SONIC Square Shakes
SONIC DRIVE-IN
Issue 40 | September 2016
Agency
Goodby Silverstein & Partners
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director Margaret Johnson Creative Director Jon Wolanske Associate Creative Director Tristan Graham Creatives Rohan Cooke Laura Petruccelli Content Creative Quinn Gravier Designer Todd King
Production Team
Director of Interactive Margaret Brett-Kerns Director of Graphic Services Jim King Senior Interactive Producer Danielle Riccardi Interactive Producer Severin Sauliere Content Producer Isaak Le Technology Director Mike Kellogg Associate Technology Director Andre Cardozo Post Production E Level Films Motion Graphics Creative Director Mike Landry Retouching Quinn Gravier Color Fabio Benedetto Music Nic DeMatteo Photographer Dwight Eschliman Food Stylist Karen Eva
Other Credits
Group Account Director Leslie Barrett Account Director Jenna Duboe Account Manager William de Ryk Client CEO Cliff Hudson President Todd Smith VP of Marketing Sarah Beddoe VP of Public Relations Christi Woodworth Senior Director of Culinary Innovation Mackenzie Gibson Director of Content Burke Morley Director of Brand Advertising & On-Lot Communications Molly Brill Assistant Digital Marketing Manager Jackie Cyrnes
Date
April 2016
Background
There are over 178 million photos tagged #food on Instagram (i.e. far too many) and growing all the time. But less than 0.00001% of these photos featured food from SONIC Drive-In, America's largest and most popular drive-in restaurant.
Compared to rivals like McDonald's with 1.3 million Instagram followers, SONIC's 113,000 represented a drop in the ocean.
Any food retailer wanting to use Instagram has to find a way to stand out.
Idea
The idea was to create the world's first product designed to be Instagrammed – SONIC #SquareShakes.
A SONIC#SquareShake was a shake with square ingredients in a square glass, perfect for Instagram's iconic square format.
Insta-famous chef @ChefJacquesLaMerde (actually chef Christine Flynn parodying over-the-top cheffery) designed each shake to look beautiful when photographed.
Insta-famous designers created the packaging and shared pictures on their Instagram feeds.
The promotion was created for on-site activation at the Coachella Festival.
Attendees could, via the Instagram ads, order #SquareShakes and have them delivered to their phone's geo-location at the music event.
Results
With a media budget of $45,000, the campaign generated 650 million impressions at a cost per impression of $0.0002.
Some 78% of shakes served led to an Instagram post. Even Instagram Instagrammed it.
Our Thoughts
There's lots to admire about this promotion – everything, in fact.
Let's start with the idea of creating a series of special shakes. Instagram foodies will be well aware of @ChefJacquesLaMerde, so recruiting her to design something special was the way to get noticed.
The idea of aping the Instagram square shape also deserves plaudits. Too many brands don't think about, or can't be bothered to use the platform's unique differences. It would be like buying a portrait slot in a newspaper and filling it with a landscape ad.
Targeting Coachella was smart too. It's full of cool people who like to be at the cutting edge, and it's in the desert so a cool milkshake is going to go down well.
Goodby Silverstein and Instagram also made purchase and delivery simple by incorporating SONIC ads on Instagram with a 'shop now' button and a geo-fence overlay to make finding the purchaser easy.
Oh, and the shakes were free. All the buyer had to do was Instagram theirs.