Turns out that hamburgers and influencers are a match made in heaven, at least as far as live streaming goes.
Wendy’s learned this recently when it used Periscope from its pop-up food truck in a farmer’s market at Daley Plaza in Chicago. The live stream gave viewers a behind-the-scenes look into how the fast-food chain makes its “baconator” burger from the food truck, netting over 300,000 views within 24 hours. The video was shared on Sept. 1 and received over 600 likes and 60 retweets, and is also the brand’s most popular Periscope broadcast to date.
While Facebook Live gets nearly all the attention these days, Wendy’s chose Periscope over it for the effort. “Periscope just seems like a more natural place to promote conversation around events,” said Mike Bueno, director of digital marketing at Wendy’s. “With real-time conversation, Twitter was there first, so Periscope seemed like the right choice.”
The six minute-long video shows social media influencer Cody Johns from Niche’s influencer network making a baconator. Wendy’s ran ads for the live stream, which was part of a broader digital push.
LIVE on #Periscope: In Chicago with @Wendys at the Baconator Dome! #ad https://t.co/Yhp2pNQyUo
— Cody Johns (@Cody) September 1, 2016
“The days of achieving organic reach at scale are gone,” said Bueno. “So if we’re going to put effort into crafting a message, we want it to be seen. Paid support on Periscope makes sense in that regard.”
For the broader campaign, Wendy’s also brought back its “Bacon Puppets” campaign from last year, which featured anthropomorphic bacon puppets in various school-related spoof videos teaching teenagers the importance of staying on the right path. From two friends finding wood chips and deliberating on whether to smoke them or not, to a slice of sunbathing bacon wondering if it’s better to be thin-sliced, the videos drove home the message that the baconator was the right choice to make.
This year, Wendy’s agency VML ran the digital videos across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, also adding a 360-degree photo on Facebook to the mix.
With the rising popularity of Facebook Live, you’d think that Periscope has become an afterthought for advertisers. But Wendy’s is a part of the brand brigade that isn’t giving up on Twitter’s live streaming platform just as yet. JPMorgan Chase, Wingstop, Anheuser-Busch and Verizon are all brands that have either live streamed or bought Periscope’s NFL packages recently. Several recent updates to Periscope, such as replay highlights, tweet embeds and live autoplay have also played a part in attracting brands.
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