WENDY'S

With their primary markets of USA & LATAM reaching saturation, international expansion was the next stop on Wendy's mission to save the world from mediocre fast food.

 

With an irresistible opportunity in the UK, we were asked to bring Wendy’s flavour of fresh fast-food to the nuanced local consumer. But we had a mountain to climb. McDonald’s and Burger King dominate 92% of the market, they’ve occupied British high streets for umpteen years, and barely anyone under the age of 40 has ever heard of Wendy’s. We couldn’t win on muscle. We had to define the battlefield we could win on.

 

To get our brand heard, we went for the jugular. Research showed that UK customers have been massively let down by the quality of the category. Wendy’s believe customers deserve better. It’s why they’re obsessed with freshness. For them, pre-made is the devil’s work.

 

To bring this commitment to life, and to show how we are so much better than the fast-food factories, we created a new platform relevant for the UK consumer that delivered  home truths in Wendy’s iconic sassy tone. We called this “All Beef. No Bull.” A status-quo challenging idea that called out the failings of the category (Bull) and presented Wendy’s as the solution (Beef).

 

By reinforcing Wendy’s message of fresh 100 per cent British beef with our famous personality, we drove awareness and built brand love so that young urban Brits would try our burgers for the first time. Being the underdog has its advantages. With a bold strategy, a laser-focused media approach, we could focus on winning hearts and stomachs town by town, street by street, and tweet by tweet.

 

By maintaining the brand’s iconic tone of voice with a level of genuineness, cheekiness, and sense of fun we managed to generate queues around the corner for the first restaurant opening in Reading. Overall engagement for Week 1 on Twitter delivered of 2.3M impressions, 17.4K likes, 1.7K mentions and 566 retweets.

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Agency: VMLY&R