Instead of telling people what makes Wendy’s hamburgers different, we showed them. We retooled Facebook’s new Canvas mobile platform into a virtual hamburger that fit into the palm of their hand.

In an immersive, interactive tour from the top down, our audience could use their native smartphone functions to do things such as tilt to toast the bun, swipe toppings and track their progress through the experience with a custom-coded, stacking header. At the end of the tour, users saw the fully built hamburger, and could find the nearest restaurant so they could get their hands on the real thing.

Wendy’s needed a way to get the attention of young people and allow them to experience and immerse themselves in the Wendy’s hamburgers story… without actually eating one. Consumers who know the Wendy’s hamburger story tend to find themselves hungry for one more often.

Wendy’s turned to Facebook’s new Immersive Canvas to bring its hamburger story to life from October 7-18, 2015. The experience had 18.3 million impressions during that time.

As one of the first brands to take advantage of Canvas, Wendy’s used videos and images to give consumers a virtual tour through a Wendy’s hamburger while they were scrolling through their Facebook news feed. As the name implies, the experience was fully immersive and engaging. Consumers could tilt their phone, scroll down, swipe left, or swipe right and discover something new and interesting about Wendy’s unique hamburger story - from the ketchup “W” to fresh, never frozen beef.

This execution was so successful that Wendy’s decided it needed an entire campaign to market its hamburger line in early 2016 - something it hadn’t done in four years.

Consumers were hungry for the Wendy’s hamburger story. The mobile screen takeover achieved more than 18.3 million impressions. We saw more than 187K engagements: more than 9,100 likes, 1,248 comments, and 628 shares on the experience. 39% of those who engaged with the experience finished the entire thing. And those who finished the experience spent an average of 65 seconds with the Canvas, learning how Wendy’s makes its hamburgers, layer-by-layer. Finally, the click through rate to find a Wendy’s store locator was 2.9%, very high for the QSR category and bridging the gap between a social experience and an in-store conversion.

Facebook saw these numbers and now features the Wendy’s execution on much of its sales material for Immersive Canvas.