2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Objective & Challenge

A&W is the second largest burger restaurant chain in Canada. Québec being a key market, the brand always looks for ways to approach the province with a “Made in Québec for Québec” mentality, to great results.

Insights & Strategy

In November 2019, an opportunity to deepen the love relationship between A&W and Québec presented itself. A Montreal tattoo artist tagged A&W on an Instagram story: it could see a fresh tattoo of an A&W burger with a mention under it – "A&Doux". In Québec, in French, A&W is often shortened to “ah-eh-doo”.

On the tattoo, the “doo” part was spelled “doux”, which means soft and heartwarming. Clearly an endearing gesture from a fan.

The opportunity to tie this in with A&W’s goal to increase burger love in Québec was clear. Instead of doing what most brands would normally do (sending cease and desist letters asking for the removal of the brand image use), A&W wanted to salute the gesture in a big way.

The problem? A&W didn’t know who the tattoo person was.

Execution

The main idea was all about finding the man with the burger tattoo with a real-time experience everyone could take part in. The brand placed posters and billboards all over Montreal, hired an advertising truck, posted ads in local newspapers and launched a 1-888 tip line where people could call-in to report clues if they saw the man and/or his soon to be famous tattoo. The campaign featured a simple picture of the tattoo along with the tip line phone number.

Traditional assets were then amplified on A&W’s social pages. It then invited organic media to jump in to help with the “hunt” and increase chances to find the tattooed man. A few days after the launch, and with the help of united burger fans, A&W found the “Burger Man”.

As a reward? Burgers for life. The QSR had its famous manager on the street Alain (Québec’s Allan), reward the fan with his prize. Following the resolution, a social video summarizing the initiative was shared on A&W’s Facebook page, where it continued to gather positive reactions and engagement.

Results

In the first 48 hours following the launch, the campaign generated more than 2 million organic impressions online. Brand mentions increased by 370% versus the previous month solely in Québec, with traditional press picking up the initiative as part of regular news broadcasts.

More than 400 people called in to give clues to help find the fan. The three social posts done for the campaign got an engagement rate 685% higher than regularly scheduled content. These remain the best-performing social posts ever for the brand in Québec.

A&W ended the year with increases surpassing both sales, guest counts. In the two months following the launch, qualitative KPIs like unaided QSR awareness and brand/burger love both saw record increases (+12%/+15%). More importantly, 2019’s Holiday period saw record sales increase for the chain in Québec.

Credits

Creative Directors: Nicolas Quintal, Xavier Blais, Maxime Sauté
Copywriter: Vanessa Harbec
Art Director: Mathieu Lacombe
Strategic Planner: Pascal Routhier
Account Services: Catherine B. Mainville, Victor Brunton, Alex Lefebvre
Producers: Marie-Pière Poulin, Katia Dupuy
Production House: Content Content (Simon Lebrun)
Post Production: Jérémie T. Fournier, Étienne Bergeron
Tattoo Artist: Noémie La Thug