Our consumers were in a real rut when it came to the two behaviors we needed to change — social media and chicken shopping — and both were firmly on autopilot.

Our main objective was really twofold: 1) To stop the “scroll” and grab users’ attention (with ads about chicken), and then 2) Build their consideration for purchase of Perdue’s new products.

We had two product innovations: 1) PERDUE® SIMPLY SMART® ORGANICS (the very first time that organic chicken could be found in the regular freezer section), and 2) PERDUE® FRESH CUTS™ Chicken (a brand new form factor for Perdue’s regular antibiotic-free chicken breast). These products really did have the power to help people with their hectic dinnertime issues. The only problem was, nobody knew about them.

People consume social media the same way they shop for chicken — on autopilot. To break through, we used a two-pronged approach: Grab users’ attention, then convince them of the new Perdue products’ benefits.

In order to take advantage of users’ expectations of what a video should look like on social media, we created a series of videos that broke with convention and were specifically tailored to pay off our product proof points.

What resulted were these “frame-breaking” optical illusions designed to purposefully interrupt people’s established routines, with each of the interactions crafted to set up specific product proof points such as “perfectly portioned” and “no messy cleanup.”

Chicken is a low-growth category. Our consumers are discerning, and they do care about serving their families the best — but they assume it’s all the same, so they tend to shop for chicken on autopilot. They consume social media in a similar way, scrolling through the equivalent of 300 feet of social content a day.

Our approach took advantage of people’s expectations of “the norm,” showing up on Facebook and Instagram in a way that other brands weren’t and forcing them to think twice about what they were looking at. Once the scroll was stopped, we used the next generation of the Perdue family to introduce the next generation of Perdue products.

To make our optical illusions as real as possible, we needed to build a practical set in the real world so the executions would at first appear to be featuring the Perdues in a standard 16x9 online video.

It was important to establish the false parameters of the video’s edges to be able to “break the frame” in the wide variety of ways required. After a fair amount of experimentation, our final setup ended up as a combination of custom-measured foam core and wood pieces, making the set sturdy yet flexible enough for a range of scenarios. We also incorporated the use of real Perdue products and packaging for each of the four featured lines.

To date, this campaign has performed at twice Perdue’s typical engagement rate on Facebook and Instagram, delivering over 7.5 million engagements (in the form of likes, comments and shares). Perdue has seen 4 times the video completion rates of industry benchmarks. Since the launch of this effort, one featured product, PERDUE® SIMPLY SMART® ORGANIC, grew 85% in dollar sales vs. 1 year ago and PERDUE® FRESH CUTS™ Chicken grew 57% in dollar sales vs. 1 year ago.