taken aback upon noticing that the messages "included personal stories about their employees' relationship with our brand." One Cornett employee even took his current wife to an A&W Restaurant on their first date, Mashable reports.

A story that could have ended disastrously, and probably would have if the shop had more than about 35 employees, instead has a happy ending. About nine months later, A&W formally announced that Cornett is its new agency of record.

Targeting future employers creatively online isn't new to the ad world. In 2010, Alec Brownstein bought New York creative directors' names on Google AdWords. When the CDs inevitably Googled themselves, ads would appear that read "Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too," with a link to his portfolio. Six dollars worth of ads won him a job at Y&R NY.