2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Challenge & Objective

If you’re a chicken, this is not a good time for you. Breaded, grilled or battered, chicken is having its moment in culture. Once thought of as beef’s “healthy cousin”, the premium chicken sandwich market is growing, and great chicken sandwiches have become a destination food.
But unlike other restaurants, Carl’s Jr. was not getting their fair share of that growth for two key reasons. Firstly, they’re most known and loved for their burgers, less so their chicken sandwiches. Secondly, while they are a massive brand in the US with a strong and enviable footprint, in Canada they have less than 25 locations, all out West and most in smaller neighbourhoods with less access to foot traffic. In Canada, they are very much a challenger brand.

Insights & Strategy

The brand knew that to succeed, it had to find a way to lure chicken-sandwich-lovers over to Carl’s Jr. that would justify the “destination drive”. So it found one by combining a unique product benefit with a cultural hook to create an offer too good to pass up.
Unlike other QSR breaded chicken sandwiches, Carl’s Jr. chicken sandwiches are all handmade on site; hand-breaded and buttermilk-dipped. Research uncovered that to chicken sandwich lovers, this made all the difference when it comes to satisfying their desire for “true” taste and texture.
The strategy was to play off the brand’s “handmade” attribute and its target’s desire for authenticity – turning a functional product benefit into a cultural signifier for quality. Carl’s Jr. then amplified it through an idea that leaned into its challenger status - showing that the brand was so confident in the quality of its sandwiches, for a limited time, it would put its money where its mouth was and let consumers choose what to pay. This idea was integrated seamlessly through creative, media, and PR.

Execution

The “Pay What you think it’s Worth” 10-day campaign was launched on Etsy because after all, when it comes to buying and selling the world’s best handcrafted products, there’s no better place to shop. And the launch was timed for Black Friday to coincide with deal-hungry shoppers on the lookout for great finds.
The QSR’s Etsy store acted as the campaign hub, allowing consumers to choose what to pay for a coupon that could be redeemed in store. It then promoted this limited-time offer using paid social media - geo-targeting chicken-sandwich-lovers within a 5km radius of each of 23 Carl’s Jr. locations.

Results

The brand also leveraged local food influencers and food communities to help spread the word and drive engagement, earning coverage on 21 unique platforms/channels and delivering 332,800 impressions in only days.
Within a week, the brand’s Etsy pop-up store received so much traffic that Etsy shut it down and removed the brand from their site. True to Carl Jr.’s cheeky and irreverent nature, it hit back on social media with a tongue-in-cheek post asking Etsy to reconsider and continuing to communicate the brand’s handmade creds.

Customer reaction was equally strong, with stores receiving very positive feedback tied to quality and value for money. So much so, that the brand launched a line extension with new flavours to capitalize on demand.
While the goal of the campaign was simply to drive trial of Carl’s Jr.’s chicken sandwich, the campaign also ended up contributing to a 27.5% average increase in overall chicken product sales, well beyond what these 23 stores in Western Canada could have hoped for.

Credits

Creative & Strategy: Arrivals + Departures

Senior Art Director: Daniel Bennett
Senior Copywriter: Aaron Woolfson
Art Director: Kyle Winsor
Copywriter: Brian Morrison
Art Director: Michelle Orlandi
Copywriter: Tim Morrison
Chief Creative Officer: Jeff MacEachern
Director, Production: Claire McRae
Senior Planner: Henry Goodman
Group Account Director: Katharine Houghton
Account Manager: Megan Diercks
Account Manager: Tanya Bokhonko
President: Mike Bevacqua

Media: MW360

PR: Debra Quinn