Monday Mashups: People and Pancakes

People and pancakes, a good combination when thinking of breakfast, but this mashup is actually about art! That's right, pancake portraits. In celebration of bringing back "All You Can Eat Pancakes", the International House of Pancakes, better known as IHOP, hosted an interesting social media event that led to the production of 70 pancake portraits. Talk about a breakfast of champions!

On January 11, IHOP asked people to tweet photos to @IHOP using the #Panuary hashtag. Pancake artist Nathan Shields of Saipancakes then rendered the images in pancake batter. Throughout the day he created amazing pancake portraits of people—or, often, their pets—working from IHOP’s social media headquarters in Princeton, New Jersey. Nathan is an illustrator, math teacher and dad. He began this craft to entertain his children during a nine-month adventure to Saipan (hence the name). Since, it has turned into a growing business and Nathan is getting much more attention for his unique talent. Just check out these pancakes!

What an epic way to celebrate a breakfast staple! According to IHOP, the brand counted more than 500 #Panuary mentions throughout the event, and its Twitter account had three times the impressions (219,000) and engagements (10,900) than its daily averages. Quite the strategy to increase their social media presence. Their "All You Can Eat Pancakes" promotion will run until February 14, so be sure to visit IHOP before then to get your fix!

And of course a special shout out to IHOP and Nathan Shields for devouring the details of this plentiful promotion. Now we can't wait to devour some pancakes!