Keeping Fortnite Fresh

By VMLY&R - Kansas City

For Wendy's Brand Wendy's Community Management

Crème de la Crème in category Advertising

In subcategory Promo & Activation

WPPED Cream
Project Description
Younger consumers are revolutionizing the ways we produce, consume and think about entertainment. Through the online streaming platform Twitch, Fortnite has grown from a video game to the cultural hub for 12- to 24-year-olds and a new form of interactive entertainment altogether.
This audience is creating entertainment for and by itself. It is adept at avoiding traditional advertising and highly skeptical of brands entering its cultural space. This poses a challenge to Wendy's and all brands in the quick service restaurant category, because the younger consumer is eating in the QSR category most often. How could we reach this important audience that doesn't want to be reached?
Our objective was to move beyond merely reaching the audience; we wanted to build relevance on their terms. We would meet our audience where they are and entertain them on their own turf.
To reach our audience in a way distinct from our category competitors, we decided to go beyond reaching them as the brand advertiser they’d expect. So we entered the world of Fortnite as a player — as co-creator of culture, a gamer and an entertainer. Other brands have attempted to reach this audience by placing in-game logos or billboards, but we went beyond traditional advertisement. Rather than pay to play, we decided to just play.
We blurred the line between brand and influencer, playing Fortnite as Wendy’s and streaming it live on Twitch to immerse ourselves in this audience’s world as both player and brand.
In short, our idea was to use the game Fortnite to promote Wendy’s brand messaging.
Agency Solution
When Fortnite introduced a new game mode called Food Fight, we saw an organic way to insert Wendy’s into the game’s story and meet our audience in their world. In this game mode, proponents of the Fortnite universe’s two restaurants — Durr Burger and Pizza Pit — could represent Team Burger or Team Pizza in battle. We discovered that Durr Burger stored its virtual beef in freezers, a move directly against the fresh, never frozen beef for which Wendy’s is famous.
The game’s objective is to eliminate other players and be the last person standing. We decided to enter the fight on the side of Team Pizza, making it our objective to eliminate all burger freezers from the game.
We would play the game as Wendy’s, using it as a vehicle for our core brand messaging and virtually demonstrating our commitment to our core differentiator: fresh, never frozen beef.
On Nov. 29, 2018, we organically tweeted that we would be streaming Fortnite live on Twitch. We put down the keyboard, picked up a controller and began playing the game with our fans. In doing so, we took Wendy’s to a platform where our audience was — and where no brand had gone before.
We played as a character with red hair and pigtails (just like our logo), and for nine hours, we streamed our destruction of any and all beef-laden freezers.
We were playing the game wrong by only destroying virtual freezers and not other gamers, so naturally other gamers and Twitch streamers noticed. Soon players and top gaming influencers like KingRichard joined our mission and began to destroy freezers with us. We changed the way the game was played as our audience watched and joined in to help us spread our message that fresh beef beats frozen beef.
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