In January 2023, Wendy’s introduced its new Homestyle French Toast Sticks to Canada. Unlike typical French Toast, the new menu item was made for eating on-the-go.

Like that wasn’t maverick enough, the product was a bit of a departure from Wendy’s typical wheelhouse. For a brand known for square burgers and bacon – and that owns less than 1% market share in the breakfast category in Canada – getting people interested in French Toast Sticks posed a unique comms challenge.

We had to get the word out that Wendy’s now offers French Toast… in a portable stick format.

Specifically, we wanted to increase positive associations with Wendy’s and Wendy’s Breakfast, to get people to come into our restaurants to try the new French Toast Sticks and then make them a habitual add-on to their on-the-go breakfast orders.

French Toast Guy. The breakfast hero we didn’t know we needed.

We went where no breakfast launch has gone before: the subway. To show just how much of a hassle making French Toast is, we had the most ordinary guy we could find go and make French Toast on the subway. Complete with cutlery, a cloche, a jug of syrup and a table.

Commuters started filming him. Wondering aloud who this man was and what he was doing. Who is #FrenchToastGuy was promptly trending.

Soon the media picked up on it. As the speculation and intrigue reached a fevered-pitch, we sent French Toast Guy out one last time at the end of his French Toast-filled week, but this time with Wendy’s French Toast Sticks in-hand.

Some eagle-eyed reporters caught on; and in their words “got the scoop of their careers”. Wendy’s was revealed as the perpetrator of the subway shenanigans.

Wendy’s Breakfast consumers are on-the-go: to work, to school and to everything else they need to jam into their mornings. But French Toast isn’t something you have on-the-go at all, it’s reserved for weekends and holidays, when you have time to make the eggy treat. Wendy’s French Toast Sticks changes that. It makes French Toast portable.

We knew nobody was talking about portable French Toast and nobody particularly wanted to hear from Wendy’s, so we had to engineer a conversation we could then claim.

From there we recognized this launch needed to harness the power of regular Canadian commuters to create excitement, and pique media interest to gain broader attention. So, our plan was to show just how difficult it was to enjoy French Toast on-the-go, and then how easy it becomes with Wendy’s French Toast Sticks.

Enter French Toast Guy making French Toast on a crowded Toronto subway.

As anticipated it didn’t take long until people noticed.

Passers-by started filming him. Wondering aloud who this man was and, crucially, why he would make French Toast on a subway. Who is #FrenchToastGuy was trending.

Soon the media picked up on it and started asking the same questions. Just as the speculation and intrigue reached a fevered-pitch, we sent French Toast Guy out one last time at the end of his French Toast-filled week, but this time with Wendy’s French Toast Sticks in-hand.

Some eagle-eyed reporters caught on; and in their words “got the scoop of their careers”. Wendy’s was revealed as the perpetrator of the subway shenanigans. Busted.

We created our own “influencer” to make eating French Toast on-the-go a newsworthy event. All so we could introduce a better way to do it: Wendy’s French Toast Sticks.

We didn’t just create a cult hero for the sake of it, there was a method to the madness of using #FrenchToastGuy to drive awareness of the Wendy’s French Toast Sticks product launch, and to ultimately drive sales.

French Toast Guy earned 25.6m impressions in the first week, reached 243m people and the Wendy’s reveal video alone scored 1.8m TikTok views.

The activation drove very positive sentiment for Wendy’s and Wendy’s Breakfast reaching 96% positive sentiment online. This moved Wendy’s overall brand sentiment score up from 47% to 76%.

Canadians also flocked to Wendy’s to try French Toast Sticks, resulting in a 14% increase in restaurant traffic (meaning we drove over 90,000 additional people through Wendy’s doors vs. the same time the year prior).

French Toast Sticks also became a habitual add-on to breakfast orders with French Toast Stick sales exceeding benchmarks by 192% and average cheque size increasing 6%.