Objective

What happens in a 24-hour diner? Most people experience a diner for just a few hours—whether it’s a morning coffee run, a quick work lunch, or a late meal after a night out. But what if you stayed for a full 24 hours? To promote our guide, "NYC’s Best Classic Diners, Ranked By Coffee Price," we set out to capture the unique rhythm of a diner over an entire day, a consecutive 24 hours, at Court Square Diner in Queens, NY.

Our goal was to provide an immersive experience that would showcase the diner’s evolving atmosphere, the different kinds of staff and customers at various hours—from the waitress beginning her shift to the couple that came in for a late-night milkshake and the group of friends that laughed as they remembered the events of the day—and the role diners play as community hubs. We knew a standard short-form video wouldn’t do the concept justice, so we leaned into long-form storytelling to create a deeper, more engaging experience.

Strategy

This project required a different approach than our usual social videos. Instead of condensing the experience into 30-90 seconds, we embraced long-form video to let the full story unfold, fitting 24 hours in a video under 5 minutes. This was a net new experience for us across Instagram and TikTok.

Our challenge: How do you keep a user engaged to watch our team over 24 hours? We understood the necessity of keeping the content engaging across a long runtime. We recognized that we needed to avoid monotony and maintain audience interest throughout the experience. 

Our strategy included the following pillars and was executed by hitting each one:

1. Shifting Perspectives: To capture and keep the attention of our audience without the video getting stale, we divided the experience into 3-hour shifts, with different team members taking over at various times of the day. Each shift offered a fresh perspective—from the early-morning regulars to the late-night crowd, creating a dynamic, evolving narrative.
2. Real People POVs: The video leaned into real interactions, highlighting both the customers and staff, showcasing how the diner’s energy shifted with each passing hour. Each team member filmed their shift using only their cell phones, ensuring an authentic, relatable POV that resonated with audiences.
3. Talking to the Patrons: We actively engaged with our audience throughout the campaign, responding to comments, which diner is their favorite and what they order, etc, and using engagement insights to sustain momentum.
4. Get People to Read the Guide: Throughout the video and in the captions, we emphasized our diner guide, seamlessly integrating the content with our editorial mission.

Results

The long-form experiment proved to be a major success and exceeded our target benchmarks and expectations:

• Total Impressions: 10.4M, surpassing the goal by 420%
• Total Shares: 30.6K, surpassing the goal by 45%
• Total Followers Gained: Set our own record for most followers gained from a single post, surpassing the goal by 13x
• Site Traffic: Surpassed benchmarks by over 2x 
  • Driven by strong calls-to-action in video captions, comment engagement, and platform features like Instagram link stickers and TikTok bio links. The seamless integration of the guide into the video narrative encouraged viewers to explore the full list of NYC’s best diners, reinforcing our editorial authority and increasing direct traffic to the site.
• Positive Sentiment: Social engagement and comments reflected enthusiasm for the concept, nostalgia for classic diners, and appreciation for the storytelling format. Many users expressed a desire to visit Court Square Diner or reminisce about their own diner experiences.

The engagement showed that audiences were not only watching but actively sharing, proving that long-form storytelling can thrive in a short-form-dominated landscape. The 24-hour diner experience became a cultural moment, sparking conversations about classic NYC diners and driving tangible interest in our guide. By embracing a format that let the story breathe, we created a piece that resonated far beyond a single viral moment.

Media