The document describes two Pittsburgh businesses, The Waffle Shop and Conflict Kitchen, that take a "content-centric" approach to marketing. Both rely heavily on engaging content creation and interactions between customers to drive their business. The Waffle Shop produces various TV shows and live events featuring customers. Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that educates about countries in conflict with the US through food from that country and packaging featuring interviews. Both use content to promote discussion and understanding beyond what their core business offers.

1. The Waffle Shop The Conflict Kitchen
Great Content Marketing
2 Great Case Studies

2. The waffle shop is all about content creation
and you can find that content system all over.

3. A retail experiment which takes a “content centric” approach to marketing
The term “content centric” doesn’t quite capture what it’s all about, a more correct
reflection would be to say that the content has become just as much one of The
Waffle Shop’s products as the waffles themselves
The philosophy behind the project is that innovative and great content creation will
ultimately drive consumers to their retail locations.

4. Open Talk
Cook Speak
Waffle Wopp
Video Archive and Channel featuring all the episodes from the shows.
Billboards on the roof supported with it’s own website:
www.waffleshopbillboard.org
Waffles, which are served between 11pm and 3am every Friday and
Saturday

5. Waffle Wopp: teenagers host and produce the show, focussing on eclectic
guests, live music and fun, “the interviews have become a favourite
among the Waffle Shop’s audience”.
Open Talk: allows anyone and everyone to take the to the Waffle Shop
stage where they can talk about any topic.
Cook Speak: presented by local Pittsburgh cook Tom Totin, who shares
his unique culinary commentary.

6. Featured videos | A live feed | The chat function | Video archives | Photos
This spreads the Waffle Shop’s content far further than Pittsburgh itself and is
helping to spread the Waffle Shop messages.
… In fact, herein lies the true genius behind the Waffle Shop’s content, it is
content layered upon content (and context)…

7. A 36 foot long billboard on the roof of the Waffle Shop.
Each month a different person is invited to use the custom designed billboard
Also known as “The Last Billboard”, it is curated by Lenka Clayton and Jon
Rubin and it was designed by Pablo Garcia and Jon Rubin.

8. The Waffle Shop is indeed a restaurant, but because of it’s content
production it’s also a TV production studio, a business and a classroom.
The Carnegie Mellon University students can express their ideas and
opinions and try them out in front of the waffle shop customers who act as
the panel of critics needed to push the boundaries of content creation!
The entire concept of the Waffle Shop content experiment was the brain
child of Carnegie Mellon professor, Jon Rubin who is reported by Andrew
Davis as saying that the experiment invited students to “create a cultural
experience that adds something new to the city” and to learn about
“working collaboratively with the community members”.

9. “The shop was a public lab that
brought together people from all
walks of life to engage in dialogue,
experimentation and the
co-production of culture. The
project functioned as an eatery,
a TV production studio, a social
catalyst, and a business. Our
customers were our funders,
audience, and participants as we
filmed during open hours, inviting
interested patrons to express their
unique opinions and personalities”.
What this captures is the Waffle Shop’s true engagement with their patrons who were as
much a part of it as anyone else - that’s the level of connection all brands should aspire to.

10. The programmes have become an equal
reason, if not the primary reason why people
visit the waffle shop.
The shows are truly engaging and take their
lead focus from the customers taking part.
This approach to content creation ensures
they produce content that is constantly
original, new and exciting, and most
importantly their content is relevant to their
audience.
The content produced is of such a high
quality, it is able to stand alone from the
Waffle Shop restaurant and website, on it’s
own dedicated websites.

12. Directly linked from the Waffle Shop’s website, is the Conflict Kitchen.
The Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that only serves cuisine
from countries with which the United States is in conflict.
It serves to educate consumers about
the details of the country in question
and it’s conflict with the USA.

13. • The take-out style storefront circulates identities every 6 months to
highlight a different country, and uses food and packaging to educate
people about the country central to each iteration of the project.
• With every change in the Conflict Kitchen’s cuisine, a new food wrapper is
produced relating to that country
• The project is also augmented by events, performances, and discussions
that seek to expand the engagement the public has with the culture,
politics, and issues at stake within the focus country. These events have
included live international Skype dinner parties.

14. • The wrapper is from the Cuban version of
the conflict kitchen.
• It introduces customers to the food,
culture, and thoughts of people living in
Cuba and those that have immigrated to
the U.S.
• This wrapper, take out boxes and stickers
used to package the food was developed
in collaboration with members of the
Cuban community.
• Therefore the packaging includes
interviews with Cubans on subjects
ranging from the U.S. economic embargo
to Cuba’s relationship with other global
players.

15. Live Skype Meal between Pittsburgh and
Tehran on April 28th, 2012 at noon.
The meal was held with the Conflict
Kitchen customers (USA) and people
involved with the Sazmanab Project
(Tehran).
The meal invited diners in both cities to
create an international dinner party -
connected via webcam.
The same Persian recipes were made at
each location, so food and conversation
was shared.

16. Operating seven days a week in
the middle of the city, Conflict
Kitchen reformats the pre-
existing social relations of food
and economic exchange to
engage the general public in
discussions about countries,
cultures, and people that they
might know little about outside of
the polarizing rhetoric of U.S.
politics and the narrow lens of
media headlines”.
Just like the Waffle Shop, the Conflict Kitchen relies in the interactions between their
customers as heavily as the content itself, without the discussions and engagement about
the countries and cultures involved, the Conflict Kitchen is just a take out place.

17. This close association between two content driven organisations, the
Waffle Shop and the Conflict Kitchen emphasizes the “content centric”
approach of each one individually as well as emphasizing it as a whole.
Like the Waffle Shop, the Conflict Kitchen is more than just a restaurant
it’s also a place of education and more importantly debate.
Every aspect of the restaurant is functional: the food, menu, wrapper and
signage all serves to better explain the conflict in question.

18. Debate, engagement and discussion is driven by the food wrappers
especially because they are compiled from the thoughts and opinions of
those directly involved or affected by the conflict.
As the content on the food wrapper come from interviews with real
people, it is often contradictory and complicated by personal perspective
and even history.
The Conflict Kitchen successfully embraces these natural contradictions
to balance and reflect a nuanced range of thought within each country
further driving questioning, conversation, and debate among their
customers.

19. The International Skype Dinner, serves to further the Conflict Kitchen’s
reach and influence by connecting with other organisations across the
world
It also allows the participants to gain a greater understanding of the
cultures, thoughts and opinions of the people living in countries that are in
conflict with the U.S. by directly connecting these people.
The events can be spread beyond just those who were present by posting
it on the Conflict Kitchen website for everyone to view and discuss.
This is an example of using one initial piece of content – the Skype
dinner, to create many more pieces of content e.g. a video, a blog post
etc.

20. The point to take on board from these two related examples of truly great
content creation is that when done cleverly, effectively and
wholeheartedly, content creation can be married with the retail
experience to such an extent, that that content can become a part of the
product just as much as anything else.
By relating, linking and connecting to the great content created by one
another, these 2 businesses are emphasizing the importance and power
of that content twofold. Greatness by associated helps build greatness by
default.
To end on a final quote from Andrew Davis’s article “What If You Sold
Waffle’s With A Side Of Content?”: Without the live streaming show,
there’s no Waffle Shop. Without a conflict that needs to be understood,
there’s no Conflict Kitchen.