The challenger brand Church’s Chicken had seen success in the previous year promoting their new line of chicken sandwiches. But after adding thick cut bacon to their line of sandwiches, a big idea was needed to promote this new addition in one of the most competitive fast food segments in the industry (even though the media budget was very modest). Our objective was to communicate the perfect combination of flavors, bacon and Church’s chicken sandwich, with a PR forward, brand activation to garner earned media with a goal of 60 million impressions over the course of the LTO period.

Bacon used to be a town in Texas. And we brought Bacon back. To celebrate the combination of Texas cut bacon with its chicken sandwich, Church’s Chicken put the former town Bacon, Texas back on the map in their home state of Texas and across the country through a local activation and national petition that was brought to life in person and online.

In order to connect with Church’s Chicken’s younger, millennial and Gen Z, emerging audience along with its traditionally older core audiences with limited resources, our approach was to support our traditional campaign elements with a PR forward, brand activation. We wanted this experience to not only connect with our product as well as our Texas roots and story in a way that would appeal on a national level.

Bacon used to be a town in Texas over 100 years ago. We brought back Bacon, Texas to launch the new Bacon chicken sandwich. To do so, we worked with local politicians, launched a Texan road trip with a custom truck with a giant Bacon Chicken sandwich topper, held LIVE events, billboards, social campaign to build awareness on National Chicken Sandwich Day, online video, national petition, placed a giant Welcome to Bacon Texas where the original town stood.

Running from early November 2021 through December 2021, this work ran across Church’s Chicken’s organic social channels, a landing page, and bacontexas.org petition, reaching national and local media outlets across the country.

The Bacon, Texas activation was Church’s chicken’s largest activation to date. Our goal was to increase Church’s national press attention, and with more than 250 million impressions in only the first few days, we outpaced our total expected impressions by over four times with zero paid media.