July 10, 2018

That over-hyped IHOP 'name change' is already over

By Marielle Mondon
PhillyVoice Staff

IHOP /Facebook

IHOP pancakes.

Tonight you can fall asleep and rest peacefully because the horrific IHOP name change of 2018 is over at last.

Its reign of terror lasted just under one month.

RELATED: IHOP reveals name change to International House of... Burgers?

The hysteria began the first week of June, when the pancake-centric chain announced it would now be known as...IHOb. A week later, and we found the new "b" stood for burgers, and soon the world was flooded with pictures of the menu's burger options.

And now, a few weeks later, despite several storefronts swapping in new signage, and despite the chain even switching to an @IHOb social media handle, IHOP is backtracking hard and returning to its original name in what has been officially proclaimed as a publicity stunt (as if we didn't already know that).

We’re giving away 60¢ short stacks on July 17 from 7a-7p for IHOP’s 60th birthday. That’s right, IHOP! We’d never turn our back on pancakes (except for that time we faked it to promote our new burgers) pic.twitter.com/KsbkMJhKuf
— IHOP (@IHOP) July 9, 2018

We really abbreciate the burgerin’ loyalty, but we’re back @IHOP again.
— IHOb (@IHOB) July 9, 2018

According to USA Today, the stunt had some benefits -- depending on your metric. The store's word-of-mouth score got a definite bump, as reported by YouGov, but not so much when it came to actual sales probability. YouGov found that IHOP's purchase consideration score -- which measures the likelihood of consumers eating at a specific chain -- remained unchanged from January through June this year.

"While unsolicited third-party results are interesting, interpretations of YouGov's findings don't completely or accurately reflect what we're seeing in our restaurants," said spokeswoman Stephanie Peterson in a statement to USA Today.

If nothing else, we at least got some decent tweets out of all this.