Cyber Search
Wendy’s
Issue 58 | March 2021
Agency
VMLY&R Kansas
Creative Team
Chief Creative Officer NA John Godsey Chief Creative Officer Noel Cottrell Group Creative Director McKay Hathaway Creative Director Jess Elwood Associate Creative Director Chad Ford Senior Copywriter Garrett Musar Art Director Ben Grace Copywriter Andrew Bohren
Production Team
Producer Shae Mermis Delivery Analyst Amy Pettinger Senior Production Business Manager Penny Galazkiewics Senior Campaign Program Manager Laura Picicci
Other Credits
Chief Client Officer, NA Jennifer McDonald Managing Director, Client Engagement Jason Bass Group Director, Client Engagement Kelly Gartenmayer Supervisor, Client Engagement Hilary Golubski Associate Account Manager, Client Engagement Adam Scherzer Managing Director, Planning Bret Smith Senior Analyst, Strategy & Insights Jeremy Cline Senior Channel Manager Jessica Wiggins Channel Manager Emmy Hanlon Associate Director, Conversation Design Matt Keck Connections Supervisors Samantha Schuster, Alyssa Murfey Connections Manager Carolina Mach Client Chief Marketing Officer Carl Loredo VP, Media and Social Jimmy Bennett Director, PR Frank Vamos Social Media Manager Kristin Tormey
Date
May 2020
Background
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, people had everything but the third most popular hamburger chain to think about. Store sales were down and the branded needed attention. Without a production budget.
While everyone was stuck inside.
Idea
While free offers drive attention and sales and gamification drives engagement, people tend to value something more when they have to earn it versus it being given to them.
Wendy’s knew they had to sweeten the pot.
That meant a prize but with a little sweat equity.
The idea was to gamify Wendy’s entire digital ecosystem, hiding coupon codes across all the brand’s digital touch points.
Wendy’s Cyber Search involved 100 coupon codes, ranging in value from $10 to $1,000, hidden everywhere from old social posts to the front entrance of Wendy’s headquarters on Google Maps; from their Twitch streaming channel to the closed captioning in restaurant training videos on YouTube.
One was even placed on page 27 of the PDF of Wendy’s own 100-page tabletop role-playing game, Feast of Legends. (Yes, the brand has its own Dungeons & Dragonsstyle game.) Hints to find the hidden codes were posted on Twitter, sending followers off to scour the internet for them. The game was simple: the first person to find a code and direct message Wendy’s got the coupon. They had to be fast. Within seconds of tweeting each hint, treasure hunters and cyber searchers flooded their direct messages, hoping they were the fastest.
Results
More than 22,000 direct messages were sent to Wendy’s Twitter account. There were over one million engagements and 15 million organic impressions.
Our Thoughts
Not all that long ago, ‘promo’ advertising was considered creative sludge. Not any longer. Firstly, it’s where clients are still spending money, which makes it instantly attractive, but secondly, thanks to digital, it’s now a playground for inventive minds.
Gamers are hugely important to brands.
They are those pesky, hard-to-reach millennials they want and need to engage with. But they are adept at avoiding ads.
Gamification like this can pull them in (and the genius of the idea is it gets people returning to old Wendy’s content). But woe betide the brand that is crass in its intrusions because they will get trashed in a thousand Twitch streams. Wendy’s shows how it’s done.