Making pigtails cool again
Wendy’s
When “Where’s the Beef” turned 40, Wendy’s needed to regain its swagger and share of stomach to attract an audience interested in something more than just the baked potato and salad bar.
Our goal was to make Wendy’s part of a conversation that was bigger than fast-food.
What we did
We didn’t walk away from our roots, we just gave them a fresh coat of fiery red. We reminded everyone why fresh beef matters, gave Wendy a badass personality on Twitter, expanded to new social platforms and seized on every pop culture moment we could.
The numbers
38%
increase in awareness of fresh, never frozen beef
#1
the most retweeted tweet in Twitter history (beating out Ellen’s Oscar selfie)
758M
media impressions from Wendy’s MixTape
336%
exceed donations for Dave Thomas Adoption Foundation
+3
sales of Taco Salads against -1.5 forecast for the month
#1
spot on Facebook Live Map for chicken tenders
Fresh, never frozen beef had become nothing more than a copy point when talking about Wendy’s hamburgers. We wanted to make it as household as “where’s the beef” so we created the Freezerdig Sweepstakes and asked people to show us the oldest thing in their freezer. The campaign lifted awareness by 38%.
The sass of Wendy’s in social didn’t happen overnight, but it was pretty dang close. We started off 2017 taking a shot at McDonald’s that sparked a reenactment from Anderson Cooper. And that was just the beginning. In 2018, we created over 46 Million new engagements and 963, 921 new followers.
Carter Wilkerson tweeted @Wendy’s to see how many retweets for a year of free chicken nuggets. We responded with 18 Million. And that’s when the #nuggsforcarter campaign began. It received worldwide coverage and landed him a seat across from Ellen Degenerous. He didn’t get 18 Million but he bested Ellen’s Oscar selfie and took the throne as the most retweeted tweet in history with 3.5 Million.
It started as a tweet battle between Wingstop and Wendy’s. We won, btw. But fans wanted more so the We Beefin’ Mixtape was born. We released it organically and it shot up like a bullet: #1 on Spotify’s Global Viral 50, #3 on iTunes Hip-Hop charts. We spent $0 on media and created the equivalent of 76 years of streams in one week and earned 758 Million media impressions.
To raise awareness and donations for the Dave Thomas Adoption Foundation, we tapped into something people do practically every day – take a selfie. Through a Snapchat filter activated on a Wendy’s cup, we created the Selfless Selfie. Every selfie = $5 to adoption. We raised awareness to 12 Million Snapchat users and raised 2 Million dollars exceeding our goal by 336%
In the 1990s, Wendy’s introduced the Taco Salad. Twenty years later, they wanted to re-introduce it to a younger audience that never knew it existed. We created the We Need To Taco campaign where GenXers could talk to their millennial kids about Wendy’s Taco Salad. At launch, the taco salads promptly sold out.
Some things are too good to be true, like the Wendy’s Double Stack in the Wendy’s 4 for $4 value meal. To promote it, we created the Real Impossibilities campaign featuring unbelievable tidbits about animals.
In a perfect world, we would have $15 to spend on a quality salad for lunch every day. But we don’t live in a perfect world. In this Perfect Perfect campaign, we let stock photos talk about the affordability and quality of Wendy’s salads.