We’ve all seen people at restaurants, their heads buried in their cellphones with little or no interaction with the friends, relatives or other associates across the table from them. Thus mealtime, which used to be a place for people to catch up, has become an insular experience. Looking to remedy that, Dixie, maker of products long associated with mealtime, teamed with Droga5 NY on a “Deadzone Diners” campaign designed to help people connect again.
So Droga5 and its team hunted down cellular dead zones in Los Angeles where people would be free of digital distractions. Droga5 set up three Dixie Deadzone Diners, pop-up restaurants, in places with no cellphone service. The locations—an old federal reserve vault, a hillside park, and the Bronson Caves—served dinner, breakfast and ice cream respectively over three days from August 26-28 to nearly 1,000 attendees. The activation also consisted of a special press event night hosted by Carla Hall, noted restaurateur and co-host of ABC’s The Chew. She also designed the menu especially for the occasion.
In addition to the Deadzone Diners themselves, the activation includes a launch video introducing the concept, this ScreenWork wrap video underscoring the importance of connecting–particularly during this Labor Day weekend–as well as a website (click here) featuring Hall’s recipes and other content to inspire families to reconsider their perceptions of dead zones. We are also collaborating with Buzzfeed to create further content, including articles with tips on how to interact without a phone, and the story of one writer’s experience bringing a date to one of the Deadzone Diners.
