Consumer sentiment around Applebee’s was at its lowest, as evident by hate tweets on social media. We needed to turn our image around. When we discovered struggling musician Walker Hayes and his song about us, “Fancy Like,” we knew it had the positive vibes America needed to hear. So we made Walker famous with a 360° campaign that started by helping the song go viral on TikTok and then blowing it up even further with our TV ads. The results? Applebee’s was #1 in the category and Walker’s song broke the charts and earned a Grammy nomination.

Applebee’s, the largest casual-dining restaurant (CDR) chain in the United States, is the stuff of meme legend, but not in a good way – it’s roasted on social media for being mediocre, ubiquitous and a cultural relic of early 2000s Americana. When COVID-19 hit, many believed it could be the final nail in the coffin for Applebee’s. People were placing their bets that the restaurant wouldn’t make it through the year 2021.

With all of these compounding factors, Applebee’s needed to do something bold and meaningful to build brand love and cultural relevance. Applebee’s objective was to create a powerful reason to motivate Americans to believe in and love it again.

The vibe in America was as bleak as the one around Applebee’s. A OnePoll survey revealed half of Americans felt 2021 was the worst year of their lives. So, we sought a way to get people feeling good and loving Applebee's again.

We dug through the internet to find some piece of authentic brand positivity. Then, we found Walker Hayes and his song, “Fancy Like”: an ode to his date night tradition at Applebee’s. It was an earworm that perfectly summed up the feel-good food and moments America was craving.

Our idea: become the source of much-needed good vibes for the country by amplifying the good vibes of “Fancy Like.” The only problem? Walker was an unknown artist, and his song was stuck in obscurity. We had to bring it to the light and make Walker Hayes and his ode to Applebee’s famous, to change the perception around the brand.

In 2021, TikTok was America’s happy place. Time spent on the app helped us escape political unease and ongoing pandemic uncertainty – particularly in the form of feel-good music. 75% of TikTok users – about 600 million people – say they discover new artists through TikTok.

It was the perfect place to initiate Walker’s rise to fame. Plus, launching on social media gave us the opportunity to spread brand positivity in the place where people hated us the most. Ultimately, our strategy was to act more like a record label, than a restaurant, to make the song famous. First, we had to promote “Fancy Like” on the platform where good vibes and catchy tracks go viral, TikTok, then achieve mainstream fame – and definitivity drown out the hate – by pushing “Fancy Like” out into bigger and broader channels.

Within four weeks, we blew up Fancy Like on TikTok by turning employees into semi-influencers. Then we implemented a 360° media campaign to bring it to the masses, rewarding those who danced by showcasing them in our TV ads and putting them everywhere. We even put the song on TV’s biggest night, Sunday Night Football, to get heard by as many ears as possible. Walker’s song (and Applebee’s) took over radio, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. Inspired by the lyrics (“Get that Bourbon Street Steak with the Oreo Shake!), we even put our Oreo Shake back on the menu.

The final piece of acting like a record label was to promote Walker Hayes himself. He spoke with targeted press and broadcast aimed at driving traffic to the restaurant. This coordinated effort ensured that our obscure artist and song would achieve total fame.

We made “Fancy Like Applebee’s” the catchphrase of summer. According to Shepard Smith of CNBC, more than one billion people have seen the ad. The result? The convo around Applebee’s blew up in a good way, with unaided awareness at its highest, 4.3 billion earned media impressions and a 355% increase in reach across social. Most importantly, we nearly doubled positive social sentiment. And sales showed it: Applebee’s outperformed the category and had its best year ever.

The same was true for Walker: after our TV ran, his song hit its highest number of streams and sales in a single week. It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Hot Country Songs charts. What’s more, “Fancy Like” scored a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song. With a 165% lift in mentions of him on social, we brought Hayes out of obscurity and into the limelight.