It's gotten attention plenty of places other than amongst his Twitter followers, so they'd benefit from it even if he had fewer followers as long as it'd get reposted. It seems more important that he's someone they know would be vocal about it. I'd almost think it'd have done better if he had fewer followers, in that people would be less skeptical of it being just because of his follower count.
You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers "treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it needs to be a surprise or it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for regular customers.
If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it, and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that makes it seem like you go above and beyond.
An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts" that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and even if such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their surprises fresh and not too frequent).
You're right you can't do this for everyone, though, but giving customers "treats" now and again would seem to do wonders. I think the key is that it needs to be a surprise or it needs to be commensurate to what they spend for regular customers.
If it's commensurate to what they spend you need to budget and plan for it, and quite possibly should if you're aiming for a high end market, but it may be worthwhile to make some of the perks for regular customers "surprises" that makes it seem like you go above and beyond.
An up-market brand might have the margins to set aside say 10% for "stunts" that makes the customer fanatical about the brand. I don't know Morton's, but an upscale steak house can easily land you with bills in the $150-$200 range for a dinner - it doesn't take many dinners at that cost level before the customer has "paid" for a free steak and a 20 mile drive to an airport, and even if such a customer doesn't plaster it all over the internet, you can bet that if my favorite steak house had shown up at SFO with a steak on one the occasions I had to do regular business travel to California, everyone I met would hear about it for a long time. I'd repay a $200 cost or more with extra business for them in a few months at most, probably already on that trip just because it'd be an awesome story to have (as long as they keep their surprises fresh and not too frequent).