Wendy’s was launching a new blue cheese hamburger, but Americans either love blue cheese or despise it. And unfortunately, the haters are always loudest online.

Knowing that, we decided to trick the online haters into actually promoting Wendy’s new blue cheese burger by serving them videos that they couldn’t help but share in disgust and disbelief.

To get attention, the videos assumptively touted that “everyone loves the pungent smell of blue cheese.” The video then goes on to explain that Wendy’s is releasing a blue cheese-scented candle and the new Blue Cheese Burger to celebrate the popularity of the famously pungent cheese.

Thousands commented, shared and debated the merits of blue cheese and Wendy’s stoked the conversation with community management. In the end, we got the word out to the blue cheese lovers who flocked to the restaurant to try the limited time offer.

1.    First we launched a tongue-in-cheek short video on social media and The Onion touting Wendy’s main inspiration for the hamburger being research that shows that America’s favorite cheese is blue cheese!

2.    Haters took the bait, launching a wave of anti-blue cheese sentiment and consumers incredulously sharing the video with their followers.

3.    Meanwhile, vindicated blue cheese lovers (who are also very active online) shared and commented on the video. Wendy’s also had nearly 20,000 1:1 interactions to fuel the conversation.

4.    Finally, we released a retraction video declaring that Wendy’s made a mistake in declaring blue cheese America’s favorite cheese. It is actually only the favorite cheese of people whose favorite cheese is blue cheese (get it?).

The videos featured the right mix of quirky humor, mouthwatering food, and ridiculous claims to get people talking (and hungry). The March 2015 campaign had 200M+ impressions.

The blue cheese lovers had the last laugh because Wendy’s exceeded its sales projections for the Bacon and Blue on Brioche burger… in part because to blue cheese haters spreading the word for us in the digital environment.

Wendy’s reached 60M unique consumers through social platforms, generating more than 32.7M video views. But we were most proud of our whopping 2.3 million social engagements!

More than 20,000 one-on-one interactions between Wendy’s community management and fans sparked even more conversations and garnered thousands of engagements on our own posts. This community management program saw 92% positive and neutral sentiment in response to our engagements with our fans and followers.

In the end, even haters couldn’t help but fall in love with Wendy’s “challenger with a charm” attitude in our campaign content, and blue cheese lovers rejoiced over its Bacon and Blue on Brioche.