Challenge: Whether you’re a first-timer or a regular, Cicero’s has been a fixture in the University City Loop since 1977, bringing the best pizza, pastas, Italian entrees, burgers, salads, wraps and mouth-watering desserts to St. Louis. With 55 beers on draft and 200 in bottles, you’re sure to find a new favorite… or 55. The venue has been bringing St. Louis audiences the best in original live music for nearly 25 years. Our challenge was to feature the three pillars of the Cicero’s brand (restaurant, bar and entertainment venue) while updating the online brand of a 35 year old establishment.
Solution: Cicero’s has been a mainstay in the University City Loop for over three decades, and people are engaging the brand online. We were able to leverage the conversations already happening on blogs like “Cicero’s Beer School” and “Cicero’s Chatter,” Twitter and Facebook in order to incorporate as much content directly into the main website as possible. We thought of the Cicero’s website as our home base and our partner blogs and social networks as our outposts in this strategy. With this strategy in mind, parters that maintain activity in these outposts will direct traffic to the website whenever appropriate, such as weekly draft beer menu updates, concert dates, blog posts, photo gallery updates, and information on new store items.
Partnering with Ticketfly, Cicero’s is able to provide online ticket sales to all of it’s venue patrons. Utilizing their framework, a WordPress theme was created to feature the three main pillars of the Cicero’s brand in an infinitely rotating carousel. The restaurant and beer menus are easily sharable to social networks using Addthis.com. All event pages include Facebook RSVP integration, Facebook comments and sharing functionality, keeping the focus of a very seamless integration with social networks the site’s viral marketing strategy.