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One of the earliest television commercials for International House of Pancakes shows a smiling family running across a meadow in slow motion while carrying bunches of helium balloons. In the background a high-pitched voice sings lyrics that end with, "International House of Pancakes, just for the fun of it." The 1969 ad, viewable on YouTube, features the typical authoritative male voiceover of that era announcing, "Of course it says pancakes on the outside, but there's a lot more on the inside."
The company's marketing campaigns have come a long way since then, but the central theme over the years has been the same: that IHOP is about a lot more than breakfast.
"Our advertising is designed to tempt people to come in, to try us at different times of the day," says Carolyn O'Keefe, senior vice president, marketing. "Thaf s a 50-year challenge."
Early Ads
International House of Pancakes was founded in 1958. In 1972 the chain began using the acronym IHOP, and in 1973 it launched an advertising campaign that adopted the term. The following year the company registered IHOP as a service mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Steve Pettise, who was chief marketing officer for IHOP from 1981 to 1996, says that advertising before the 1980s was sporadic, partly because the company had been enduring various ownership changes. When Pettise joined IHOP, the chain's owner was a Swiss company, Wienerwald. One of Pettise's earliest tasks was to advertise some new dinner items, with the goal of making IHOP relevant to people who didn't eat breakfast foods for lunch or dinner. "You at least want to dissuade the veto vote," he says.
The first dinner item on the menu was a chicken dish. "They wanted to call it spit roast chicken," Pettise says about the Swiss leadership. "I got them to change that to golden rotisserie chicken."
Pettise turned to Salvati Montgomery Sakoda, an advertising agency in Costa Mesa, Calif. The agency unsuccessfully had pitched the Love's Barbecue account, and Love's was owned by IHOP. Pettise had known Phil Salvati, Scott Montgomery and Ken Sakoda when they worked...