Co-Winner: Arby's Restaurant Group, Inc.—Arby's and Edelman Tip Their Hat to Millennials
When restaurant chain Arby’s first approached Edelman, the perception of the Arby’s brand amongst its target demographic, especially millennials, was not a favorable one. The brand was perceived as old and out of touch. Arby’s first opportunity to reach this audience in a new was during the 2014 Grammy Awards. Leading up to the Grammys event the team developed a strategic, real-time game plan to drive engagement. The team noticed that Pharrell Williams wore a hat to the Grammys that bore a stunning resemblance to the brand logo. The team tweeted: “Hey @Pharrell can we have our hat back?” seizing the millennial moment. This started a ongoing dialog between Pharrell and the brand.
The Pharrell tweet provided an opportunity for Arby’s to insert itself into real-time conversations and create relevance among Arby’s target consumers, particularly millennials. Engaging tweets in social media and integrated amplification extended “the Arby’s moment” into a year-long campaign that helped rejuvenate perceptions of the brand. Over the year more than 1,440 placements and over 120 million daily impressions were secured in key pop culture, urban lifestyle, national consumer and entertainment publications. The Grammys alone saw over 83,000 retweets, 48,000 favorites and an increase of 6,000 new twitter followers.
Co-Winner: Warner Bros. & Edelman Los Angeles
Warner Brother Interactive Entertainment tapped Edelman to create a social-first activation that cleverly engages core gamers and the broader 18-34 year-old male audience to promote its largest game title, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor. The activation needed to break through gamer and Lord of the Rings chatter at a time of several major gaming and movie title launches.
Some of the most news worthy activity in social media occurs when brands interact with one another. Edelman’s strategy was to take over the official Twitter handle for Shadow of Mordor and invoke cantankerous Orcs to taunt and cajole some of the biggest and most active brands on Twitter. Over the course of the activation there were a total over 200,000 engagements on social, 4,541 uses of the supporting hashtags and increased Twitter followers by 40 percent. Edelman also secured a total of 132 million media impressions from both online and offline channels, due to the responses form brands with large followings as well as media pickup.
Honorable Mentions
- Horn Group Transforms Tealium to Social Media Thought Leader
- TBWA\Nissan United - GT-R vs. Kim K #BreakTheInternet
- TBWA\Nissan United - Deadmau5 #OMGTR
- Weber Shandwick and Suave Professionals - #DateNightHair with The Bachelorette