Make sure to practice your best Instagram pose and get those tweets ready — there’s a new awards ceremony in town! The RIZMY Awards, or RIZMYs for short, will showcase the best social and digital brands in the Restaurant & Hospitality industry. Think of it as the Emmys of the foodservice industry (but without the awkwardly long speeches and stiff dress codes).
The RIZMY carpet rolls out on September 24th in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the first annual Foodservice Digital Marketing Summit (FDMS), which will take place in conjunction with tech conference FSTEC NexGen. In proper fashion, the awards ceremony will include live performances, envelopes, appetizers and cocktails.
This is the first time the Restaurant Social Media Index (RSMI) will consider nominees from every segment in the industry — from fast food and QSR, to fast casual and fine dining — altogether in the same mix for each of the eight awards. Social and digital rockstars will be nominated for Overall Brand of the Year, Most Loved Brand of the Year, Mobile Brand of the Year, Most Influential Brand of the Year, Location-Based Brand of the Year, Digital Executive of the Year, Digital Innovator of the Year and Social Chef of the Year. There will be a winner and two runners up for each award. To put a spin on things, there will be a secret measurement element — to be announced at the ceremony — factored into each brand’s RSMI score, so there will be no way to predict where brands rank before the actual event.
Interested in getting more information about FDMS or FSTEC NexGen? Check them out here. You can also reserve a spot here.
Checkout this years Nominees
Overall Brand of the Year
The Overall Brand of the Year award is the ultimate RIZMY for top restaurant brands with the best overall RSMI score over the past 12 months. The primary elements incorporated into a brand’s overall score are Influence, Sentiment and Engagement, with Location and Mobile measurements added into the equation as of Q1 2013. Each category is cross-referenced to a weighted scale and advanced Social Insights Algorithm that provides a level playing field for all brands participating, big or small.
Big Data: Behind-the-Scenes Sneak Peek
The RIZMY Awards are powered by the unique and proprietary Restaurant Social Media Index. As you may or may not already know, the RSMI is the largest collaborative resource of restaurant industry data in the world, tracking more than 7,500 brands, 60 million U.S. consumers and 100 million global consumers. Additionally, more than 5 billion location-based actions and more than 30 billion targeted actions contribute to Sentiment, Engagement, Location, Influence and Mobile data in the RSMI in 2013. To get the full scope of how the RSMI works, you can dive deeper here.
Want to submit your brand into the RSMI to ensure you’re considered for a RIZMY? You can do so right here. You can also find more information about FDMS here or follow us on Twitter.
Jessica Bryant is a digital brand analyst for DigitalCoCo and leads research for the Social Insights platform. DigitalCoCo is the leading firm for social consumer research and digital brand development for the restaurant and hospitality business. Bryant is a seasoned researcher with a specialty toward consumer trends and culture shifts in the restaurant business.